The University of Kentucky is disbanding its Office for Institutional Diversity effective immediately, President Eli Capilouto announced Tuesday.
No one will lose their job, Capilouto said in a Tuesday afternoon email sent to staff. Other offices will absorb people and services. That includes a new office called the Office for Community Relations.
“We share the value that out of many people, we are one community,” Capilouto wrote. “But we’ve also listened to policymakers and heard many of their questions about whether we appear partisan or political on the issues of our day.”
The office’s goal, according to its website, was to “enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff and students, and by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.”
This comes after diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) at public universities came under scrutiny during Kentucky’s 2024 legislative session — and nationally.
Though Kentucky lawmakers failed to pass a bill that would have ended DEI programs and offices at public universities and colleges, the discussion will continue during the interim.
The email from Capilouto says the university will also “not mandate diversity training” and will remove diversity statements from in hiring documents.
He also pointed to the national DEI discussion, writing that “universities across the country are grappling with the same questions that we are asking and being asked around diversity, equity and inclusion.”
“Kentucky legislators have made clear to me in our conversations that they are exploring these issues again as they prepare for the 2025 legislative session,” Capilouto wrote. “If we are to be a campus for everyone, we must demonstrate to ourselves and to those who support and invest in us our commitment to the idea that everyone belongs — both in what we say and in what we do.”
Republican praise
Rep. Jennifer Decker (R-Waddy), who sponsored unsuccessful legislation to defund DEI offices this year, praised UK for the decision.
“I appreciate the University of Kentucky for taking this step and remain hopeful that other institutions, as well as the Council on Postsecondary Education, will follow their lead and recognize that this failed experiment has done nothing to make postsecondary education more accessible,” she said in a statement.
“Our efforts have always been aimed at eliminating unconstitutional, unnecessary, costly and duplicative bureaucracy while still making sure campuses are open and welcoming to a diversity of students and staff,” Decker said.
Senate Republican Whip Mike Wilson, who sponsored another bill aimed at limiting DEI, called this disbandment a “positive step in the right direction” and said “I would encourage other institutions to follow UK’s initiative. I trust this development, and the university’s efforts are sincere.”
“We will get a chance to hear from the university and find out more details on what they are doing at our next Interim Joint Committee on Education meeting in September, when the topic of DEI will be on the agenda,” Wilson said. “A true elimination of these DEI policies in our public universities will end the division they promote, allowing our colleges and universities to be the true bastion of free thought we need them to be.”
‘A change without a difference’
Sen. Reggie Thomas, the minority caucus chair who represents Lexington and the University of Kentucky, told the Lantern he was “disappointed to hear” of the move, but doesn’t believe it means UK has abandoned a commitment to inclusion.
“I feel confident that UK is going to still continue to be very active in recruiting Black students, to make sure that that there are groups that will encourage cultural affinity amongst themselves,” he said. “I think that’s a change without a difference.”
Essentially, Thomas said: “there’s more to supporting cultural diversity in any institution other than a name.”
And, given that the DEI conversation “is going to rear its ugly head again in 2025,” he said, “President Capilouto and the UK administration is being proactive in terms of saying ‘look, we’re going to disband our office, but not disband the notion.’”
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Written by Sarah Ladd. Cross-posted from the Kentucky Lantern.
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