A Rutgers professor defended diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices on college campuses on Thursday.
Harvard University held a panel featuring scholars and academics to discuss the role DEI bureaucracy plays on college campuses.
"Four academics agreed it was important to protect diversity in higher education, but disagreed over whether universities’ diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives clash with academic freedom during a Thursday panel hosted by the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics," according to Harvard Crimson.
Amna Khalid, a Carleton College history professor, began the debate by calling current DEI efforts "DEI, Inc.," a matter she said in which "diversity is a customer service issue, education is the product, and students are customers."
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"It’s underscored by the notion of harm and that students somehow need to be protected from harm, as if we entered our classrooms dying to harm our students," she went on to say.
Rutgers University law professor Stacy Hawkins pushed back.
"But Hawkins pushed back against Khalid’s criticisms of DEI initiatives, saying it is contradictory to oppose the ‘operationalization and the professionalization of diversity’ while pursuing it as a goal," The Crimson reported.
"We have wanted diversity, we have wanted equality in this country — in our institutions — for a very long time, and we have not managed to succeed in achieving it," Hawkins said.
She continued, "And one of the problems is that there was not sufficient structure and accountability around that goal."
"And so, without the structure and accountability that Jeannie and Amna and, I guess, Ilya as well are complaining about, we would have no ability to make meaningful progress," Hawkins added.
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While two other panelists slammed DEI efforts during the event, Hawkins was the only panelist to defend DEI imperatives.
Gersen countered Hawkins by noting the racial demographic of Harvard’s student population as evidence for progress in diversity in higher education.
"She said that while this increased diversity should encourage ‘friction’ and healthy debate, she found DEI policies have made students more hesitant to freely express themselves in the classroom," the Crimson reported.
Gerson touted the importance of requiring her students to take opposing stances on legal debates.
"What they’re doing with cases like that is dismissing them off the bat because of academic freedom, and saying this does not actually violate the rules of our school, it does not violate anti-discrimination policies, it does not violate any rules by which people are bound," Gersen said.
The other academics included Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor.
Shapiro said that DEI initiatives have "led to censorship or a culture of self-censorship — which, in turn, harm academic freedom."
Per the Crimson, he added that DEI is "almost always wrong in the sense that it subverts classical liberal principles of the academic mission of open inquiry and truth-seeking and knowledge creation and research and debating ideas and what-have-you."
Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Christopher Robichaud moderated the discussion.
The panel came amid state legislatures making moves to restrict DEI measures on college campuses and the public sector.
The Florida Board of Governors passed the regulation in January limiting public funding for DEI, defining them as "any program, campus activity, or policy that classifies individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, gender identity, or sexual orientation and promotes differential or preferential treatment of individuals on the basis of such classification."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has made halting DEI a cornerstone of his efforts to overhaul education in the state, wrote on X, "Florida is where DEI goes to die."
Furthemore, Republican Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed a bill into law in January that prohibits diversity training, hiring and inclusion programs at universities and in state government, adding to a growing list of states to ban such programs.
Texas has also cracked down on DEI efforts in the state.
DEI campus proponents argue they help correct systemic inequities and address increasingly diverse student populations, while opponents like DeSantis have said they are a form of leftist discrimination.
