New Idaho law slashes DEI at universities. What it means for students

When Mario Pile arrived at the University of Idaho’s Moscow campus in early 2022, the school’s Black students were struggling. The few Black undergraduates on campus were dropping out at high rates, unable to cope with frequent racist harassment, he said.

Pile was on campus as the director of a new Black and African American Cultural Center, which was tasked with increasing Black students’ enrollment through scholarships and high school recruitment classes, hosting cultural events and advocating on students’ behalf with faculty. The center offered Black students a trusted adult, and a retreat from a campus on which they were an extreme minority – a place where they could let down their guard and relax, Pile said.

By 2023, Black students’ retention rate on campus had jumped 8% – and by the next year, the number of Black students on campus had risen to about 160, according to university data obtained by the Idaho Statesman. They were drawn to the university in part by the center’s activities, Pile told the Statesman. “There was a little glimmer of hope,” he said.

It was short-lived. Pile’s center shuttered in December, ahead of a State Board of Education decision to curtail DEI-related programming and offices.

That decision was prompted by many Idaho Republican lawmakers’ concerns that centers and activities like these come at the expense of the other students on campus. They amount to a reverse discrimination of sorts – promoting a narrative that some students are inherently oppressors, while others are inherently oppressed, Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, said on the House floor in March. For years, lawmakers have pushed laws that would shut down these efforts in classrooms and on campus.

On the last day of this legislative session, they succeeded by passing Senate Bill 1198, which Gov. Brad Little signed into law the same day. The law, which takes effect July 1, will “eliminate all programs and initiatives” in publicly funded universities “commonly known under the title of ‘diversity, equity and inclusion.’ ” It takes broad aim, targeting offices devoted to investigating biased or prejudicial speech; compulsory DEI-related training or instruction; the incorporation of diversity initiatives in the hiring process; and offices like Pile’s at the University of Idaho.

These programs have “infected” the state’s university system with a “culture of division, ignorance, bigotry and intolerance,” the bill reads.

Supporters of the bill argued that universities should be supporting all students equally, and making admissions and hiring decisions based purely on merit. Sponsor Sen. Ben Toews, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he wanted Idaho universities to be “places to seek truth and build relationships,” where “robust debate and deep conversations” were not policed.

“The sad reality is that DEI actually divides, excludes and indoctrinates,” he said on the Senate floor.

DEI is a ‘pernicious ideology,‘ some Republicans say

What exactly DEI encompasses, however, is less clear. Almost half of the bill is devoted to defining terms such as “bias reporting system,” “diversity training” and DEI officers and offices. But in public hearings and debates on the Senate and House floors, lawmakers wrestled with how to define just what it was they sought to eliminate.

The bill’s sponsors relied on definitions from Harvard University and the University of Washington, but opponents argued that the terms are still broad, fluid and inconsistent with traditional definitions or common use. The resulting vagueness of the bill, Sen. James Ruchti, D-Pocatello warned in a committee hearing, would lead to “really bizarre outcomes,” citing the recent example of when a West Ada School District teacher was told to take down a classroom poster that said, “Everyone is welcome here.”

“You’re going to create a lot of anxiety and uncertainty on campuses about what they can and cannot do, what’s appropriate and not appropriate,” Ruchti said.

Division over these terms’ definitions came to a head in that hearing, when Ruchti challenged Samuel Lair, a lobbyist for the Idaho Freedom Foundation, an influential right-wing think tank, over what Lair called the “pernicious ideology” of DEI while testifying in support of the bill.

Ruchti read from a University of Idaho statement about its commitment to diversity and inclusivity. The university said it would unconditionally reject “every form of bigotry, discrimination, hateful rhetoric and hateful action,” and Ruchti asked Lair whether he would consider such a statement to be “pernicious.”

Lair said he considered such a statement to be written in “the spirit of … a different time.” Having himself attended a public university in the last 10 years, he said, “I can tell you that the spirit of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, in which that kind of language is molded, is no longer the spirit that’s currently (at) our colleges and universities.”

Though such statements are written in terms of “liberal toleration,” Lair said, they “go beyond a lot more” to encompass damaging ideas such as critical theory, which examines power dynamics between historically dominant and oppressed groups in society. The Legislature in 2021 passed a resolution opposing the teaching of critical race theory – a subset of critical theory – in public schools.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the term ‘dog whistle,’ ” Lair said.

