Since we last wrote about Alabama SB 129, the bill has become law. And as it has been implemented, universities themselves have gone even further than the bill demands, resulting in the full closure of DEI offices on all three University of Alabama campuses.

SB 129 defines prohibited DEI programs or groups as those “where attendance is based” on a specific identity category. This could prohibit programming specific to international students, for example, or the official recognition of the Black Student Union, unless those programs and groups were open to the full community. The definition of prohibited DEI work would also prevent  requiring students to participate in events, trainings and coursework that promote “divisive concepts.”

But it does not require the closure of a DEI office.

Regardless, all three schools in the University of Alabama system closed their DEI offices in response to the law, and reopened new offices under different titles; the Birmingham campus, for example, launched the Office of Access and Engagement in an effort to comply with the law and “[promote] access and success for all students.” The university further recognized the need for additional support for students who are “veterans or active-duty military,” “first-generation college students,” or “students from rural or urban areas or underperforming high schools.” In other words, many of the communities that existing DEI offices exist to serve.

The closures are a textbook example of how universities ought not to respond to educational censorship: banning offices and concepts via administrative overcompliance that are not banned by law. As we said in a recent post on “jawboning,” only when university leaders “recognize that maintaining the autonomy of their institutions requires a willingness to defend themselves against political bullies” will this epidemic of educational censorship efforts cease.

 

Stopping WOKE in Alabama | AL SB 129 

Alabama is poised to pass the most pernicious educational gag order impacting higher education since Florida’s Stop WOKE Act became law – and in some ways, it’s even more restrictive. 

Like many gag orders, SB 129 includes a prohibition on the “divisive concepts” popularized by a Trump executive order in 2020 which ban large swaths of educational speech about race, racism, sex, and American history. The bill would ban faculty from requiring any student to participate in coursework that “advocates for or requires assent to a divisive concept” – essentially a ban on even including such content in a course, an extreme prohibition currently present only in Florida’s currently-stayed Stop WOKE Act among higher ed laws. The bill also edits one of the familiar “divisive concepts,” prohibiting content that contends an “individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin.” And it introduces a new prohibited concept: the idea that “slavery and racism are aligned with the founding principles of the United States.”

This new language could prohibit instructors from assigning the 1619 Project, even if they do so to demonstrate points they disagree with – something that has never before been done so explicitly at the college level via legislation. It would also prohibit assigning readings of essays, books, or films where the author expresses that they feel complicit in past wrongs because of their identity, or historical documents demonstrating historical perspectives on race, gender, or class. This is a more expansive restriction than even Florida’s HB 7 (Stop WOKE), which only prohibits assigning readings advocating for complicity, not merely expressing the author’s experience

Alongside coursework, the bill would prohibit DEI offices and programming that determines participation based on identity group, which could include info sessions for international students or university recognition of the Black Student Union. And should public universities attempt to get around the severe measures in this bill by using federal or private funding, they will find themselves stymied by a clause prohibiting them from procuring any money to fund such activities. 

The result would be a campus environment devoid of intellectual freedom, and a state law so draconian that it gives Florida a run for its money.