More Victories Over DEI: Auburn and Mizzou Disband DEI Offices

Two more prominent public universities will close their “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) offices, another important win in the fight against discriminatory DEI programs. This welcome news highlights the importance of adopting targeted policies that will end the campus DEI regime for good.

Auburn University and the University of Missouri announced this week that their DEI offices will cease operations by August 15. Both universities will reassign staff members in these offices to other departments.

With the closing of these DEI offices, Auburn and Mizzou are recognizing the incompatibility of DEI programs with the mission of public universities. The ideology behind DEI divides people into the simplistic categories of “oppressor” and “oppressed,” calling for discrimination against the “oppressors” to achieve “social justice.” DEI thus rejects the American ideal of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race, color, or creed. DEI offices provide the shock troops that promote this poisonous ideology across the university.

These departments also waste enormous sums of money, contributing to the skyrocketing costs of a college education. Auburn reported spending $5.6 million in 2022 alone on DEI programs.

Auburn and Mizzou are following the lead of Florida and Texas, which have passed legislation to dismantle DEI offices at public universities. In Texas, Goldwater helped to pass the nation’s most powerful law to end DEI offices on campus.

Although the closure of DEI offices is welcome news, more work remains to ensure that these discriminatory programs are truly ended at public universities. Both Auburn and Mizzou have announced that staff members in the DEI department will be reassigned to other offices. This shuffling of staff raises the possibility that the universities will continue discriminatory DEI programs within several offices across campus rather than a single DEI department.

To prevent this concealment of DEI programs, state legislators must pass strong measures that prohibit specific DEI activities, rather than simply banning offices labeled with DEI terms. State policymakers should look to Goldwater’s Abolish DEI Bureaucracies reform, which plainly defines the DEI activities that are disallowed under the legislation.

Universities around the country are recognizing that discriminatory DEI programs have no place in higher education. Across all 50 states, Goldwater will continue to advocate for our reforms that help to restore public universities to their core missions: the pursuit of truth and the education of thoughtful citizens.

Timothy K. Minella is a Senior Fellow at the Goldwater Institute’s Van Sittert Center for Constitutional Advocacy.