Oklahoma public universities are set to spend more than $10 million on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the current fiscal year.
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education was required to quickly produce reports after the state superintendent, Ryan Walters, demanded to know “every dollar” that had been spent on the DEI agenda during the past ten years.
“I want an overview of your staffing and the colleges underneath your oversight as the Chancellor of Oklahoma Higher Regents within every DEI program or … expenditures,” a letter from Walters read. The January 23 letter requested the financial information by February 1.
The board found that $10.2 million had been budgeted for DEI activities for the current fiscal year, a local news outlet reported. Meanwhile, $3.7 million of that sum came from the state. The regents also stated that the figure amounted to 0.29% of higher education spending and 0.11% of state expenditures relating to higher education.
Tulsa World asked Walters why he was requesting the information, to which he responded:
To see how much money is being spent on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which we’ve got a lot of feedback around, a lot of concerns around, around these white privilege walks and around the shaming of one race or another or saying one race is superior or inferior to another.
“We’ve got to empower parents through transparency and through school choice,” Walters also added.
Meanwhile, Chance Layton, a spokesperson for the National Association of Scholars, told College Fix that “Financial transparency is a fundamental part of public expenditures,” before going on to add that “publicly funded institutions should report all such spending and do so in every state.”
In addition, Layton also called for legislation that would enhance transparency, remarking, “Transparency bills are the first step to acknowledging the damage DEI does to higher education.”
Spencer Lindquist is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerLndqst and reach out at slindquist@breitbart.com.