What We’re Reading: June 2023

This month’s top 10 stories focus on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) controversies, as colleges react to state legislation disallowing DEI programming. Highlights include a professor sues UC Santa Cruz over DEI statement requirements, a state legislator argues for viewpoint diversity, and a college professor makes the case for core curricula as the pathway to honoring diversity on campus.

Campus Happenings

Scientist Sues UCSC Over Diversity Statement Requirement

Aric Sleeper | Santa Cruz Sentinel | May 19, 2023

A prospective applicant for a faculty position at the University of California, Santa Cruz is suing the school over the requirement to submit diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) statement. The scholar asserts that DEI statement requirements violate the First Amendment and have “contributed to creating a corrosive and hostile environment that is intolerant of viewpoint diversity and is anathema to high-quality research and teaching.” The University of California system has required DEI statements since 2005.

 

UB Student Group Sues, Claiming Free Speech Violation after Michael Knowles’ Visit

Janet Grazma | Buffalo News | June 3, 2023

The University of Buffalo Student Association revised its rules governing recognition of student clubs to withdraw recognition from clubs affiliated with national organizations, resulting in the derecognition of several clubs. The Young Americans for Freedom club asserts the student association meant to target it and now is suing university administrators who oversee clubs. Administrators said that they support freedom of association and are considering alternative club recognition procedures.

 

State and Federal 

Senate Bill Would Create ‘Intellectual Diversity’ Centers at Ohio State and the University of Toledo

Megan Henry | The74 | May 21, 2023

An Ohio Senate bill would create a Center for Civics, Culture, and Society at Ohio State and Institute of American Constitutional Thought and Leadership at the University of Toledo College of Law. One bill sponsor said the new centers correct “a single ideological perspective [dominating] academia,” while an Ohio State University professor suggested it is “a mistake to reinvent the wheel when you could actually just work with the existing faculty, staff and student centers and institutes.”

 

A Plan to Counter Antisemitism Warns Colleges, ‘OCR is Watching’

Katherine Knott | Inside Higher Ed | May 26, 2023

The Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague” letter reminding schools that the department considers antisemitic harassment to be discriminatory harassment based on race, color, or national origin under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and affirming the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. Some say this definition disallows criticism of Israel that is constitutionally protected.

 

Colleges Squirm Under Anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Pressure

Lexi Lonas | The Hill | May 30, 2023

As Republican-led anti-DEI legislation seeks to regulate professors, funding, and coursework at public universities across the country, proponents of DEI initiatives argue that the laws “have a fundamental misunderstanding of the goal of the programs.” Some schools seek loopholes: a Florida Atlantic University professor said, “I know that, for coursework and for some of the things, they’re just changing the names of committees as opposed to, you know, doing away with them altogether.”

 

Op-eds and Thought Pieces

College Students are Being Told to Report People who Say ‘Divisive’ Things. It’s an Attack on Freedom.

Jonathan Zimmerman | The Philadelphia Inquirer | May 17, 2023

University of Pennsylvania Professor Jonathan Zimmerman criticizes efforts to encourage college students to report others for controversial statements, whether imposed by state laws or by bias reporting systems. According to Zimmerman, “A campus bias response system isn’t the same as a law barring CRT. Most obviously, breaking the law can land you in jail. But the attacks on speech from the right and left share an equally illiberal spirit.”

 

Free Speech, Diversity of Views Critical to Quality of Education at Wisconsin Universities

Dave Murphy | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | May 30, 2023

Wisconsin State Rep. Dave Murphy, Republican chair of the State Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, summarizes survey findings and testimony that conservative students face a less welcoming environment than liberal students to express opinions. He writes: “I firmly believe that intellectual and viewpoint diversity must be on an equal plane with all other types of diversity our university system promotes. If it is not, our students will never receive the true college experience they deserve.”

 

Speaking Up on Campus Doesn’t Mean Shouting Down Others

Sian Beilock and Phil Hanlon | Boston Globe | June 2, 2023

Phil Hanlong and Sian Beilock, the outgoing and incoming presidents of Dartmouth College, respectively, write: “We need our institutions to resume their place as bastions of rigorous academic debate, where students are afforded the space to try on new ideas and vet existing ones… If we can help them embrace the idea that being ‘right’ is less important than being engaged, we might persuade those who would choose silence to risk being wrong.”

 

Campus Diversity Is Campus Jew-Hatred

Seth Mandel | Commentary | June 2023

According to author Seth Mandel, “DEI university activity has become a reliable indicator of overt hostility to Israel and, at the very least, suspicion of any visible expression of Jewishness.” Mandel cites examples of increasing antisemitism associated with DEI efforts, endorses state efforts to defund DEI programs at public colleges, and writes that “in an atmosphere where DEI has great sway, merely to denounce anti-Semitic violence is to risk one’s job, reputation, career, livelihood.”

 

Great Books Can Heal Our Divided Campuses

Andrew Delbanco | Wall Street Journal | June 9, 2023

The author, a Columbia University professor and president of the Teagle Foundation, argues schools should realign general education requirements around a common core curriculum. Citing examples of schools that have done so, he argues such a curriculum “is the likeliest way to make diversity a real force for learning among students of different races, religions, origins, sexual identities and other forms of difference.”