Texas Legislature Passes Bill Banning Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Efforts in Higher Education

Texas Republicans passed and sent a bill to Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) desk over the weekend that would ban Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts at publicly funded universities in the state.

Texas would become the second state in the nation after Florida to enact this kind of legislation, should Abbott sign off on Senate Bill 17. The bill would require universities in the Lone Star State to eliminate their DEI offices, programs, and mandatory trainings within the next six months and would also require university hiring practices to be “color-blind and sex neutral.”

The bill would not impact admissions, course curriculum, student organizations, faculty research, or data collection. It also mandates that the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board conduct a study every two years documenting “the effect the changes have on enrollment, retention and graduation of students, broken down by race, sex and ethnicity,” The Hill reported. 

The bill additionally includes a clause that would allow a student or employee who is required to participate in a DEI training in violation of the law to bring action against the institution.

“The days of political oaths, compelled speech, and racial profiling in university hiring are behind us,” bill sponsor state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R) said in a statement to The Texas Tribune. “Moving forward, Texas will prioritize the advancement of the most qualified individuals and endorse policies that promote diversity and equality for our great state.”

As Breitbart News has previously reported, DEI programs are often used to launder left-wing ideologies, like Critical Race Theory (CRT), in schools, government, and private companies. Critical Race Theory is one of the most common ideologies promulgated in DEI programs, and “claims that all of America’s institutions — our government, our economy, our culture — are based on racial hierarchy, with whites on top and blacks at the bottom. Even things that look race-neutral are, on closer inspection, racist,” Breitbart’s Joel Pollak wrote. 

“It was the invention of a group of radical left-wing intellectuals known as the Frankfurt School, who developed it to achieve through cultural change what Marxism could not achieve politically,” Pollak added. “…Race is to Critical Race Theory what class is to Marxism: a basic building block of society, which can only be defeated by a revolution that gives power to the formerly oppressed.”

Earlier this year, two conservative think tanks, including the Manhattan Institute, published a model legislation to “abolish DEI bureaucracies.” Prominent anti-Critical Race Theory activist Christopher Rufo helped write the model legislation, arguing that “so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies at public universities operate as divisive ideological commissariats, promulgating and enforcing Critical Race Theory and related political orthodoxies as official campus policy.” 

“Administrative DEI offices within universities are not covered by norms of academic freedom and are in fact a threat to academic freedom and academic integrity. Administrators in public institutions of higher education should maintain institutional neutrality on controversial political questions extraneous to the business of educating students,” the model reads. “Contrary to this obligation, DEI advances primarily political aims rather than educational aims. Additionally, the growth of DEI bureaucracies has fueled bureaucratic bloat and rising costs, contributing to the indebtedness of students and parents.”

Before the bill’s passage, Rufo notably published three-part investigative series (see here, here, and here) exposing how DEI bureaucracies at three different Texas universities, following the 2020 George Floyd riots, insidiously worked to promote CRT and other culturally marxist ideologies like queer theory and transgender activism. He wrote that he published the investigations with the hope of persuading lawmakers to pass legislation banning DEI efforts in universities.

“The University of Texas has created a radical DEI bureaucracy that equates ‘objectivity’ with ‘white supremacy,’ recommends the word ‘wimmin’ as a replacement for ‘women,’ and affirms ‘polyamory’ and ‘polyfidelity’ as positive sexual identities,” Rufo found in his first investigation. 

“Texas A&M is a systematically racist institution. According to whom? According to the leadership of Texas A&M,” Rufo wrote in his second piece. “In recent years, the College Station-based public university, originally founded with a focus on agriculture and engineering, has built a vast ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy that has adopted the narrative of left-wing racialism, segregated students by race, and told colleagues to ‘stop centering whiteness.”’

In his third investigation, Rufo found that “The University of Houston has created a radical DEI bureaucracy that condemns the United States as a ‘white supremacy system,’ castigates Christians for their ‘religious privilege,’ and hosts sexually explicit events such as ‘Queer Sex After Dark’ and ‘Sex Ed Bingo: Chance to Win a Sex Toy.'”

Rufo celebrated the passage of the S.B. 17 in a post to his Substack on Tuesday.

“I have been working on this campaign since January, releasing model legislation with Manhattan Institute, publishing investigative reports on radical ‘diversity and inclusion’ programming in state universities, and working with political leaders to craft a persuasive narrative in the public debate,” he reflected. “This campaign is now paying dividends. Earlier this month, Governor DeSantis signed a bill to abolish DEI in Florida. In the coming weeks, Governor Abbott will sign the bill to abolish DEI in Texas. And, next year, other red states are likely to follow, copying the legislation in Florida and Texas, which has set the new standard.”

Rufo called the bill’s passage “the beginning of a conservative counter-revolution in higher education.”

“In the late 1960s, left-wing activists launched their “long march through the institutions” and treated the public universities as a vehicle for their private political interests. They saturated academic departments with their ideology and showed contempt for voters in their intellectual work, but, for many decades, conservative politicians did nothing,” he wrote.

“No more. The legislation in Florida and Texas will immediately shut down the most ideological component of university administration and put the pursuit of knowledge—not political activism—back to the center of higher education. It’s time to recapture the institutions. Starting now.”

DEI proponents unsurprisingly bemoaned the bill’s passage, with members of Texans Students for DEI telling The Texas Tribune that lawmakers “fundamentally misunderstand the role of DEI in reconciling a longstanding history of systemic exclusion in Texas’s institutions of higher learning.”

“DEI represents a dedication to create and maintain an open and supportive environment for all students regardless of background,” the group claimed.

The Texas Conference of American Association of University Professors “encouraged colleges and universities to find ways to continue DEI services in a tweet,” UPI reported.

 

“In light of the passage of #SB17 banning diversity, equity and inclusion officers, we ask our public university and community college administrations to look for ways to make the best continuing use of the invaluable service to our campus communities by DEI staff and faculty,” the group said.

If signed, the law will take effect on January 1, 2024.