Michael A. Chihak: DEI: Is it on or off at U of A?

Will the University of Arizona re-establish its diversity, equity and inclusion programs now that the White House and federal government have at least partly surrendered on the issue?

U.S. Department of Education lawyers on Wednesday withdrew their appeal of a court ruling that the administration violated procedures in withholding funding and threatened educators’ free speech in classrooms.

Just like that, the threatened loss of billions of dollars for schools at all levels, elementary districts to university campuses, appears to be over. The president’s efforts to further embed white dominance into the U.S. educational system has been stifled, for now.

But not before UA administrators cut, culled and consolidated DEI programs in response to the education department sending memos last February to universities across the country to end such initiatives or lose funding. At our university, administrators folded quickly, without objection, plea or fight.

Under Suresh Garimella, by happenstance the UA’s second president of color, the phrase “committed to diversity and inclusion” was removed from the institution’s Indigenous land acknowledgement, and the campus Office of Diversity and Inclusion’s website was taken down.

Garimella said he had to follow the law and federal guidelines. Nothing in the federal threats was based on law, and guidelines are just that.

Three months later, the university announced that it was consolidating six cultural centers that served students of color, LGBTQ students, female students and those with disabilities. The directors of the centers were told their positions were being eliminated.

Included was the Adalberto and Ana Guerrero Student Center on what is a federally designated “Hispanic Serving Institution.” Hispanic, perhaps; serving, no longer.

A seventh program, the Native American Student Affairs Center, was subsumed into the administration’s Office of Native American Initiatives, and the center’s director was fired.

The deadline for this column did not give Garimella or the university’s spokesman time to respond to an inquiry about any plans to reverse the DEI rollback in light of the federal government dropping its appeal. Watch the Star’s news pages for a response from campus.

One must wonder if Garimella’s quick capitulation on DEI programs last February gave the Department of Education and the White House incentive in October to include the UA on a list of nine universities asked to sign a “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.”

The compact would have required the university presidents' agreement to eliminate race-based admissions, scale back diversity programs and enforce “viewpoint neutrality” in classrooms.

The UA did not reject it out of hand as some institutions did, but credit Garimella with standing up for academic freedom, merit-based research funding and independence from political influence. “... the university has not agreed to the terms outlined in the draft proposal,” he said in a message to the campus community.

That and other federal efforts still linger in the background, though, leaving educators on edge about next moves, especially because no reason was given for dropping the appeal. The administration already has pursued white-dominance goals along multiple paths, including investigating educational programs for children of color in Chicago and elsewhere.

It also has used antisemitism as an excuse to target faculty and students of Middle Eastern background on some campuses.

The very nature of American society is one of diversity in origin, background, skin color and culture. It always has been, and it must be reflected in education.

On the University of Arizona campus, that means diversity must live as intrinsic to the institution and the campus community. In that, diversity, equity and inclusion have prominent and proper roles.