During a January hearing on DEI initiatives, Toews told lawmakers that he was drawn to legislating on the issue in part because of a story his daughter, a university student in Idaho, told him about a classmate. His daughter, who is conservative, felt comfortable debating with the predominantly liberal students in her cultural anthropology class, but her fellow conservative classmate did not – and ultimately dropped the class.

“There were no liberal students that said, ‘I’m not comfortable,’ ” Toews said. In the current university climate, he added, the speech of conservative students like his daughter’s friend is being “chilled.”

Reflecting on the hearing months later, Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, told the Statesman she felt Toews’ comments disregarded the “folks who have always felt uncomfortable” – the students who are not in the “dominant culture.” Wintrow, who served as the first director of Boise State University’s Women’s Center, said she had worked with those groups firsthand, including single mothers returning to the classroom after a divorce, survivors of domestic abuse or sexual assault, or students who were racial or ethnic minorities on campus.

She told the Statesman she’s “at a loss” as to why it’s so controversial to offer a leg up to those students.

“In the richest country in the world, we always come at everything from scarcity instead of plenty,” she said. “Why would we not want to reach out and say, ‘Hey, you might need a little extra support to gain access to something’? That’s all it is. Why would we deny that?”

Keith Anderson, a former Boise State University professor who leads anti-racism training, echoed that sentiment.

“You must understand and acknowledge that many of America’s social, employment, financial, law and justice and educational systems are and have been, for a very long time, biased against marginalized American citizens,” he said in a statement shared with the Statesman. “All the parts and pieces within DEI were not designed to exclude or discriminate against people. They were designed to include those who have for a very long time been excluded.”

Opponents: Bill represents censorship of universities

The bill’s sponsors were adamant in hearings that they were not trying to ban DEI, but rather wanted to ban requirements to take courses related to the subject.

Opponents, however, challenged the idea that university students – who are almost all adults – need to be protected from uncomfortable conversations about race, class or gender. They also argued that lawmakers shouldn’t have any influence over universities’ approach to hiring, admissions or curriculum decisions, even if they disagreed with the content.

“The challenge that I see in front of us as a body is, what about the next idea? What about the next subject?” asked Sen. Britt Raybould, R-Rexburg, who voted against the bill. “What’s the threshold that we are setting for establishing, within law, the idea that we should be censoring ideas?

“If we look back through history, the governments who rely on censorship of ideas, it’s because they’re scared of the positions that they hold, and ill-equipped to defend them.”

Toews argued that the bill did not constitute censorship. He said it was meant to be “correctional,” not “punitive” – though it allows for penalties to be imposed on universities that fail to remove offending offices and course requirements, and for students and faculty who believe that DEI efforts on campus have impeded their free speech to seek an investigation from the state’s attorney general.

Rep. Chris Mathias, D-Boise, the state’s only Black legislator, argued that the bill’s provision for involving the attorney general amounted to a fast-tracking of white students’ complaints of discrimination, while students of color who face racist harassment are relegated to an “Olympics of paperwork” that culminates in, at most, a review from the State Board of Education. Mathias received national attention for a debate about critical race theory in 2021, when he said that “virtually every law and policy that we maintain” has had a disparate impact on people of color.

“Housing, health, education, wealth, income – people of color always come out on the losing end. Always,” Mathias said on the House floor in 2021. “And I don’t think it’s unfair to acknowledge it.”

University of Idaho officials don’t know yet what the new law will mean for the school’s DEI-related programs, faculty and staff positions, Jodi Walker, a spokesperson for the university, told the Statesman.

But in the months since Pile’s center shuttered, he’s already seen the impact on students, who are now forced to shoulder efforts to advocate for themselves and other students who have been harassed or need additional resources. Still working at the university, now as the associate director of student involvement, Pile sits down the hall from his former center, which was converted into a student lounge. Students still regularly drop by his office, he said, giving him a window into their angst over the loss of the center.

Pile echoed the idea that Black students’ concerns are routinely dismissed, citing the lack of an effort to track or quantify incidents of harassment. He feared that without the center, Black students will find themselves in the same situation – feeling isolated, without institutional support, and ultimately dropping out.

“There is no effort to make sure Black students are seen, heard and valued in this state whatsoever,” he said.