Higher ed leaders have largely kept mum about anti-DEI bills. A new campaign changes that.
In the past couple of years, the country has seen a spate of legislation targeting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and perceived liberal bias at educational institutions. Initially focused largely on K-12 schools, the legislation has increasingly gone after colleges and universities. Last year, nearly half of the bills targeted higher education, according to the free speech and literary organization PEN America.
Higher education leaders have tried stay above the fray. But in news shared exclusively with Paste BN, more than 100 former college presidents are banding together, pushing back against recent bills and policies in a campaign they hope will become a national movement.
The campaign, which will be spearheaded by PEN and the civic engagement-focused nonprofit Campus Compact, kicks off Friday with a signed statement. But for many signatories that’s just the first step, said PEN’s Jeremy Young. The former presidents will go on to engage in op-eds and other communication pushes, and network with key leaders in industries ranging from the military to medicine, among other strategies.
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Their status as retired or former presidents is key, Young said. Previously, advocates had failed to convince sitting presidents to speak out publicly over fears that lawmakers would penalize them with funding cuts.
The 117 and counting signatories include a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a former Republican congressman and lieutenant governor and recent leaders of massive university systems in states from Montana to Maryland. They represent 36 states total.
“No one has ever done anything like this,” Young said. “The goal is to have these prestigious figures with lifetimes of experience in higher education – and in communicating about it – build public support for maintaining (it) as a place of intellectual freedom.”
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One of the most high-profile participants is Patricia Okker, the recently ousted leader of New College of Florida, a public liberal arts institution.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis earlier this year overhauled the board of the college, which he denounced as liberal-leaning and epitomizing the problem of woke indoctrination in education. Okker was replaced with an interim president who formerly served as a Republican lawmaker and speaker in the Florida House of Representatives.
DeSantis said his mission was to turn New College into a “Hillsdale of the South,” referring to the private Christian college in Michigan that espouses a focus on the Western canon. The transformation of New College took place against the backdrop of various DeSantis-backed legislative efforts to restrict course offerings and DEI programs.
“Statements are important but they’re not sufficient,” Okker said. “Let’s figure out actions that we can take to address this and build support for higher education and for academic freedom and freedom of expression on campus.”
As former college leaders, Okker said she and her peers have a rare platform from which they can correct the narrative around education as indoctrination.
“There’s this incredibly rich history in education – particularly American higher education – … of reading texts as a way of figuring out what you hold to be true and believe in,” Okker said. The whole purpose of an education, she said, is to be exposed to ideas with which you disagree.
“We as individuals decide for ourselves what we believe to be true – that is not a liberal or conservative viewpoint," she said. "There’s a lot of opportunity for common grounds here … around the necessity of freedom of expression of American democracy.”
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Contact Alia Wong at (202) 507-2256 or awong@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @aliaemily.