Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ Stop-WOKE Act has been mired in legal challenges, but was the building block of the state’s latest law targeting diversity initiatives.
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North Dakota’s “specified concepts” law, which will take effect on Aug. 1, will bar colleges from asking students and employees about their commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. The law would also block colleges from requiring diversity training and prevent institutions from penalizing students or employees for disagreeing with more than a dozen concepts that are identified in the law text.

That list includes the concept that “one race or sex is inherently superior or inferior to another race or sex,” that an “individual’s race or sex is inherently privileged, racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously” and that the “state or the United States is fundamentally or irredeemably racist or sexist.”

Tennessee

Gov. Bill Lee

Similarly, Tennessee lawmakers this month sent Republican Gov. Bill Lee a bill that prohibits mandatory implicit-bias training. The bill would also bar public colleges and universities from penalizing faculty for refusing to participate in the training. Republican lawmakers contend that the legislation would protect teachers from disciplinary action or firing if they don’t submit to the training.

In 2021, Lee signed into law a bill that restricts how race and gender can be discussed in the classroom. Tennessee teachers are limited in how they can teach about racism, white privilege and unconscious bias.

Iowa

Gov. Kim Reynolds

Iowa lawmakers adjourned their session this month without advancing a bill that would ban the state’s public college system from spending money on DEI offices and professionals.

However, the Iowa Board of Regents announced that it is taking on a comprehensive review of all DEI programs and efforts and pausing any new ones at the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa.

Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds has already signed into law a measure that restricts “divisive concepts” from diversity training because, she says, it combats critical race theory. Reynolds, in a statement in 2021, said the law would “promote learning, not discriminatory indoctrination.”

She has argued that critical race theory teaches students to judge others by their race or gender, rather than their character.

Critical race theory is an analytical framework originally developed by legal scholars examining how race and racism have become ingrained in American law and institutions since slavery and Jim Crow. Many conservatives have used critical race theory as shorthand for a broader critique of how race and social issues are being taught in schools.

Some colleges argue that new measures cutting DEI programs will stifle academic freedom and halt diversity work that create a welcoming environment for students.

“Our work makes a difference to help students succeed, and it is this progress such legislation attempts to destroy by misrepresenting it in a divisive narrative,” said Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, in a statement. Her group is composed of diversity practitioners, scholars and researchers at universities.

“Instead of attempting to understand the work we do, policymakers are seeking to seed division and cause confusion,” she said.

Liz Crampton and Andrew Atterbury contributed to this report.