How American universities get around the DEI backlash
Schools are relabelling offices faster than they are cutting them.
Dropping politically charged terms from office and job titles can allow universities to retain staff and pursue the same goals while attracting less scrutiny. Jerry Cirino, sponsor of Senate Bill 1, which banned DEI programmes at public colleges and universities in Ohio, says he’s broadly pleased with compliance, but that “the practice is still going on, they’re just calling it something different.” Even some DEI advocates acknowledge this. “Some people have changed the language they use publicly, but the underlying work is very similarẠỊsays Emelyn dela Peña, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education.
The Economist obtained payroll records from several large state-university systems to measure the effect of the crackdown on staffing and salaries. These records cannot establish whether DEI work itself has been scaled back, only whether staffing costs have declined. The data show that spending on DEI staff is falling, not just in many Republican states but in several Democratic ones too. Yet the decline was modest-even at institutions that swiftly eliminated their DEI offices.
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