People often ask me how, as an outspoken conservative professor at a large state university, I can get away with some of the things I say on social media and in essays for the Martin Center, Campus Reform, Minding the Campus, and other “right-wing” publications. Why, they want to know, hasn’t my institution already canceled me?
Georgia is a solidly conservative state, with elected and appointed leaders who (generally) behave like conservatives.The answer is that a group of my colleagues, along with a couple of rogue (now former) administrators, did try to cancel me several years ago, but they failed. That was mostly because I have tenure and didn’t actually do anything wrong, but it was also because I’m fortunate to work in—as Donald Trump might say—“the big, beautiful red state” of Georgia.
I know. Some of you are under the impression that Georgia is actually purple, since we currently have two Democrat senators. I will just say that, in my view, that is an anomaly, created by factors I won’t go into here. The fact is—a fact overshadowed in the national press by Ron DeSantis’s historic, 19-point gubernatorial win in Florida—our own Republican governor, Brian Kemp, also won reelection in 2022 by an impressive margin (eight points). Kemp is actually our third two-term Republican governor in a row, following Nathan Deal and Sonny Perdue. Republicans also hold majorities of 33-23 in the state senate and 100-80 in the house. Perhaps more to the point relative to this discussion, former Gov. Perdue is now chancellor of the state’s university system, while all current members of the Board of Regents, which governs the system, were appointed by Republican governors.
Oh, and let’s not forget that Trump won Georgia by more than two points in 2024 and by nearly six in 2016, after Romney won by eight in 2012 and McCain by five in 2008. The outlier was Trump’s hotly-contested, 12,000-vote “loss” in 2020—which, again, I won’t go into here.
So, yes, despite what you may have read in the left-wing press, Georgia is a solidly conservative state, with elected and appointed leaders who (generally) behave like conservatives. In just the past few years, their efforts to improve higher education in the state while driving down costs have included consolidating campuses, streamlining the core curriculum, eliminating underperforming programs, and prohibiting institutions from requiring prospective faculty to submit “diversity statements.” So it may come as no surprise that, last fall, we joined other red states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee in effectively banning “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives from our university campuses altogether.
In November 2024, the Board approved a set of policies aimed at accomplishing precisely that objective. Among other things, the new rules state that “all admissions processes and decisions shall be free of ideological tests, affirmations, and oaths, including diversity statements. No applicant for admission shall be asked to or required to affirmatively ascribe to or opine about political beliefs, affiliations, ideals, or principles, as a condition for admission.” In terms of hiring, evaluating, and promoting faculty and staff, the Board stipulated that such decisions should henceforth be based on merit—on “knowledge, skills, and abilities”—rather than on race, gender, or other factors.
The BOR’s policy changes also include a statement of institutional neutrality, requiring that, while individual employees are “encouraged to exercise their First Amendment rights,” institutions “shall remain neutral on social and political issues unless such an issue is directly related to the institution’s core mission.” Colleges and universities that are part of the University System of Georgia (USG) may not pressure anyone to “support … or [oppose] … any political campaign or candidate for political office, political party, or political organization,” and employees are prohibited from “using USG or other public resources to support political activities.”
These new policies place Georgia’s public colleges on the right side of the ongoing debate over DEI.These new policies are undoubtedly an important step, placing Georgia’s public colleges and universities clearly on the right side of the ongoing debate over DEI and the politicization of higher education. Yet, for those of us who oppose DEI on campus (and elsewhere), it is only that—a step. We recognize that the battle is far from over because we know from experience that the Left will not surrender—not on this point or any other. As I observed last summer in an essay for American Thinker, they may retreat, but only to regroup and plan the next assault on our freedoms, going underground as necessary, changing the names of offices and programs but not their functions, while still working to advance their agenda.
My friend and colleague Adam Ellwanger, a tenured English professor at the University of Houston-Downtown, has written extensively on this phenomenon, for the Martin Center and elsewhere. For instance, in October 2023, when the national backlash against campus DEI programs was just beginning, he noted in this space that many such programs have simply added the word “belonging” to their name or renamed it altogether, so that an office of “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” becomes an office of “Student Belonging” or something similar. But, as Ellwanger points out, “belonging” is merely another DEI buzzword that means essentially the same thing as “inclusion.” These offices and programs may have technically complied with state mandates to “eliminate” DEI, but they have done nothing to change their focus, their tactics, or their goals.
One specific example that Ellwanger cites, in an article for Campus Reform, occurred at Texas A&M University. After the state legislature effectively banned DEI on public campuses, explicitly forbidding institutions from “conducting trainings, programs or activities designed or implemented in reference to race, color, ethnicity, gender identity, or sexual orientation,” the university’s “Student Center for Diversity and Inclusion” morphed, overnight, into the “Center for Student Advocacy and Belonging.” He goes on to note that his own institution, around that same time, circulated an email explaining that the new law “does not necessarily mean that we cannot continue to have the [DEI] programming or activities, but we may need to make some adjustments or changes in order to be in compliance.”
Another strategy the DEI true believers have adopted, as their programs have come under fire in red states such as Texas and Florida, is to “pretend to follow the letter of the law by appearing to dismantle their formal DEI apparatus while actually farming out its functions to other campus entities, including academic departments,” as I explained in a column for Campus Reform in December 2023. In the words of one prominent “race scholar” at the University of Texas, “We do the work that we’ve always done. We just find different ways to do it.”
Which brings us back to Georgia. Is that the sort of subterfuge we can expect now that our state has banned DEI? Will we see the same kinds of semantic games? The answer to both questions is almost certainly “yes,” given what we know about the Left in general and about DEI apparatchiks in particular. If they’re doing those things in other states, why wouldn’t they do them here?
Indeed, it has already begun. According to The College Fix, in October 2023, not long after Georgia’s Board of Regents launched its first attack on the DEI regime by banning “diversity statements,” the president of Georgia Tech, Angel Cabrera, said in a press release that the institution “would embed its DEI into the school’s academic and administrative units ‘rather than being run out of a separate, central office.’” He further stated that his “goal was to do a better job at ‘weaving these programs into the fabric of the Institute.’”
Clearly, the DEI die-hards here in Georgia fully intend to subvert the will of the people.Meanwhile, at Kennesaw State University, Georgia’s second largest institution, with an enrollment of nearly 48,000 students, “President Kathy Schwaig announced in a December 2023 faculty email [that] the school will rebrand its Division of Diverse and Inclusive Excellence by renaming it the Division of Organizational Effectiveness, Leadership Development, and Inclusive Excellence. The current chief diversity officer, Sonia Toson, will receive a title bump to vice president and be tasked with overseeing the rebranded department,” according to The College Fix. In October 2024, Kennesaw State finance professor David Bray told the Fix that the supposed “changes” were merely “the same lipstick on the ideological pig. […] As soon as DEI was uncovered as political[ly] left, they now reinvent the language and have morphed into the ‘sense of belonging’ crew.”
Clearly, the DEI die-hards here in Georgia fully intend to subvert the will of the people, as expressed by their Board of Regents, using the same strategies that have been so effective in other states. Will that change now that the Board has spoken so clearly, emphatically, and comprehensively against DEI and anything that resembles it? Perhaps, though I’m not optimistic. System-level administrators, if they truly wish to eradicate DEI, must remain vigilant—and so must those of us who for years have been fighting this battle in the trenches and who will continue to fight until DEI is but a distant, shameful memory.
Rob Jenkins is an associate professor of English at Georgia State University-Perimeter College. The views expressed here are his own.
This article was originally published at www.jamesgmartin.center
