By: Madalyn Stump, Olivia Jackson, and Scarlet Hohman
Note: this article was created in conjunction with and as an assignment for Black Feminist Theory, taught by Dr. Simona Fojtova. Contributors to this article include Simona Fojtova, Steve Hess, Cameron Ritchie, Kennedy Kniffley, Caroline Host, Val deValinger, Josiah Finley, Krissalyn Love, and Ella Go.
As a result of the election of Donald Trump, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Programs have faced bans and other hindrances. This was particularly kicked off by a “Dear Colleague” letter sent by Craig Trainor on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education on February 14th, 2025, giving public educators two weeks to dismantle their DEI Programs. This letter claims that white and Asian students have been discriminated against “on the basis of race” and claims that “Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism.’” In Transylvania’s Black Feminist Theory class, we are exploring the ways in which this claim is unequivocally false, expanding across fields such as health, education, law, pop culture, and more. We are learning about Black women and Black feminists — such as Kimberlé Crenshaw and Angela Davis, as well as ones not mentioned in this article including the Combahee River Collective, Jennifer Nash, Patricia Williams, and more — who have been paving the way and acting as beautifully articulate predecessors advocating for the same values that align with the vocabulary and DEI efforts we have today. In the wake of these DEI bans, this class decided to have a more open-ended final project. This article focuses on the history of DEI programs and how they impact different student organizations, including the Rambler, FSL, and others, and broadens this knowledge outside the scope of the classroom.
DEI and Its History
You might be asking: “What is DEI?” DEI stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and was a result of the Civil Rights movement. Steve Hess, professor of political science at Transylvania University, states:
“In these conversations, it’s important to try to unpack the terms we’re talking about. ‘DEI’ itself has become something of a lightning rod in our highly polarized society, but when you think about what it stands for – ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ — are these really values that we should consider problematic? Would we prefer the opposite: ‘uniformity, inequity and exclusion?’ Much of the value of colleges and universities is their emphasis on free speech, open and often contentious discourse, and the challenging of established dogmas. In contrast to the assumptions of DEI critics who fundamentally misunderstand our mission and allege that universities ‘indoctrinate students in discriminatory concepts,’ students are expected to be creative, consider the range of intellectual thought, and generate new and different ideas, but also subject these ideas to scrutiny, ensuring that they logically hold together and are backed by evidence. This emphasis on critical thinking is central to what we do in higher education; it provides a tool and ability that helps our students thrive in their future lives and careers. However, since the inception of universities in the United States, they have often functioned as agents of social reproduction and exclusion, helping the children of the affluent stay affluent, rather than social mobility, allowing students without means and students from historically marginalized groups to achieve socio-economic advancement. It was over 100 years before Transy admitted its first woman and over 180 years before its first Black student set foot on campus. Students from marginalized groups have thus entered a campus with institutions, practices, and norms that have been almost exclusively determined by and in the interests of cisgendered white men from privileged backgrounds. As a consequence, universities have worked intentionally to identify and remove barriers that deter students from marginalized groups from coming to campus and allowing them to enjoy equal opportunities once they have arrived. We should be skeptical of DEI, but for other reasons. In many organizations, DEI efforts can be tokenistic, performative, and superficial, designed to impress the outside world and improve one’s brand but have little impact on bringing about structural change in the organization’s actual functioning. As a consequence, even in today’s charged political climate, we should be even more active in challenging power structures that exclude and marginalize underrepresented groups, supporting our students and affinity groups, reexamining our own policies and practices, and working to create an inclusive environment on campus.”
The push for diversity in higher education became prominent following the civil rights movement, when student activism and protests were at an all-time high, with 1 in 5These protests resulted in departments of African Studies opening up across the country. The article ‘The History of Diversity in Higher Education’ explains, “The first Black studies department was started at San Francisco State College in 1968 after the longest strike in U.S. history to occur on a college campus”. Not only did academic studies begin to diversify, but student bodies did as well. Affirmative Action was introduced, striving to diversify systems and create spaces with various backgrounds. While Affirmative Action doubled the admission rates for Black students, retention was low, and only half of admitted Black students received their degree due to other systemic factors. The same article states, “In 1976, white students made up over 80% of all U.S. college students, but that percentage dropped to 57% by 2016.”
