Given the relentless attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives coming from President Donald Trump’s administration and conservative state leaders, I was especially interested in what the Chronicle’s data revealed about higher education’s progress in this critical area. The results are telling: Black students, faculty and staff remain underrepresented almost everywhere and in every measurable category.
Although Black Americans comprise 14.4 percent of the U.S. population, for example, they remain at or near the bottom across nearly every metric of higher education. Of the 9.2 million students enrolled in four-year public institutions, only 10.6 percent are African American. While the percentage of Black students at two-year public colleges is higher, 13.7 percent, there is no evidence that diversity programs have given Black students any disproportionate benefit.
Tenure, the ultimate career milestone in academia — providing both job security and intellectual independence — reveals deeper inequities. Seventy-four percent of tenured faculty are white; only 5.2 percent are African American. From 2016 to 2023, the percentage of minority tenured professors increased, but at a painfully slow pace: Asians gained 3.7 percentage points and Hispanics 1.1 percent, while Blacks rose by less than 1 percent. Sadly, but as might be expected, Black women remain at the bottom of all tenured faculty lists.
Much of the rhetoric from Trump and his supporters has focused on elite public and private universities. Yet according to the Chronicle, when it comes to faculty makeup none of the nation’s 10 most racially and ethnically diverse institutions are flagship state or Ivy League universities. In fact, the seventh most diverse college in the country is Savannah State University, a historically Black college or university (HBCU), with a faculty that is 39 percent Black, 29.6 percent white and 21.7 percent Asian and Hispanic. This only confirms what African American educators have long known: HBCUs have always been open-access institutions. They have never imposed racial quotas, nor have they needed political coercion to achieve diversity.
Yet despite this evidence, many institutions are capitulating to political pressure by voluntarily dismantling diversity offices and ending programs that have been proven effective.
This month, former Georgia Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, who is now interim president of my alma mater, Emory University, sent out a campuswide email announcing the closure of Emory’s DEI offices, suggesting that diversity could still be achieved without formal programs. Months earlier, leaders at Georgia Tech, where I once taught future Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, directed staff to delete any mention of “diversity,” “equity” or “inclusion” from its websites.
A few higher education institutions — such as Virginia’s George Mason University, whose president is vigorously defending his university’s diversity achievements — are resisting the pressure to shutter those programs pre-emptively. But many more are moving the other way, arguing that they are being strategic, trying to avoid federal scrutiny and head off the potential loss of millions in research funding. But consider this: Have you ever seen a scenario where giving your school lunch to a bully pre-emptively made the situation better?
So what should public officials who value higher education do?
First, they should fund what works by investing in proven pipelines: scholarships and mentoring and faculty development programs that expand access and retention for underrepresented students and staff. Next, they should push back against political interference in curriculum and hiring decisions. Colleges must remain spaces for honest inquiry, not partisan warfare.
Finally, they must pay close attention to this year’s — and past years’ — Almanac findings, which underscore the importance of HBCUs and community colleges. These institutions are already national leaders in diversity and mobility. Strengthening them strengthens the entire educational ecosystem.
Public officials must decide whether they will be guided by politics or by evidence when shaping the future of higher education. If leaders allow fear, ideology or a fanciful belief in a never-existed racially neutral meritocracy to override the facts, they risk not only compromising the integrity of our education system but jeopardizing the future of a nation that cannot afford to retreat from its promise of equal opportunity for all.
Governing’s opinion columns reflect the views of their authors and not necessarily those of Governing’s editors or management.
