How DEI Offices Grew on Campus and What Closing Them Requires

When a legislature closes a campus office, the office has a way of reopening down the hall under a new name, with the same staff, the same budget and a warmer logo. Call it the bureaucratic witness protection programme. The paperwork changes. The people do not.

That is the practical lesson of the first wave of state laws aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracies in higher education. A statute that closes an office called the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion has accomplished very little if the work moves to the Office of Belonging and Community. This post explains how the offices grew, what they do, what the objections to them are, what the best case for them is, and what a legislator or trustee needs to know to make a law or a board resolution actually reach the function it is aimed at.

What a DEI office typically looks like

There is no single model, but most large campuses assembled the same parts over about two decades.

1. A chief diversity officer, often a vice president or vice provost who reports to the president or provost, with a seat in senior meetings.
2. A central office with staff, typically directors of programmes for students, faculty and community engagement, plus assistants, coordinators and data analysts.
3. Distributed staff in the schools and colleges. Many universities placed a diversity officer or committee in each college, so that the central office had branches in every department.
4. Training programmes: workshops on bias, microaggressions, privilege and inclusion, sometimes required of new students, new employees or members of hiring committees.
5. Hiring functions: guidance for faculty search committees, "diversity statements" requested of applicants, and in some cases review of candidate pools by the diversity office before interviews.
6. Student life programmes: cultural centres, affinity housing, orientation sessions and scholarship programmes.
7. Reporting and response: bias response teams, which take reports of speech or conduct that someone found offensive, discussed in Bias Response Teams and the Quiet Machinery of Campus Speech Policing.
8. Curricular tie-ins: general-education requirements built around diversity topics.

None of this was created at once. A multicultural affairs office from the 1970s grew into a diversity programme in the 1990s and a full bureaucracy in the 2010s, often after protests and often with the best of intentions. The expansion was gradual enough that no single step looked like a decision to build a parallel administration.

The steelman: what defenders say these offices do

Let me state the best case for them. Defenders say that campuses are legally obliged to prevent discrimination, that federal law (Title VI on race, Title IX on sex, the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 on disability) requires compliance offices, and that a university which wants to attract and keep students from every background needs people whose job it is to help them. They say first-generation and rural students, among others, benefit from mentoring and support. They say training can reduce harassment and help a workforce learn to work together. And they say that the attacks are often directed at a handful of excesses, while the great majority of the work is ordinary student support.

Part of that is right, and the laws that closed DEI offices in several states recognised it. The state statutes generally carve out compliance with federal anti-discrimination law, accreditation requirements, and services for students that are open to everyone. A serious conservative position does not oppose helping a first-generation student find a tutor. It opposes a bureaucracy that sorts students by identity, polices speech and requires conformity.

The objection: diversity statements and compelled speech

The most pointed controversy concerned diversity statements in faculty hiring. Applicants for jobs were asked to write a statement describing their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, and the statements were scored, sometimes with a rubric, before the committee looked at the candidate's scholarship. Candidates whose statements did not match the rubric's preferred views could be eliminated early.

The objection is a First Amendment one, and it is old. In West Virginia v. Barnette (1943), the Supreme Court held that the government may not compel a person to affirm a belief. In Wooley v. Maynard (1977), it held that a state could not force a driver to display a motto on his licence plate. Public universities are state actors. A requirement that a professor affirm a particular view of a contested social question as a condition of employment is, on that reading, a compelled-speech problem. A related line of cases, the loyalty oath decisions such as Keyishian v. Board of Regents (1967), struck down New York's loyalty rules for public employees, including teachers, as vague and overbroad, with the Court stressing the value of academic freedom. See DEI Statements Were Loyalty Oaths, and the Old Oath Cases Show Why for the longer version.

There is also a practical objection. A scholar of chemistry or Greek is hired to do chemistry or Greek. A rubric that scores a statement on a social question adds a political test to an academic decision, and it invites applicants to write what the committee wants to hear, which rewards cynicism over honesty.

In 2024 the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced that it would no longer require diversity statements in faculty hiring. That was a notable decision, because MIT is neither a conservative institution nor a state-run one, and its president explained the change in terms of whether the statements were effective and whether they compelled speech. When a leading private university drops a practice on the merits, it is hard to claim that the objection is merely partisan. Other institutions, including some public ones, made similar changes.

The state laws: Texas and Florida

Two state laws from 2023 became the models.

Florida SB 266, signed in 2023, restricts public colleges and universities from spending state or federal funds on programmes that advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion, or that promote or engage in political or social activism, as the law defines those terms. It targets the spending.

Texas SB 17, signed in June 2023 and effective January 1, 2024, bars public universities from establishing or maintaining a DEI office, from hiring or assigning employees to perform the duties of one, from compelling or soliciting diversity statements, from giving preference in employment on the basis of race, sex, colour, ethnicity or national origin, and from requiring DEI training on race, colour, ethnicity, gender identity or sexual orientation as a condition of enrollment or of performing institutional functions. It also gives the schools a list of exceptions: academic instruction, scholarly research, registered student organisations, short-term guest speakers, and student recruitment and admissions, along with statements describing support for underserved students or certifying compliance with antidiscrimination law. The statute includes a compliance mechanism: a board certification to the legislature before funds are spent, periodic state audits, a cure period and loss of funding increases for a university that does not comply.

Both laws reached for more than titles. Note the verbs in the Texas law: establish, maintain, hire or assign to perform the duties, require. A law that bans only an office named DEI invites renaming. A law that bans the duties is harder to dodge. That drafting lesson applies everywhere.

