The University of Kentucky is dissolving its Office of Institutional Diversity, months after the state legislature tried to pass bills targeting diversity, equity and inclusion programs on college campuses statewide.
The move comes after UK President Eli Capilouto said he received feedback throughout the summer, including meeting with legislators who expressed concerns about the role of diversity, equity and inclusion — referred to as DEI — at UK.
Lawmakers failed to pass the bills targeting DEI programs this past spring, but the university expects them to pursue similar bills next spring.
In addition to eliminating the Office of Institutional Diversity, several other changes announced Tuesday will take effect in the next few weeks. UK will remove mandatory diversity training throughout the university, and no employees will be required to write a diversity statement to be employed, Capilouto said in a campus-wide email sent Tuesday afternoon.
To be “impartial facilitators as an institution of broad perspectives,” the university and Capilouto will no longer make statements on political or partisan events or issues, including on the university website, he said. A new office, the Office for Community Relations, will be created in place of the Office of Institutional Diversity.
“We share the value that out of many people, we are one community,” Capilouto wrote in the email.
“We share a promise with Kentucky that all who turn to us should have the same opportunity to live a healthy, long life or cross that stage. That is how we honor our shared, common humanity. But we’ve also listened to policymakers and heard many of their questions about whether we appear partisan or political on the issues of our day and, as a result, narrowly interpret things solely through the lens of identity. In so doing, the concern is that we either intentionally or unintentionally limit discourse.”
Legislation targeting DEI efforts on college campuses has been proposed in 28 states since 2023, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education , which has been tracking such legislation. Earlier this year in Kentucky, two bills were proposed by Republicans that would have targeted, and essentially eliminated, DEI programming and initiatives on college campuses, though neither became law.
Kentucky’s anti-DEI higher ed bill dies a second time
Training on topics like unconscious bias and “modules within larger training segments in HR that could be classified as around DEI,” will no longer be mandatory, said Jay Blanton, university spokesperson.
Capilouto said he is focused on three questions: “Did we care? Were we fair? Did we give all a fair shot?” In talking with legislators, Capilouto said it has been made clear to him that DEI will again be brought before the legislature in 2025.
“As we strive to be a community where all people, no matter the background or perspective, feel a sense of belonging, we must seek to foster a sense of mutual respect among members of our community and for all those we serve,” said Capilouto, who has been the president since 2011. “We must do this while also protecting academic freedom — the idea that scholars and all members of the university community must always be free to inquire, to discover, to teach and to evaluate as they gain and impart understanding and knowledge.”
No jobs eliminated due to changes
Colleges and academic units will continue the diversity work of the Office of Institutional Diversity, with job descriptions of some roles being rewritten to reflect their role in working with DEI initiatives and programming, Blanton said.
“This should in no way be construed as impinging upon academic freedom,” Capilouto said. “Faculty decide what to teach as part of formal instruction and where discovery should take them as scholars in their areas of expertise. That means both scholar and student encountering difficult and challenging ideas together, pushing each other to toward deeper understanding, while maintaining a sense of mutual respect.”
Capilouto said the university remains committed to its strategic plan, including the principle of “bringing many people together, one community” that is outlined in the plan.
No jobs will be eliminated because of these changes, Capilouto said.
The Office of Institutional Diversity’s mission, according to the UK website, was to “enhance the diversity and inclusivity of our university community through the recruitment and retention of an increasingly diverse population of faculty, administrators, staff and students, and by implementing initiatives that provide rich diversity-related experiences for all to help ensure their success in an interconnected world.”
Katrice Albert, who has been the vice president for institutional diversity at UK since 2021, will move into a new role as the vice president for community relations in the new office, Blanton said, and employees from the Office of Institutional Diversity will move into roles in different offices.
In 2020, Capilouto spoke out after Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was a UK student in 2011 , was killed in her home by Louisville Metro Police officers. Since then, he has spoken up several times in support of diverse communities, including about a controversial mural located on campus that depicts Black workers, possibly slaves, planting tobacco and a Native American person wielding a tomahawk.
Capilouto has repeatedly come out in support of removing the mural after student protests in 2019, though a lawsuit filed by Kentucky author Wendell Berry halted removal efforts.
DEI in Kentucky
Tuesday’s announcement comes several months after Capilouto, in a rare public rebuke of GOP legislators, spoke out against anti-DEI and tenure bills that had been filed in the state legislature earlier this year, calling the bills “deeply concerning.”
“We don’t speak out as an institution on public policy unless the issues will impact our entire community in potentially significant ways,” Capilouto wrote in a campus-wide email in April. “This is one of those moments. Let’s not extinguish the thirst for knowledge because certain questions aren’t allowed because they are uncomfortable or challenging.”
The two bills proposed in Kentucky would have blocked all DEI initiatives that promoted “discriminatory concepts” and would have forced public colleges and universities to dismantle and defund DEI offices and positions. Senate Bill 6, which was aimed at restricting DEI offices at public universities, failed to pass on the last night of the 2024 legislative session.
‘Race-based metrics’ no longer included in state funding model for Kentucky public colleges
Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, who sponsored one of the anti-DEI bills earlier this year, argued last spring that DEI initiatives represented a “failed policy” that made “college more divided, more expensive and less tolerant.”
In March, the Kentucky Attorney General said public universities’ use of certain DEI policies violated the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights Act. Drawing on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, the case which struck down affirmative action last year, Attorney General Russell Coleman said using “underrepresented minorities” as a metric for funding state colleges is unconstitutional.
Following that, a law was passed barring the Council on Postsecondary Education from considering race in its performance-based funding model, which determines how state funding is distributed to public universities and community colleges.
CPE then changed metrics in its performance-based funding model to remove “race-based metrics” from funding consideration, giving more weight to low-income bachelor’s degree produced and introducing degrees earned by first-generation students and non-traditional students into the model.
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