The University of Kentucky will disband its Office of Institutional Diversity in response to questions from policymakers about whether the school has stifled political discussion, its president said Tuesday.
The action on the Lexington, Kentucky, campus comes as state lawmakers debated whether to limit diversity, equity and inclusion practices at public universities. Republican supermajorities in the Kentucky House of Representatives and Senate were unable to resolve differences on the issue before this year’s session ended in April, but the issue is expected to resurface when lawmakers reconvene early next year.
In the school’s preventive action, units housed in the shuttered diversity office will be relocated elsewhere on campus, including a newly created Office for Community Relations, UK President Eli Capilouto announced in a campus-wide email. The restructuring will not result in job losses, he said.
Capilouto stressed that the school’s core values remain intact: protecting academic freedom and fostering a “sense of belonging” for everyone on campus, regardless of background or perspective.
“But we’ve also listened to policymakers and heard a lot of their questions about whether we seem partisan or political on the issues of our time and, as a result, interpret things only through the lens of identity,” the campus president said. “As a result, there’s a concern that we’re intentionally or unintentionally limiting the discourse. I hear a lot of those concerns echoed in discussions with some of our students, faculty and staff across our campus.”
Universities in other states face similar problems, he noted.
The quest to limit DEI initiatives gained momentum this year in some red-state statehouses. For example, Iowa’s Republican-led legislature passed a budget bill that would ban all DEI offices and initiatives in higher education that aren’t needed to comply with accreditation or federal law.
Republican lawmakers in Missouri have introduced numerous bills aimed at “diversity, equity and inclusion” initiatives in higher education and state government. Although the legislation has not passed, the efforts have put pressure on institutions to make changes. The University of Missouri recently announced that it is disbanding its Division of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity and redistributing its staff to other departments.
In Kentucky, GOP lawmakers at the forefront of the DEI debate said Tuesday they applauded UK’s action and urged other public universities to take similar steps.
“A true elimination of these DEI policies at our public universities will end the divisiveness they foster and restore our colleges and universities to be the true bastion of free thought we need,” Republican Sen. Mike Wilson said in a statement.
Opponents of Kentucky’s anti-DEI laws warned that the restrictions on campuses could undermine growth in minority enrollment and undermine campus discussions about past discrimination.
On its website, the UK Office for Institutional Diversity states that its mission is to “increase the diversity and inclusiveness of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population.”
In outlining the restructuring at UK, the university will not mandate centralized diversity training at the faculty or unit level, Capilouto said. It will not place required diversity statements in recruitment and application processes, he said, and websites will be free of political views to ensure impartiality.
“This should in no way be construed as an infringement on academic freedom,” the campus president added. “Faculty decide what to teach as part of formal education and where discovery should take them as scholars in their fields.”
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David Lieb, an Associated Press editor in Jefferson City, Missouri, contributed to this report.