Historically Black Colleges and Universities have also played a critical role in DEI for higher education. HBCUs began as schools designed to provide opportunities for Black Americans. The UNCF article ‘The Numbers Don’t Lie: HBCUs Are Changing the College Landscape’ discusses how black students continue to have a low retention in graduating in higher education due to many systemic factors, writing, “Seventy-two percent of Black students take on debt as they seek their degrees, as opposed to 56% of their White peers. And while the number of African Americans enrolled in college has increased over the last few decades, going from 10% in 1976 to 12.7% in 2019, African American enrollment at the nation’s most elite colleges (often toting the biggest price tags) has remained mostly the same.” Where elite colleges fail to broaden their enrollment, Historically Black Colleges and Universities seek to provide resources to fight systemic causes of low retention. 29% of students attending an HBCU report feeling more stable and financially secure than at a non-HBCU. While HBCUs only make up 3% of United States universities and colleges, they continue to close the gap for students of color.
The current pushback against DEI is not a new phenomenon. There has been pushback for decades on DEI by conservatives, who define it as reverse discrimination. The Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank, defines DEI as a radical force pushing against U.S. morals, leading to white backlash, school closures, and private segregation in academics. Any push for corporate America to diversify has faced white resistance and accusations of “reverse discrimination.” In the 1980s, Reagan-era policies hampered affirmative action and civil rights policies, and DEI was deemed “special treatment” for Black people. In 1996, California’s Proposition 209 banned affirmative action in public hiring and education, setting the stage for future anti-DEI policies.
The Black Feminist Lens on DEI Removal
Black Feminist Theory provides a unique lens to view the backlash against DEI. One of the key concepts within this theory is intersectionality. The article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics” by Kimberlé Crenshaw displays this idea. As explained by Crenshaw, intersectionality is the way that intersecting identities affect individuals in our society and how those identities contribute to experiences with discrimination. This is an important concept when considering feminism as a whole, particularly black feminism. Without representation for individuals who share intersecting identities, feminism is not complete. Knowing this, the removal of DEI should be recognized as a feminist concern.
Black Feminist theory also provides suggestions for how to navigate the removal of DEI. Its framework is rooted in collectivism and working together to educate, advocate, and bring awareness to injustices. One of the key concepts related to black feminism is abolition. The book Abolition. Feminism. Now., by Angelia Davis highlights the importance of abolition as an intersecting concept with feminism. This concept highlights that advocacy for the dismantling of anti-black and anti-feminist systemic structures must be a part of feminism. DEI is a large part of these efforts and is necessary to sustain equality in both academia and the workforce.
The article “The Anticipated Impacts of DEI Program and Policy Rollbacks” by Sharon Kalango highlights particular ways that the removal of DEI may affect black women in engineering fields, but this information is transferable to all fields as well. A few of the listed concerns are: “Limited career development opportunities, reinforced workplace discrimination and microaggressions, Slower progress toward leadership roles, Higher risk of job displacement and turnover, and Widening of the pay gap.”
This article also lists a variety of ways to combat the emotional and financial distress that this could place on black women during. It suggests “seeking out mentorship, prioritizing mental Wellness and Emotional Resilience, continuing to advocate for Change, and investing in Personal Development.” These are important resources to consider when struggling with the removal of DEI programns and good for educating yourself and others.
DEI Currently
The Trump administration has made its efforts to dismantle DEI programs a top priority. The federal government has been directed to end DEI programs and investigate private companies and academic institutions that are engaging with DEI. Colleges and schools have begun canceling DEI-related events to avoid lawsuits. Some of these programs still operate under different names and structures, while others have been shut down entirely. According to the article “Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI” published by The Chronicle of Higher Education, over 200 colleges have changed or removed DEI since 2023, as well as changed policies and hiring processes that involve diversity. The article “The Real Reason DEI Is Under Attack: It’s About What It Represents, Not How It’s Practiced” by Dunn discusses how current backlash to DEI strongly resembles previous backlash to the Freedmen’s Bureau, which helped newly freed Black people transition to freedom after being released from slavery. It also discusses the similarities to the backlash against the push for human rights for Black Americans during the civil rights movement. The backlash towards DEI mirror historic trends in that it is rooted in anti-blackness.
This anti-blackness can also be seen in how such backlash and DEI bans are uniquely impacting HBCUs as compared to Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs), such as Transy. Josiah Finley, a student at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College (NCAT) and friend of the Rambler, states: “The direct impact is that it’s made it increasingly difficult for students to get research opportunities here. Indirectly, students’ jobs are taking a hit (cutback on hours due to boycotts, etc.) making it harder to sustain their lifestyle while pursuing their education.”
While the fight for DEI feels like new terrain to navigate, it has been an ongoing issue in America in many ways. Looking at examples such as these as a guide to navigate our current situation with DEI could be helpful moving forward. According to the New York Times article “These Words Are Disappearing in the New Trump Administration,” Trump has led agencies to flag hundreds of commonly used words to limit DEI.
