The University closes the Office for Campus Inclusion due to mandate 

The Office for Campus Inclusion was removed by the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. According to The Acadiana Advocate, the University announced the closure in an email to staff at 5 p.m. on Apr. 11. 

The abrupt removal comes after increasing pressures from the federal government to remove all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and language in higher education institutions. 

The University also removed a Black Lives Matter statement made in 2020 from their website. 

The statement, written by Chad Parker, the assistant vice president for Faculty Development and Academic Outreach, was in the form of a blog post. 

It is unclear who initially removed the statement, but upon noticing it was removed, the Department of History, Philosophy and Geology, republished it but removed it again at the request of the University. 

The first line of Parker’s statement said, “The Department of History, Geography, and Philosophy at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette knows that Black lives matter and we stand with Black Lives Matter activists.” The statement detailed how the department planned to use its platform to review curriculum in an effort to understand institutionalized racism and create change within the department. 

Jennifer Stephens, the associate vice president for communications and marketing, said in an email that the website’s language and content are “regularly reviewed to ensure consistency, neutrality and compliance.” Stephens said monitoring the site’s content is a part of a migration process that began in 2022, to ensure consistency with the UL Lafayette brand. 

“Multiple layers of review and decision-making are in place to ensure that any changes, particularly any political statements or other sensitive language, are communicated with relevant stakeholders,” Stephens said. 

She said this particular statement was removed in the early phases of the University’s migration process, but related conversations about removing content have taken place with “key stakeholders.” 

She said the University is expected to align with federal and state guidance. “We continue to monitor and respond to evolving directives. While content and language are reviewed periodically, the University’s core identity remains consistent and strong. Our mission and institutional values are unchanged,” Stephens said. 

According to The New York Times, on Apr. 3, President Trump’s administration sent a memo to public education officials threatening to withhold federal funding from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of all DEI programs through a certification form. 

According to The Associated Press, the memo specifically threatened Title I funds, which sends billions of dollars to schools, targeting low-income areas. 

Theodore Foster III, an assistant professor of African American history and Black studies, said he was less concerned with the removal of the statement and more concerned with what the University is going to do to combat systemic racism within the University. 

“Does structural racism exist or does it not, right? I think it is not something a scholar simply states. I think it’s something that research, analysis and education debates and discusses, and the University should be a place in which we can debate and discuss that based on evidence, based on analysis, based on scholarship, based on critical and respectful discussion. Not based on ‘it is’ or ‘isn’t.’” 

Foster said that it takes the work of everyone in the University to promote inclusion, and he was not invested in the Office for Campus Inclusion being the sole place where that work took place. 

“DEI is but one site through which that work happens. And so, if it was a problem before DEI existed, it’ll be a problem after. What are those problems? How do we identify them? I hope that we can still name those problems so that we can solve them. And that’s my fear is that DEI means we can’t name the thing, the thing. The problem, right? It’s no one problem.” 

Foster added that he has confidence in his colleagues to “help our students see those problems through their classes, through their service learning projects and through scholarship research opportunities.” 

Kiwana McClung, former chief inclusion officer for the Office for Campus Inclusion, said the purpose of the office was “to make sure that everyone on this campus feels they belong, and to remove barriers for people that might get in the way of them effectively doing their jobs or getting their education or engaging in the great events that we have on campus.” 

When asked where she thought the attacks on DEI would end in general, for the country, she said, “I don’t know exactly where it’s going to end, but what I can say is that…no matter how people demonize the words, they will eventually look up and realize that leaving people out of the situation… excluding people, it doesn’t, it doesn’t help any of us, right? It always backfires.”