This spring, lawmakers in Alabama and Iowa passed similar bills to restrict DEI programs, and Wyoming removed state funding for the state university’s DEI office, forcing its closure. In mid-June, Republican members of Congress introduced a bill proposing to end all federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs and pull funding from government agencies, schools and others with DEI programs.
The law’s passage in Utah played to the more conservative wing of a divided Republican Party, said Michael Lyons, a political science professor at Utah State University. In an election year, Gov. Spencer Cox (R) and other GOP lawmakers faced the need to win over party delegates in Utah’s caucus-based nominating process.
Utah law targeting DEI leads university to close LGBT, women’s centers
The effects of a Utah law rolling back diversity, equity and inclusion programs at public colleges are beginning to emerge.
- The school won’t lose its student services and will continue holding cultural events, but complying with the law will require a significant change in approach, administrators said. . .
- Although it left their funding in place, it effectively directed schools to reorganize those services, such as mental health, career and scholarship help, under generalized campus centers catering to all students.
- Furthermore, the state’s guidance indicated those services couldn’t operate in centers that also did cultural programming.
“This is not the path we would have chosen,” University Provost Mitzi Montoya wrote in a note to deans and faculty Thursday.
“But … it is our calling to rise to the challenges of the day and find a better way forward.” . . .
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