Cameron Ritchie, a writer for the Rambler, commented on this: “DEI is currently under attack in the United States, making its future uncertain. I think to protect it and preserve its future, we need to make it clear at Transy that we are firmly committed to embracing and upholding diversity at our institution. DEI is important, especially at places like universities that tend to have problematic histories, being primarily composed of white men and only catering to that demographic for centuries. DEI attempts to alleviate this issue by making college education more accessible to marginalized groups. Dismantling DEI serves as part of the larger far-right project of protecting white supremacy in institutions and our country. They’re attacking DEI now, but they likely won’t stop there. We need to defend it to continue uplifting women and minorities and to keep the far-right from encroaching on civil rights.”
Student Organizations and DEI
Prominent student organizations on Transy’s campus include our student newspaper ‘The Rambler’ and Transy’s Literary magazine ‘The Transylvanian.’ Student press activism became prominent in the 1960s, following the civil rights movement. According to ‘The Underground Press @ Archives & Special Collections’ by The University of Pittsburgh’s library, “These papers were often aimed at educating their fellow students, encouraging and supporting on campus activism, and helping to create networks of movers and shakers within their communities.” Despite the flag on certain words and DEI, it is important to utilize our voices as students, especially now more than ever.
Abigail Muncy, President and Co-founder of Transylvania Advocates for Accessibility, explains her thoughts on DEI and student organizations. “Something I learned about accessibility throughout the creation of our organization is that it benefits everyone. While every day it might not be necessary for me to use a wheelchair ramp, it becomes helpful when I have heavy luggage or if I have a hurt leg. I would like to think of any discussion of DEI topics in a similar way. While the discussions of marginalized communities help to uplift said communities and make them feel seen, these discussions also benefit the entire community as they open a line of communication. I fear that with the release of the “Dear Colleague” letter that this open line of communication will be closed, and any hopes of discussions about marginalized communities will be put on pause… but I know our Transylvania Community, and I know that there is nothing that will pause the voice of our students. While this is a scary time in our nation where we fear talking about our ethnicities or the disabilities we may face, I know that our community is strong and has the support to be able to uphold these conversations no matter what. I am extremely disappointed by what is happening in our country now, but I am glad our community on campus is supportive and loving.”
Another organization that is very relevant on this campus and as a cultural institution is Fraternity and Sorority Life (FSL). In fact, 42% of Transy’s campus is involved in FSL. Additionally, while 2% of the U.S. population is involved in FSL, 80% of the leaders of Fortune 500 companies and much of the U.S. Congress, President, and Supreme Court Justices have been involved as well.
The formation of these organizations correlates to who had rights at the time, which is why white fraternities were created first, then white sororities in the postbellum era, then finally historically Black fraternities and sororities, also known as Divine Nine chapters. The white counterparts are wrought with racist history, with some DEI efforts being implemented in recent years. The history of racism among FSL has far surpassed that of DEI. For example, Kappa Alpha was founded on the “gentlemanly values” of Confederate soldier Robert E. Lee and has a history of performing minstrel shows. In the 1960s, former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, when he was serving as the University of Mississippi’s Interfraternity Council (IFC) President, tried and partially succeeded in preventing his fraternity (Sigma Nu) from admitting Black members. In 1983, the Divine Nine chapter Phi Beta Sigma at the same university was raided by 1000 white students chanting “Save the Flag,” in reference to the Confederate Flag, during their yearly “Dixie Week.” The following decades included the use of Blackface and Klan wear, and as recently as 2015, there have been instances of the use of the N-word in fraternity chants.
It is for reasons like these that it is not surprising that #AbolishGreekLife circulated in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, but the issue more complicated than that. Divine Nine chapters have long been a source of community and safety for minorities that primarily white fraternities and sororities have not been able to. Kennedy Kniffley, a member of Sigma Gamma Rho at Transy, states: “I feel that people misunderstand what DEI means and who it benefits. DEI is important as it allows for marginalized groups, such as women, people of color, disabled people, and veterans, to have equal opportunities to share their knowledge and identities with the world. Without a push from the previous VP of DEI at Transy, there would be no historically black Divine 9 Greek life on this campus. My sorority, Sigma Gamma Rho, is the first fully chartered chapter of the Divine 9 at Transylvania. The significance of this is often lost because of the lack of knowledge of Divine 9 culture. Our sorority focuses solely on improving the lives of women and their families in the U.S. and globally through community service. This means that we did not start this just for the sisterhood but to create a safe space for young women of color and white alike to become bonded through service and academic excellence. We strive to support women who have struggled to adjust to life in spaces in which they have been marginalized by uplifting them and providing opportunities for growth both as professionals and human beings. In these ways, I believe that chartering this chapter with the support of DEI has allowed me to flourish into the empathetic, empowered, and encouraging leader I am today.”