Why renaming works, and how to stop it

If a legislature bans an office by name, a university can rename it. The staff keep their jobs, the budget moves to a new line and the programme continues. The campus can truthfully say it has complied with the letter. This is not necessarily bad faith: administrators have employees they do not want to lay off, and the law gave them a gap.

A statute that closes the gap has these features.

1. It defines the function, not the label. It describes the duties: promoting differential treatment on the basis of race, sex, colour, ethnicity or national origin; requiring statements or training on contested social views; and so on. It applies to any office or employee who performs them, whatever the title.
2. It bars specific practices. Preferences in hiring, admissions, scholarships and contracting on the basis of the listed characteristics; diversity statements; mandatory training on these topics; and compelled affirmations.
3. It has carve-outs that are clear. Compliance with federal law, accreditation, academic instruction and research, and student organisations. Clear carve-outs prevent the law from being attacked as vague and protect legitimate work.
4. It covers funding sources. If the office is paid with private gifts, grants or auxiliary funds, a ban tied to state money may not reach it. Decide what you intend.
5. It requires reporting. An annual certification by the president, with a list of positions and budgets, creates a paper trail.
6. It has consequences. Without a penalty, such as withholding of funds or personal accountability for officers, compliance is optional.
7. It protects speech and teaching. A good law says explicitly that it does not restrict faculty from discussing or researching any subject. That keeps the law on the right side of academic freedom and the First Amendment, which conservatives, of all people, should want.

A hypothetical audit, to show how the dodge works

Let me illustrate with a made-up example, clearly hypothetical. A state passes a law closing "any office of diversity, equity and inclusion" at its public universities. In the spring, a university announces it has complied. The Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is gone. In its place, effective July 1, is the Office of Community and Belonging, with the same director, now titled Associate Vice President, and the same eleven staff. The mandatory orientation workshop, formerly "Inclusive Excellence Training," is now "Community Standards Orientation," run by the same vendor under a new purchase order. The diversity statement on the faculty application is now a "statement on contributions to a welcoming campus."

Follow that logic one step further than its defenders do. If a name change satisfies the law, then a university can comply with any statute by hiring a good copywriter. The legislature has spent a session on a bill whose entire effect is a new letterhead. The press, for its part, will likely report that the university "closed" its DEI office, using the word the press release supplied. That is the coverage failing to ask the obvious follow-up: who works there now, and what do they do?

The answer is to write the statute so that the question is about duties. If the new office promotes differential treatment, requires the old trainings or scores the old statements, it is covered under any name. If it does ordinary student support open to everyone, it is not, and nobody should lose a job for helping a freshman find the tutoring centre. That distinction is the whole art of drafting, and a legislator who gets it right will not need to hold a second hearing next year.

How a trustee or legislator audits compliance

Passing a law is the easy part. Here is a practical audit that a trustee, a legislator's staff member or a state auditor can run on any campus.

1. Get the organisational chart for every vice presidency, college and large unit, with every position title and its reporting line.
2. Get the budget and position list from the prior year and this year, and look for positions that moved, were renamed or were reclassified at the time the law passed.
3. Search job titles and descriptions for the vocabulary of the old function: inclusion, belonging, equity, community engagement, multicultural, access. A title is not proof, but a cluster of positions with unchanged duties is a signal.
4. Read the posted job advertisements for any open position and see whether they require a diversity statement or experience advancing a particular agenda.
5. Ask for the training catalogue: every workshop offered or required for students, staff and faculty, with the vendor and the cost.
6. Look at hiring and admissions forms for diversity statements, essays, rubrics and scoring sheets.
7. Check the contracts: consulting firms, speakers, vendors and software that deliver DEI services.
8. Ask for the complaint and response processes that handle bias reports, and compare them with the speech protections the university advertises.
9. Follow the money in auxiliary accounts, foundations and grants.
10. Require a certification under oath from the responsible officer, and treat an inaccurate one seriously.

Notice that none of that requires hostility. A trustee's duty is to know what the institution does. In public universities, that duty is owed to the taxpayers and the students.

The measure against the Founding

The Declaration says all men are created equal, and the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees every person the equal protection of the laws. In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), the Supreme Court held that the race-conscious admissions programmes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful, and Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the Court that eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. That holding concerned admissions, but its logic reaches any programme that treats students differently by race. A conservative case against DEI bureaucracies rests on that principle, not on hostility to any student: the law should treat people as individuals, and a university's institutions should do the same. See Seven Myths About DEI Programs, Including That Critics Oppose Diversity for the common misconceptions on both sides.

It rests as well on a principle of academic freedom, which the Court has linked to the First Amendment. A university that demands professions of belief as a condition of employment undermines the free inquiry that is its reason for existing. And it rests on cost: every bureaucratic position is paid for out of tuition and tax dollars, which ties this to Where Tuition Dollars Go, From Administrators to the Lazy River.

The case in brief

1. DEI offices grew from 1970s multicultural affairs offices into large bureaucracies covering hiring, training, student life and bias reporting, with a chief diversity officer at the top.
2. The compelled-speech objection to diversity statements rests on Barnette, Wooley and the loyalty-oath cases, and MIT's 2024 decision to drop the statements shows the objection is not merely partisan.
3. Florida SB 266 and Texas SB 17, both from 2023, restricted DEI spending, offices, statements, preferences and mandatory training at public universities, with exceptions for compliance, instruction and research.
4. A statute reaches the function only if it defines duties rather than names, bars specific practices, carves out compliance and academic freedom clearly, covers funding sources and requires reporting and consequences.
5. Trustees and legislators can audit compliance with org charts, budgets, job titles, advertisements, training catalogues, contracts and sworn certification.

What you can do: if you serve on a board or follow your state legislature, ask your public university for its current organisational chart and position list, and compare it with the one from two years ago.