South Carolina legislators have requested information from the state’s 33 public colleges and universities regarding all spending on programs, trainings, and activities targeted toward people based on their race, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
The request seeks salaries and operating costs associated with efforts to make campuses more “diverse, equitable, and inclusive.”
The legislators define diversity, equity, and inclusion programs as, among other things, attempts to take an official institutional policy on concepts such as unconscious or implicit bias, cultural appropriation, and microaggressions.
South Carolina’s request, which was obtained by The Chronicle, echoes similar ones made of public colleges by state officials in Florida and Oklahoma in recent months. It comes amid a campaign by conservative activists to banish codified efforts to recruit and retain administrators, faculty members, and students from historically marginalized communities.
Last month the conservative Manhattan and Goldwater Institutes unveiled model state legislation that would, among other things, effectively ban mandatory trainings that instruct staff members to identify and fight perceived acts of racism; the hiring of administrators to oversee diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts; and statements that commit a college, administrators, and faculty members to social-justice causes.
The authors of the model legislation say public colleges shouldn’t use tax dollars to promote one ideology over others.
But college leaders and minority-student advocates say colleges have a duty, amid shifting demographics, to work actively to better serve communities that have historically been excluded from their campuses. They also say getting rid of such efforts will put accreditation at risk, and could run afoul of federal and state civil-rights laws, such as Title IX.
A bill introduced in the Texas Legislature in December would prohibit the funding, promotion, sponsorship, or support of college offices that seek to achieve the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
A Chronicle analysis of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s request of Florida’s public colleges in December found that, among four-year universities, so-called DEI activities amounted to less than 1 percent of their budgets.
In South Carolina, Rusty L. Monhollon, president and executive director of the state’s Commission on Higher Education, said he did not know which legislators had sought the information or why. Monhollon emailed the public-college presidents about the legislative inquiry on Tuesday.
“We have requests for information the entire year, so we’re treating it as just another request at this time,” Monhollon said. He said the legislators were “not looking for an audit, just a general overview.”
The colleges have until February 23 to respond.
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