The War on DEI: An in-depth look at the Texas DEI law’s impact on college campuses as lawmakers move to expand the legislation​on February 28, 2025 at 4:35 am

DALLAS — The movement to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has been sweeping across government agencies, businesses, and educational institutions nationwide. However, in Texas, the effort began well before the Trump administration when lawmakers passed Senate Bill 17 (SB 17) in 2023 during the last legislative session.

SB 17 mandated all public Texas universities to eliminate offices, departments, staff positions, hiring practices, statements, and training programs centered on DEI. The law passed in June 2023 and went into effect on January 1, 2024.

In January 2025, a year after the law went into effect, the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee presented a report to the 89th Legislature detailing the progress and impact of the bill based on testimony provided by the chancellors from Texas’ seven public university systems during a hearing in May 2024.

According to that report, all seven public university systems in Texas dismantled any existing DEI programs before the law actually went into effect. According to reports provided from all seven chancellors, more than 35 physical offices or centers were shut down, and more than 350 part-time and full-time jobs with a DEI focus were eliminated.

The University of Texas System experienced the most significant impact, reportedly closing 21 offices and cutting 311 jobs across all of the system’s campuses.

State Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe) filed SB17 last session and chairs the senate committee responsible for the report and ensuring the compliance of Texas’ higher education institutions.

“We’ve had our own efforts to ensure that compliance is taking place across the state, throughout our public universities and for the most part, we’re seeing that,” Creighton said.

The University of North Texas (UNT) System was the first in the state to announce the closure of its Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access Office, along with restructuring multiple programs in response to lawmakers passing the legislation in 2023.

“There was not really room for us to protest or give our opinions because by the time we got information, things were already being put into place,” said Trois Murphy, the president of UNT’s Black Student Union.

UNT’s main campus, in Denton, had a student center called the “Multicultural Center” that the University renamed the “The Center of Belonging and Engagement”. Murphy said the shift also changed the way students interact with the space.

“What I saw as a space where anyone could just come and find people they can relate to, is often very empty and no one’s in there,” Murphy said.

SB17 did not impact student organizations like BSU, and their ability to meet and hold events as long as they are available to all students.

Ariah Kragness, who serves as the director of social justice and professionalism for the organization, said there is still a tangible impact for students on campus.

“Seeing physical spaces that used to be available for students being closed down or renamed, even staff members that had to be let go of their position…it’s just a lot,” Kragness said.

Kragness, who is majoring in political science with hopes of becoming a lawyer, said she worries SB17 has sown fear in educators that will prevent them from teaching diverse topics and perspectives.

“I see a lot of people advocating for classes and professors because outside of the fun programs that a lot of organizations do, there are a lot of classes that were impacted and no longer available on campus,” Kragness said.

Sen. Creighton praised SB 17 as the “strongest bill in the nation” targeting DEI.

“I measure success by making decisions based on merit, right? We’ve seen diversity, equity, and inclusion across public universities weaponized against vulnerable student populations,” Creighton said.

Creighton cited mandatory pronoun training and professor candidates being required to sign what he referred to as “leftist political oaths” as examples of what the law was created to get rid of.

“It’s absent everything MLK taught about, you know, focusing on character and competence and what someone brings to the table as far as their innovation and ideas and work ethic, not the color of one’s skin,” Creighton

Sen. Creighton said Texas plans to continue to be a “national model” for anti-DEI efforts.

While the law’s passage immediately led to dozens of office closures and hundreds of job eliminations, an analysis of fall 2024 enrollment data—the first semester after SB 17 took effect—showed little change in minority student representation at most public universities in Texas.

In June 2023, the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, ending the practice of colleges and universities considering race for admissions. Most of the public university systems in Texas were already hiring based on merit, according to their report to the state.

Flagship universities like UT Austin, Texas A&M University, UNT Denton, Texas Woman’s University and Texas State University have seen a consistent increase in the percentage of minority students over the past decade. Fall 2024 was no different.

At UT Austin, Texas A&M and UNT Denton, white students made up the largest percentage of undergraduate students on campus when looking at individual racial groups, and in Fall 2024 that was still the case with 30.4% of undergraduate students at UT Austin, 52% at Texas A&M and 32% at UNT Denton identifying as white.

However, the percentage of white students in all three undergraduate student bodies has steadily declined even with different shifts in total enrollment as each university sees upticks in the percentages of Asian, Hispanic, Black and, in some cases, International students.

At UNT Dallas, where nearly half of the students are Hispanic, the percentage of white students rose from 14% to 15% in Fall 2024.

