Gov. Greg Abbott is leading the charge to rid Texas of DEI policies, but Black and Mexican American state lawmakers are calling on him to reverse course. The NBA and the NFL won’t be holding championship games in the Lone Star State if some lawmakers get their way.
Earlier this week, Black and Latino legislators in Austin petitioned those national sports organizations, in addition to the NCAA and MLB, to steer clear of Texas until Gov. Greg Abbott reverses course on guidance related to diversity, equity and inclusion. The politicians’ press conference came about a week after the governor’s office told state agencies and universities that DEI hiring policies are illegal.
“The innocuous sounding notion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others,” Abbott’s chief of staff wrote in a memo first reported by The Texas Tribune. The letter didn’t spell out which demographic groups he was referring to.
The memo is the latest shot from conservatives in the ongoing war on supposed liberal leanings in public schools. Texas Republicans in 2021 outlawed the discussion of so-called critical race theory in classrooms, and now they’ve turned their attention to higher ed and another three-letter acronym: DEI.
DEI policies are meant to offer workplaces guidance on creating and maintaining an atmosphere of fair treatment to all, particularly when it comes to those from historically oppressed groups, including people of color and LGBTQ+ community members.
Legislators with the state’s Black and Mexican American caucuses railed against Abbott during Tuesday’s news conference. They also took issue with the claim that DEI efforts are against the law and accused Abbott of merely trying to churn up more red meat for his base.
The lawmakers argue that Texas’ population is rapidly diversifying, so its workplaces should also reflect that.
“If we remove these opportunities by removing DEI, where will that take our economy?” state Rep. Victoria Neave Criado, a Dallas Democrat, said at the conference.
Other critics are casting doubt on Abbott’s DEI claims. The governor’s office is “grossly misconstruing” federal law in an attempt to roll back the clock on equity, said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Offices in Higher Education. The United States has already had difficulty fulfilling “its founding promise of justice and liberty for all,” she wrote via email.
“The memo and its claims are ridiculous and beyond an attempt for state government overreach.” – Paulette Granberry Russell, NADOHE president
tweet this Granberry Russell pointed to several federal anti-discrimination laws already on the books including the Civil Rights Act, which is aimed at preventing discrimination on the basis of race, sex, color, religion and national origin.
Everyone can benefit from institutions that are equitable and inclusive, she added.
“The memo and its claims are ridiculous and beyond an attempt for state government overreach,” Granberry Russell said. “They are just one more step in a broader assault on the basic underpinnings of diversity, equity and inclusion, terms that some have sought to turn into dog whistles because they have not bothered to understand the basic history of America and the principles that can set it on a brighter path forward.”
Certain colleges in the state are currently under fire for their DEI dealings.
Texas Tech University recently received blowback after aWall Street Journal opinion piece condemned how the school’s biology department conducted its hiring practices. One job candidate reportedly earned bad marks for not understanding the difference between “equity” and “equality,” and another applicant received a demerit for repeatedly referring to professors using the “he” pronoun.
The university has since eliminated the policy in question and launched a review of all departments’ hiring processes. It’s a move welcomed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which advocates for protecting free speech rights on campuses and beyond.
Aaron Terr, FIRE’s director of public advocacy, noted that tension over DEI initiatives has steadily ramped up in recent years. FIRE has heard concerns from hundreds of faculty members across the country that their campuses are using DEI statements to “enforce ideological conformity, or using that as a litmus test.”
Many higher-ed institutions have started to require job candidates and faculty who are up for a promotion or tenure to demonstrate via written statement their dedication to accepted DEI views, Terr said. Such statements then may work against applicants who don’t agree with prevailing DEI opinions.
“The problem is that the way that these statements are evaluated is often viewpoint discriminatory,” he said. “So if you express, or fail to express, certain views about contested social and political issues related to race or gender, then you may be disadvantaged in the hiring process or when you’re being evaluated.”
The way Terr sees it, DEI initiatives don’t have to be at odds with academic freedom and free speech. Still, universities have been known to pit them against such First Amendment values.
Colleges have every right to try to increase diversity on campus, Terr said, but the process can’t interfere with someone’s expressive rights. “If you’re not familiar with how [DEI] sort of gets operationalized, it might sound perfectly innocuous or uncontroversial, or values that everyone can agree on,” he said. “But, of course, the devil’s in the details and the actual implementation of it, and I think more people are waking up to the fact that it’s being used to purge campuses of people who don’t hold institutionally approved views.”