Disrupting the Mechanisms of Equity Suppression in an Anti-“DEI” Policy Context: Lessons from A Case Study

• In Event: Designing, Defending, and Sustaining Equity for Communities of Color in Politically Hostile Climates

Abstract

To effectively counter the suppression of equity-focused policy in education, we must first understand how race-evasive ideology is embedded, operationalized, and enforced in repressive actions and laws targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (“DEI” ) initiatives. Laws banning funding of “DEI” programs in public higher education, such as Texas’ Senate Bill 17, operate not only through legal mandates but also through the interpretive and structural mechanisms that institutional actors use to implement them. Through a case study of the implementation of this law at a Texan university (name omitted for peer review), we illuminate how the law’s vague language, coercive compliance structures, and surveillance mechanisms serve to (re)entrench race-evasive norms that undermine racially conscious policy. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers committed to preserving equity in education amid hostile political terrains.
Drawing on sociolegal, social movement, and organizational theories (Edelman, Leachman, & McAdam’s, 2010), we conceptualize the anti-“DEI” law as a politically constructed disruption designed by external actors to delegitimize equity-focused practices. The law catalyzes internal organizational meso-level processes that ultimately give the law its meaning. Findings reveal how these shifts normalize race-evasive values through “strategic overcompliance,” fear-based suppression, and surveillance-based processes.
This presentation draws from a two-year ethnographic case study examining how organizational actors (e.g., faculty members, administrators, and student leaders) interpret and enact the anti-“DEI” law, and how their responses shape the law’s consequences and meaning. Data sources include 81 interviews with faculty members whose research is focused on race/racism, former diversity-focused administrators, and student leaders dedicated to supporting marginalized students on campus; three student leader focus groups; over 70 hours of observations; and more than 100 institutional and external documents. We collected data from the law’s signing (June 2023) to roughly 16 months post-implementation (April 2025).
Findings illuminate how the law’s implementation phases institutionalize race-evasive policy and practice through routine actions that extend beyond the formalized repressive elements of the law. Our presentation will focus specifically on findings that illuminate the dynamic of repressive legalism (Garces et al., 2021), which explains how organizational actors expand the repressive elements of the law to suppress attention to inequities and normalize the invisibility of racially marginalized groups on campus.
This study contributes to a deeper understanding of how race-evasive ideology is enacted through policy implementation. By exposing the mechanisms that give repressive laws its meaning, we offer critical insights for disrupting their effects and advancing equity in education. These insights are particularly timely, as similar repressive efforts are emerging at the federal level, highlighting how lessons from state-level contexts can guide resistance and strategic action in this broader national landscape to protect the well-being and success of communities of color in higher education.

Authors

• Liliana M. Garces, University of Texas at Austin

• Jackie Pedota, University of Texas at Austin

• Eliza Epstein, University of Texas at Austin