From Legal Endogeneity to Exogenous Meaning Control: The Dismantling of Faculty Diversity Infrastructure

• In Event: The Political Context of Education

Abstract

The passage of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 initiated a roughly 60-year period in which diversity, equity, and inclusion in postsecondary education was federally encouraged and mandated. Over this period, academic institutions built extensive faculty diversity infrastructure–spanning K-12 pipelines, college access programs, postdoctoral fellowships, and faculty recruitment and retention supports–that marginally increased the representation of racially marginalized scholars. Starting in 2021, individual states began introducing legislation prohibiting attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion. By December 2025, 33 states had introduced such legislation. Federal-level interventions in 2025–including Department of Education and Department of Justice guidance letters, banned language in grant applications, and threatened financial penalties–further accelerated this shift.

Drawing on 103 interviews conducted between June 2025 and February 2026 with faculty engaged in racial equity labor at public colleges and universities across 38 states, we ask: How has anti-diversity governance impacted faculty diversity infrastructure, and why has this governance been so destabilizing? We argue that the US has shifted from a regime of legal endogeneity–in which organizations managed civil rights compliance through internal processes with substantial discretion–to one of exogenous meaning control, in which external political actors regulate values rather than practices. We demonstrate how this shift has rapidly dismantled faculty diversity infrastructure. Four features of anti-diversity governance explain its speed and scope: (1) eroded postsecondary autonomy due to politicized governance structures; (2) regulation of ideology rather than specific practices, foreclosing symbolic compliance strategies; (3) retroactive financial penalties that enable universities to frame cuts as fiscal rather than political; and (4) pervasive surveillance that induces anticipatory and over-compliance. The widespread contraction of supports for marginalized scholars and heightened vulnerability for equity-engaged faculty carry long-term consequences for who can belong in the academy.

Authors

• Laura Theresa Hamilton, University of California-Merced

• Caleb E. Dawson, University of California-Santa Barbara

• Veronica M. Lerma, University of California-Davis

• Veronica Garcia, University of California, Merced