I have a vivid memory of the last welcoming luncheon for new students coming to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. It was just this past summer, and Donald Trump’s assault on higher education and museums had reached a fever pitch. When a speaker introduced the offices and departments of the school, they started with the office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. What felt to me like a very authentic and sustained round of applause erupted, ringing all over the room. I was impressed by a strong commitment to the principles reflected by the existence of the DEI office. Clearly, they are important to the people who choose this school.
Ostensibly, the school feels the same way. According to SAIC’s website, its “primary purpose is to cultivate a welcoming and inclusive art and design school that animates the discovery and development of significant ideas and images. The school is committed to creating an equitable and just environment that values and respects its diverse community of faculty, students, and staff so that all at SAIC can have the opportunity to flourish.”
It’s a strongly worded statement that, at one time, could be found on the DEI office’s page. Now it’s on the page for the Office of Student Enrichment. What changed?
According to SAIC’s administration, nothing but the name. The language on the student enrichment page is largely what you would expect from a DEI office — the text quoted above is the first thing you see on the enrichment landing page. Given the political climate, this comes as no surprise. But should we join the chorus of conformity without reflecting for a moment on the cost of caving in to anti-DEI forces?
Upon election as president of the United States, Trump immediately began pursuing a raft of policies meant to eradicate efforts to acknowledge the U.S.’s long history of racism and the legacy of uneven opportunity that it has produced. Without a doubt, Trump holds racist views (as well as misogynist ones), but it is also important to note that there is a political dimension to his rhetoric as well. Racists love him and vote for him. They feel freed to act on their worst impulses by his message and his own actions. And they are tired of programs that support nonwhites. About a third of Americans are opposed to affirmative action, and the number seems to go up when talking specifically about college admissions. So by taking on DEI programs, Trump is playing to his base, as well as attacking a beloved liberal institution: higher education.
Across the country, universities like SAIC have responded to Trump’s war on equity by equivocation. This summer, the College Fix website released a report that identified 87 schools that had renamed their DEI offices. The intent, according to Inside Higher Ed, is to try to remain in compliance with federal mandates without substantially changing their DEI policies. One might forgive schools for making a pragmatic, if ethically tepid, choice if the result is avoiding a fight with the federal government they cannot win; live to fight another day, as the saying goes.
But it isn’t clear that the tactic will work. Despite the scramble of colleges and universities nationally to work around Trump’s policies, many still are facing federal investigation. At the beginning of this year, there were already 50 under investigation by the feds.
If one pretends that the long and bloody history of the United States has not been an ongoing effort to privilege white people, then anti-discrimination laws can be used to stifle efforts at equitable policy correction. Both Title VI and Title IX can be misused in this way, and violations would have major implications at colleges and universities for not only funding but even accreditation, which, if lost, effectively ends all students’ ability to get federal student loans and deeply damages the reputation of the school.
With all this in mind, should SAIC administrators and leadership be given a pass when it comes to renaming the DEI office? I think there are two issues at play that deserve some consideration. The first is whether this tactic will work. The second is whether there is some moral dimension to the question of renaming an office based on addressing human rights in order to minimize the importance of that goal.
As mentioned above, the answer to the first question isn’t clear. Certainly, the Trump administration is at least as interested in spectacle as they are in compliance. His war with higher education is a proxy for Trump voters’ longtime resentment of privileged liberals who are thought to be responsible for a presumed decadence and subsequent decline of the U.S. (We will set aside for now the oddity of electing an extremely self-indulgent man to lead this fight.) Some feuds, such as his attacks on Harvard, probably won’t end for as long as he is in office. His famous dislike of Chicago may mean that our local universities are in his crosshairs to a greater degree than others. But we don’t know, and if we are quick to comply when he barks orders, we will never know.
As to the second, there is a compelling argument to be made that conceding on semantics can eventually lead to larger, more troubling concessions. “Linguistic and social change go hand in hand because linguistic practices are fundamental to social practices,” wrote linguist and author of “Words Matter: Meaning and Power” Sally McConnell-Ginet. “Words are woven into the social fabric.” If we agree to stop talking about equity, how long is it before we stop practicing it?
Perhaps SAIC could not have won this battle on our own. But what happened to the idea of elite universities as bastions of values and principles? Have we postmodern-theoried our way out of moral leadership? As mentioned above, for at least 50 colleges and universities, Trump is reviewing policy regardless of the names of their DEI departments. For these institutions, going along has not led to getting along. And in the process, we have collectively taught a lesson about giving in to bullies that is not at all inspiring.
