After failing to pass legislation at the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Frankfort are restarting discussions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at Kentucky’s public colleges.
There were multiple attempts to restrict or rein in DEI programs on state colleges during the legislative session, but after what appeared to be disagreement between the two chambers, neither succeeded before the clock ran out.
But some Republican lawmakers still appear to have an appetite for legislating DEI in education. They probed the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education and two college presidents on their diversity programs in a Tuesday interim hearing.
Republican Rep. Emily Callaway from Louisville — who voted in favor of eliminating DEI programs at public colleges this year — asked the president of Northern Kentucky University why there are specific clubs for Black students and not white ones.
“I see Black student unions. I don't see ‘white’ anything. No mention … My son, what would he relate to on your campus? And how is this inclusive?” Callaway asked. “There's no mention of any activities for whites. I'm having a problem understanding what the justification is, when we use the term ‘diversity’ to exclude, very specifically, my son.”
Northern Kentucky University’s president Cady Short-Thompson replied that NKU’s programming and clubs are open to all students, and that there is an activity available for every student’s interest. She also noted that very few dollars comparatively are spent specifically on DEI programs.
The attempts to limit or ban DEI at public colleges this year ranged from a bill to limit “divisive concepts” and required diversity statements to legislation that would ban any use of resources on DEI offices or officers, DEI training or DEI initiatives.
Travis Powell, vice president and general counsel of the Council on Postsecondary Education, explained how their diversity targets and campus scorecards work.
“Well these aren’t quotas. They’re targets,” Powell said. “We evaluate enrollment on a holistic matter. So we look at different populations and we set goals with the campuses. But no one student is discriminated against based on any of our policies that we have in place.”
The reports rate whether state universities and colleges are meeting their goals in recruiting, retaining and graduating underrepresented minority students and low-income students. If schools fall below the baseline in enough of the categories, they score a zero on the scorecard and must work with the council or they are unable to start new academic programs.
Timothy Minella, senior fellow at the conservative think tank Goldwater Institute, spoke at the hearing, and said he considered the targets to be unconstitutional.
“To address this, first consider Goldwater's model policy on abolishing DEI bureaucracies, which prohibits any attempt to promote differential treatment on account of race in public institutions,” Minella said at the hearing.
The committee’s two Black members, Democratic senators Gerald Neal of Louisville and Reggie Thomas of Lexington, spoke in support of diversity and inclusion efforts. Thomas said his grandmother attended the University of Kentucky soon after it desegregated in the 1950s.
“Since that change and UK offering equal opportunity to all of his students, it's now transformed itself to be one of the best universities in this country,” Thomas said.
Rep. Jason Nemes, a Republican from Middletown, said “we do ourselves a disservice as conservatives” to conflate helping historically disadvantaged students to access education with a lot of intellectual diversity on college campuses.
“I think what we should be hyper focused on is making sure we have intellectual diversity, and making sure that we attack the places in our university that are going after the institutions of Western civilization and trying to change our culture,” Nemes said.
Like Callaway, Nemes voted in support of anti-DEI legislation this year.
Sen. Stephen West, one of the committee chairs, said they will discuss DEI in higher education again at their September meeting.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
