Claremont Institute Report on DEI in Alabama Higher Education

Washington, D.C.—Across the country, college administrators are transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). And these transformations are taking place right under the noses of red states.

A new report—Going Woke in Dixie? The Progress of DEI at the University of Alabama & Auburn University—from Dr. Scott Yenor, a Washington Fellow at the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, details how this DEI transformation is coming to two of Alabama’s once-heralded schools.

The diversity industry, quietly and steadily, has been setting up shop at two of Alabama’s premier institutions of higher education. Both institutions have active, well-funded diversity strategic plans aimed at transforming the universities into ideological bastions of the Left.

Its success, so far, has been astounding. Alabama boasted (back in 2019) that “over one-third of UA’s undergraduate curriculum (36 percent, 1,083 courses) is diversity-related,” a number no doubt much greater today.

Auburn, for example, has a dedicated director of diversity or a representative on the Diversity Leaders Roundtable at the university for all twelve of its colleges. As University of Alabama’s dean for the College of Education Peter Hlebowitsh puts it, “Diversity is better expressed as the essence of life.”

The DEI takeover is a gathering danger in Alabama. America’s universities are unlikely to reform themselves. Concerted political action, followed by serious oversight, will be necessary to bring them back to their true educational missions. We hope Going Woke in Dixie? will serve as a blueprint toward a practical change.