Despite DEI Bans, Texas Keeps Funding DEI Activist Pipelines

Editor’s Note: This article originally stated that the NSF-funded math postdoc was at Texas Southern University. It has been corrected to reflect that the position is at Texas State University.

Despite having one of the most stringent anti-DEI legislations in the country, Texas universities still host an array of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) programs and scholarships.

In late 2023, the Texas State legislature passed Senate Bill 17 (SB17), outlawing DEI offices, employees, statements, trainings, programs, and activities state-wide in higher education. SB17, however, provides sweeping exceptions to academic work, allowing DEI scholarships to flourish.

SB17 emphasizes that it does not “restrict academic research or coursework” or “research or creative works by an institution of higher education ’s students or faculty.” Thus, under the heading of “research,” Texans continue to fund the following:

• The University of North Texas’s Center for Racial and Ethnic Equity in Health and Society (CREEHS).
• UT Austin’s Center for Equity Promotion and a Latinx Health Disparities Postdoctoral Fellowship.
• University of Houston’s Partnership to Develop Equity-minded Educators (UH PDEE) program
• UT Arlington’s Center for Transportation Equity, Decisions & Dollars

DEI-focused faculty and postdoctoral positions continue to exist as well.

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Texas Tech Humanities Center is currently soliciting a fellowship for “social justice, environmental studies, anti-racism, and public health.” The Texas A&M College of Architecture is seeking an associate professor “whose research contributes to knowledge and practice related to equity, urban regeneration, mobility, or community resilience.”

A number of these programs using “equity” frameworks are federally funded, including by the Department of Education (ED), National Science Foundation (NSF), and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). For example, Prairie View A&M University received $1,243,372 to launch the Innovative and Sustainable Practices for Recruiting, Educating, and Diversifying Educational Diagnosticians (iSPREAD-ED) project from the Department of Education’s Office of Special Education Programs. ISPREAD-ED is a race-based affirmative action program—precisely the sort of program SB 17 sought to eliminate—awarded in nine months after SB 17 had passed.

The University of Houston received $1.2 million from the NSF for STEM Education Equity Postdocs and another $1.2 million from NASA for the Partnership for Inclusivity in Engineering Education and Research for Space. NSF also funds a “Structuring Equitable Participation in Undergraduate Proofs” math postdoc at Texas State University.

Make no mistake: postdoc programs like these are pipelines for activists into university administration or tenure-track faculty positions.

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States like Texas should not perceive academic freedom as a roadblock preventing the elimination of these programs but precisely the grounds on which they should be challenged. Program administrators are aware that these programs discriminate against conservatives. “Equity” as a methodology excludes those who do not share its premises.

Programs that discriminate on the basis of ideology should not be entitled to public funds. All of the programs previously mentioned were housed at public universities. Per the American Association of University Professors’s charter, public institutions, by their appeal to the general public for monetary and moral support, are compelled to act as “non-partisan institutions of learning.” While highly partisan material can be taught objectively, equity as a methodology, and not simply an object of study, eschews the pretense of objectivity.

Terminating such programs is not with precedent.

On August 10th, 2023, the New College of Florida (NCF) Board of Trustees voted 7-3 to accept Christopher Rufo’s motion to abolish NCF’s Gender Studies Program. State legislators or individual Texas Boards of Trustees could institute a program review process with similar results.

Depoliticization starts by jettisoning the ideologically discriminatory programs responsible for the incompetent, activist-administrator class of today. Legislators and boards of trustees ought to eliminate these programs to ebb the flow of DEI activist-scholars into university administrations. Intradisciplinary reform, distinguishing disciplines from DEI pseudo-scholarship, will not occur with activists forming majorities in university leadership. If DEI pipelines remain unassailed, the American academy will endure 40 years of monoculture and stultification, if Lysenkoism’s dogmatic triumph to denomination as pseudoscience is any indication.

Image: University of North Texas, Denton by Nils Huenerfuerst on Unsplash