No More Diversity Offices?
Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, recently helped author a model bill that would ban public colleges from having diversity offices, hiring diversity administrators, using diversity statements in hiring or promotion, or requiring diversity training.
Lawmakers in several states have already reached out to discuss policy ideas in the bill, according to Jesse Arm, Manhattan’s director of external affairs.
Shapiro became a flashpoint in higher ed last year: Shortly after he was appointed to lead a center at Georgetown University’s law school, he wrote on Twitter that President Biden would nominate a “lesser black woman” to the U.S. Supreme Court instead of picking the most qualified candidate. Shapiro later deleted the post and said the wording was “inartful.” The university placed him under investigation and eventually reinstated him, but he resigned anyway.
The Chronicle interviewed Shapiro to try to better understand the anti-DEI arguments that are increasingly taking hold among conservative politicians — many of whom are eager to crack down on a perceived ideology creep in higher education regarding who colleges serve and how they serve them. This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I’m interviewing you for our Race on Campus newsletter. It’s read by a lot of people who work in campus diversity offices.
That’s awkward. I’m trying to, you know, eliminate their jobs.
Was there a particular moment when you felt that efforts to increase diversity in higher ed tipped over the edge and went too far?
In the last decade, the term “The Great Awokening” appears. Maybe 2016, with the election of Trump, is another inflection point. And then obviously, the George Floyd murder.
I don’t think this push against DEI is the latest in a decades-long conservative complaint about liberal faculty. Our model legislation is not about what faculty teach. This is about the DEI structures — these offices that, in effect, enforce a kind of ideology. Their work is not about the educational mission, and it’s not about enforcing state and federal civil-rights laws, and it’s not about just making students feel welcome. It’s taking some of the more radical theories of earlier times and operationalizing them.
You mentioned George Floyd. Many people in higher ed would say that Floyd’s murder touched off a reckoning with systemic racism that was overdue. How do you see it?
I don’t know what systemic racism means in this context. Whether you’re talking about Harvard, Princeton, Yale, big state schools — how are they discriminating against Black students? If the issue is the downstream effects of redlining, and housing patterns, and wealth not being able to be passed on — well, that’s not exactly higher ed’s fault. The remedy is not to indoctrinate. If it’s a criminal-justice issue, I don’t know why a higher-ed department is responding to that. If it’s within the institution — are you really saying that you’re racist?
A lot of people would see systemic racism in the fact that colleges routinely fail to educate students of color. They’d argue that the institutions themselves are inequitable. What would you say to that?
If you see that a disproportionate number of the lower-achieving students are racial minorities, you would think: Is the university discriminating in some way? I think the “mismatch” phenomenon does a much better job of explaining that dynamic — than, you know, psychology and astronomy and math professors all teach in a way that doesn’t help Black students. [The much-debated mismatch theory posits that many students of color lack the preparation to succeed at highly selective colleges.]
You don’t think that colleges have a responsibility to do something about disparate outcomes for students of color?
They should offer tutoring services and support for anyone who’s struggling academically. In a lot of places, those support services will be used disproportionately by racial minorities, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I do think there’s a problem with creating programs by race — singling out by identity.
Demographic trends necessitate that colleges recruit and take steps to welcome students from a range of backgrounds, who often want targeted support and affinity groups and the like. I wonder if colleges can really adopt a position of neutrality on race and equity, as you’re calling for, in that environment.
There’s a difference between having money available for student organizations and giving racial or ethnic preferences at the admissions level. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with trying to pursue affirmative action as originally conceived — that is, making sure you’re not missing the smart, qualified kids in schools that have never sent students to your campus.
But when it comes to enforced segregation on campus — programs that explicitly say, as some do, “this is only for BIPOC” or “this is only for LGBTQ.” “Only” being the key thing. Not, “This is welcoming and we’re going to talk about queer issues.” That’s fine, as long as anyone can come. There’s a distinction between being welcoming and recruiting widely, and what I’ve characterized as illiberal methods.
How can you have a support program that’s for, say, Black students or Latino students — creating a community for them — without it being somewhat limited to that group? Students are asking for spaces where they can be among peers who understand their life experience.
It depends if it’s segregation or not — if it’s race-based exclusion. If you have a dorm that’s one race only, that’s a problem. An easy way of testing this is, would you be OK if the given program said “whites only”?
But you would support colleges having equity initiatives without having racial-equity initiatives?
I don’t want to play semantic games. It’s not about the word. Diversity sounds great. Inclusion sounds great. Equity — if you mean fairness, sure. But DEI is often used in an Orwellian way, going against intellectual diversity, going against equal opportunity, and instead enforcing equality of outcomes. Inclusion often means excluding anyone who doesn’t kowtow to prevailing orthodoxy. Just being fair, sure. But the devil is in the details.
You talk about opposing segregation. That word comes from a historical context; people were segregated by race not all that long ago, during the Jim Crow era. What about the idea that adopting a stance of race blindness is taking us back to a world decades ago where we didn’t fully appreciate the impact of racism in society? That taking race out of the equation actually takes us back?
That seems to be defining words to be the exact opposite of what they mean. How can not taking race into account be racist? The definition of racist is treating someone differently because of their race. I’m saying, “I’m completely colorblind, I’m treating all people the same, regardless of their race.” I don’t see how that is something nefarious. It’s just two different visions of how we should govern ourselves, I suppose.
To be clear, what I’m talking about is official structures. If there’s some friend group that only wants to hang around with everyone of the same background — this is not about regulating social relations. It’s about, what does the university impose? And, especially if it’s a public school, what do state actors impose?
