The State That’s Trying to Rein in DEI Without Becoming Florida

Conor Friedersdorf March 31, 2024 1 min read

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: Roughly a decade after the movement for diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, began to spread in American higher education, a political backlash is here. The Chronicle of Higher Education has tallied 80 bills since 2023 that aim to restrict DEI in some way, by banning DEI offices, mandatory diversity training, faculty diversity statements, and more. Eight have already become law, including in Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, North Dakota, and Utah. The worst of these laws violate academic independence and free speech by attempting to forbid certain ideas in the classroom.

Utah’s Equal Opportunities Initiatives, or H.B. 261, which was signed into law in January, is more promising. It attempts to end the excessive and at times coercive focus on identity in higher education while also trying to protect academic freedom with carve-outs for research and course teaching.

Click here for link to full article

Leave a comment

Comments will be approved before showing up.


Also in National Free Speech News & Commentary

Why Are Humanists So Bad at Defending the Humanities?
Why Are Humanists So Bad at Defending the Humanities?

N. Ángel Pinillos June 25, 2026 1 min read

I recently listened to Ross Douthat’s interview with the philosopher Jennifer Frey. She is a serious thinker and an unusually courageous academic entrepreneur. What she built at the University of Tulsa before it was dismantled is exactly the sort of thing more universities should be attempting. Yet almost every argument she offered for the humanities is, I think, completely unpersuasive to anyone not already on our side of the table.

Read More
Free Expression in a Climate of Self-Censorship: A National Survey of American Law Faculty
Free Expression in a Climate of Self-Censorship: A National Survey of American Law Faculty

FIRE June 25, 2026 1 min read

This report presents findings from a national survey of 1,959 law school faculty at 192 American Bar Association (ABA) approved law schools in the United States, conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). As one of the largest surveys of law faculty on free expression and professional norms, the data reveal a profession that strongly endorses free speech principles while struggling to live them out in practice. 

Read More
The Turley-Wolfson Debate on Institutional Neutrality in Higher Education
The Turley-Wolfson Debate on Institutional Neutrality in Higher Education

Jonathan Turley  June 25, 2026 1 min read

I just returned from the University of Wyoming, where I debated the President of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) Todd Wolfson over the need for colleges and universities to maintain institutional neutrality. The debate was organized by the Steamboat Institute and was live-streamed.

The formal question presented for debate was: “Is institutional neutrality necessary to preserve the university as a forum for open inquiry rather than an actor in political disputes?” I spoke in favor of institutional neutrality while Wolfson argued against it as a necessary component to higher education.

Read More