The National Panhellenic Council (NPC), which oversees all sororities across the country (minus Divine Nine sororities), according to its website, started implementing DEI initiatives in 2014, when it made a statement against discrimination. Efforts since then include creating and updating a Financial Transparency Policy, giving trainings on implicit bias and DEI, having a diversity keynote, the creation of local student positions like VPJEDI (Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion), and changing language like “colony” to “newly establishing chapter.”
This information shows vague language about DEI efforts without particularly concrete examples of imbuing these values in the organization. The IFC’s website offers a timeline of DEI-focused actions with slightly more specific language but nothing particularly substantive. These precedents set by the respective organizations show improvements in respecting diversity, equity, and inclusion as a whole, but don’t allow for proper accountability for individual campuses. The amount of these values that are highlighted seems to be as much as the student body and FSL leaders care and put in effort, which has different implications for smaller versus bigger schools.
The Panhellenic VPJEDI here at Transy, Scarlett Hohman, states: “I am able to have interactive presentations and higher quality discussions with each sorority due to our smaller size, as opposed to being in charge at a large SEC school. I think my position at UK was renamed to VP of Community and Belonging in the wake of the DEI bans, which potentially puts my role in a precarious position. I hope VPs after me are able to take what I do even further and do more to promote JEDI at Transy and beyond.”
Conclusion
It is this theme of student-led precedents that seems to be a theme in the history of promoting DEI and values that Black Feminist Theory is discussing. It is important to push and open a conversation as students, whether it be through our student press, FSL, or other student organizations. We don’t know what the future holds, but we know what to do right now. Black feminist theory encourages folks to look at the root causes and underlying messages of social and systemic oppression and racism and consider how those causes contribute to broader issues such as DEI. It is important to consider this when navigating the removal of DEI and consider how this will affect individuals with intersecting identities.
Caroline Host, a photographer for The Rambler and a prominent member of the Transy community, states: “The future of DEI is what we make it to be. We have a lot of powerful people trying to go against us at the moment and take away basic rights for minority groups. I think that some people, understandably so, start to feel hopeless and like they can’t do anything about it. This only takes us down a worse path for DEI laws — if we can try to fight back and make our voices be heard, then perhaps the future of DEI could improve. At the most basic level, emailing and calling representatives, protesting, and creating an inclusive and welcoming environment in your classes, jobs, and social circles will be an amazing place to start. DEI is important because it involves EVERYONE. It affects everyone.”
Val deValinger, T-Unity President, states: “Unfortunately, I think the future of DEI is going to be regressed and hidden under different jargon, mostly going misunderstood and unnoticed. DEI is not only underrepresented, but it is under attack. There are people, organizations, and administrations with the mission to erase it, and everyone will suffer those consequences. However, it does not have to be this way. I, like many others, don’t want it to be that way. I strongly believe that DEI can be what we want it to be on this campus and in the world we are growing up in, but it will be something we will have to fight for. These conversations cannot stop. These articles cannot stop being written. It is so important, now more than ever, to talk about DEI and correct the misinformation getting spread about it to fit the narratives of people who believe it harms them, because it doesn’t. DEI is for everyone, even cis-gendered, straight, white men. It is for their wives, their children, their brothers and sisters. It is for their religious affiliation. It is for their health care. It is for everyone, for the betterment of this country, of our organizations, and for our education. DEI is not the enemy or the monster under the bed ripping opportunities and jobs from people; it does the opposite, and we are better for it.
For campus organizations, DEI allows affinity groups to do the work that the campus struggles to do. DEI gives campus organizations the ability to advocate and better their campus. Furthermore, it also holds campus organizations and affinity groups accountable for the responsibility they are taking on. And it saddens me that this work is so underappreciated because these organizations, affinity and otherwise, cannot do everything all at once. DEI will make our organization harder to thrive and reach out to more students who could really benefit from a safe space on campus.
My experience with DEI has been nothing short of amazing. Outside my role as T-Unity President, I have run support groups throughout high school and did some outside mentoring for transgender people beyond that. I am proud of my work and the people I have gained lifelong connections with due to it. DEI allowed that work to happen, for it to be public and talked about. DEI made groups like queer support groups in schools accessible. Lastly, DEI allowed my personal transition to be accessible. I have gained resources and tools I wouldn’t have if I didn’t have DEI organizations reachable during my high school years and early into college. DEI is necessary for all students.”
Simona Fojtová, Professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, states: “I applaud the students for expressing their commitments to social justice and wholeheartedly support their efforts to have their voices heard. Their dedication to positive change is inspiring, and I stand behind their efforts to create meaningful dialogue and make a difference in their communities.”