Texas Woman’s University saw the percentage of Black and Asian students hold steady into Fall 2024, while the percentage of white students fell from 31% to 29% and the percentage of Hispanic students rose from 36% to 39%.

In its presentation to the Senate Higher Education Subcommittee, leaders of the Texas State University System said the system had been growing more diverse over the past decade in both its staffing demographics and the student population- a trend the university system continued to see in Fall 2023 after some of the provisions of SB17 had been put into place.

Creighton emphasized that SB 17 does not prevent universities from pursuing diversity itself.

“Every university is going to continue to strive for diverse outcomes. That is not prevented within the effort to remove DEI,” he said.

Not only are public universities in Texas continuing to grow more diverse, reflecting the communities they serve, but the systems also pledged their commitment to supporting these shifts even as they adhere to SB17.

The law does not restrict universities from recruiting or supporting students who are low-income, from underrepresented backgrounds or first-generation college students.

In their testimony to the senate committee, Texas Woman’s University reported plans to direct resources from its former Center for Diversity and Inclusion Outreach to its Center for First-Generation Students.

The University of Houston System redirected the $750,000 from DEI programs toward improving graduation rates for all students.

Texas A&M announced plans to use reclaimed DEI funds for recruiting students from “historically underrepresented school districts”.

For Dr. Jorge Burmicky, an assistant professor of higher education leadership and policy studies at Howard University, the push against DEI is performative and political.

“I actually dislike the term DEI or DE&I, or all of the variations we have,” Burmicky said. “Part of it is because it actually weaponizes some of the programs that we force into this larger umbrella because the reality is when you have a term that is so generic, it makes it easier to target programs that you just simply don’t agree with.”

Burmicky received his Ph.D. in higher education policy from UT Austin and worked under what was formerly known as the Division of Campus and Community Engagement. He said programs within the unit focused on leveling the playing field for many different types of students- first-generation college students, students with disabilities, students in the LGBTQ+ community, senior citizens and veterans.

“It’s just providing additional support to the students that weren’t getting it to begin with,” Burmicky said.

What the programs did not do, according to Burmicky, was host events or programs that white students were not able to be a part of. In fact, he said participation from non-minority or non-marginalized students was encouraged.

“It takes a whole village. You can’t really solve problems of equity by just talking to people who are feeling marginalized,” Burmicky said.

In his experience, Burmicky said that once people fully understood what so-called DEI programs did, they did not find them to be controversial or divisive.

His main concern, now that DEI-focused programs have been banned across the state, is the impact on academia. 

“I have heard from colleagues who are changing terms in their syllabus to avoid directly referencing race, gender, LGBTQ+ issues, etc.,” he said. “What are we going to target next? What makes you uncomfortable?”

He believes the result will ultimately be a loss of talent for Texas and other states.

“You can’t have it both ways,” Burmicky said. “You can’t attract the best talent but also limit their ability to thrive as a professional and as an individual.”

Senator Creighton suggested that SB 17 could expand further, citing concerns that some universities may not be in full compliance. In January, Governor Greg Abbott threatened Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III’s job on X after someone posted a screenshot of an email exchange between university faculty concerning an academic conference that required participants to be people of color.

“It seems like they’re trying to give us a reason…that they’re trying to motivate the legislature to go back into the statute and expand it further,” Creighton said. “If that’s what President Welsh would like for us to do…if that’s what A&M is signaling that they’d like the legislature to do, we’re all ready to go. This is why we’re here, and there’s not a subject we’re watching more closely in higher ed than this one.”

This week, Senator Creighton filed two bills that will be read to a senate committee on Thursday- both with an anti-DEI focus. SB12 bans DEI programs and staffing, similarly to SB17, for public K-12 education in Texas. SB1565 includes similar language and allows parents to file complaints if they believe their child’s school is promoting DEI.

While SB17 and the two bills filed this week focus on public universities and school districts, private institutions have begun to feel the pressure to shutter DEI programming under the Trump Administration.

WFAA interviewed the former Chief Inclusion Officer for Texas Christian University for this story to get the perspective of institutions that were able to keep their DEI offices under SB17 because they are private. The interview took place the same week President Donald Trump was sworn into office and subsequently signed multiple anti-DEI executive orders- one of which targeted institutions that receive federal funding.

TCU asked for the interview to not be included in this story to avoid legal repercussions, and WFAA honored the institution’s wish.

Days before this story was published, TCU’s website shows the university has rebranded its DEI Office as the Center for Connection Culture.

Meanwhile, Southern Methodist University did not respond to multiple attempts to contact the university concerning its shift in approach to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The university’s website shows, like TCU, it’s renamed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion to the newly-named Office of Cultural Intelligence.