photo by: John Hanna/Associated Press

This photo from Friday, April 12, 2024, shows the sign above the door to the Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging inside the main administration building on the main University of Kansas campus in Lawrence, Kan. Republican lawmakers across the U.S. are seeking to restrict diversity initiatives on colleges campuses, arguing that they enforce a liberal orthodoxy.

December was oversight month at the Kansas Statehouse, as lawmakers gathered for committee meetings to review a variety of topics, including the issue of whether state universities are refraining from pushing diversity, equity and inclusion beliefs upon students.

A new law prohibiting many DEI initiatives on public campuses has been a chore for many universities to manage this school year — requiring everything from department reorganizations to website redesigns. But the leaders of the state’s six Regents universities recently received a positive report on the matter.

“I think we are all complying with the law,” Greg Schneider, the assistant vice president of government relations and economic development for Emporia State University, told a committee meeting of university presidents and the KU chancellor earlier this month.

Furthermore, Schneider — who is serving a term as legislative liaison for the Council of Presidents– said he believes most legislators agree that the state’s public universities are complying with the law. At least that was his impression after attending a recent oversight committee meeting of lawmakers.

But he also had another impression from that legislative meeting: Lawmakers will make a strong push to change and tighten the anti-DEI law when the next legislative session begins in January.

In fact, leaders with the Kansas Board of Regents — which oversees KU, K-State, Wichita State, Fort Hays State, Emporia State and Pittsburg State — think they know the idea that a group of legislators will pursue.

The idea actually has a name: the Freedom from Indoctrination Act.

The Goldwater Institute — an Arizona-based advocacy group that touts the benefits of limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty — has crafted the Freedom from Indoctrination Act, and is making the proposed bill available to lawmakers across the country to introduce during legislative sessions.

Schneider told the presidents and chancellor that it “seems likely” that the legislation will be seriously considered in Kansas during the upcoming legislative session.

If approved, the Freedom from Indoctrination Act would be a tightening of existing diversity, equity and inclusion prohibitions that exist at KU and the state’s other public universities. The state’s universities began implementing new policies after the Kansas Legislature approved a budget proviso that directed all state agencies to: eliminate all positions related to diversity, equity and inclusion; eliminate any policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion; eliminate training requirements related to DEI; and cancel any state grants or contracts related to DEI.

The proviso also required university employees to remove their preferred pronouns — he/him, she/her and they/them, for example — from the signature lines of their work email accounts. The pronoun change was the last to be implemented at KU. The new policy sparked an outcry from faculty and staff members, and led to one of the country’s top free speech advocacy groups — the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — to declare the policy produced “grave” constitutional concerns. The pronoun policy has remained in place, although some faculty and staff members have been including language in their emails protesting the policy.

What the 2025 changes didn’t do, however, is directly address how DEI topics can be incorporated in class curricula. The Freedom from Indoctrination Act would tackle that issue head on.

The Journal-World recently reviewed the language of the Freedom from Indoctrination Act, which the Goldwater Institute has published on its website. Here’s a look at several of the key provisions of the model legislation that it is providing to lawmakers:

• The act wouldn’t technically stop universities from offering classes that teach or even promote concepts associated with DEI. However, the act would prohibit universities from requiring students to take any of those classes in order to receive a degree from the university. Universities could continue to offer DEI-centered classes for students who wish to take them. The act also doesn’t specifically state that such a class couldn’t count toward the required number of hours a student must take to receive a degree. For example, if a degree requires 120 credit hours — with 100 hours being specific courses and 20 hours being any other university courses — the act doesn’t prohibit a DEI-centered course from counting toward those 20 general hours. But the university would be required to ensure that no scenario existed where students had to take a DEI-centered course to finish their degrees.

• Universities would be able to require DEI curriculum as part of a degree in one instance: If the title of the degree program make it clear the degree is “primarily focused on racial, ethnic or gender studies.” For example, a degree in gender studies could require DEI-focused courses, but a general business degree could not.

• The act provides a far more specific definition of DEI-related content than what currently exists in state law. Topics that would be considered DEI related — and thus barred from being a requirement of degree programs — include: anti-racism, microaggressions, systemic bias, implicit bias, unconscious bias, gender identity, social justice, race-based reparations, race-based privilege, race or gender-based diversity, and race or gender-based inclusion, among other topics.

The act also states that degree-required classes would be prohibited from promoting the idea that “racially neutral or colorblind laws, policies or institutions perpetuate oppression, injustice, race-based privilege, including white supremacy or white privilege, or inequity by failing to actively differentiate on the basis of race, sex or gender.”

Such required classes also would be prohibited from promoting the idea that “a student is biased on account of his or her race or sex.”

• The act states that instructors of any class could continue to teach about historical events and movements that involved elements of race, hatred or discrimination. The model legislation specifically highlights that it would not be a violation of the act for university classes to identify and discuss “slavery, Indian removal, the Holocaust, or Japanese-American internment.”

• Universities also would be prohibited from what they can ask faculty members to do as it relates to DEI practices. Schools could not require or incentivize faculty members to participate in workshops or training related to DEI issues. Schools also couldn’t force or encourage instructors to distribute any materials related to DEI issues. The act does provide an exception that schools can still require activities that keep the university in compliance with federal Title IX requirements, which prohibit any sex-based discrimination in educational programs.

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

University of Kansas students on Sept. 17, 2024 protested a merger of several student offices related to diversity, gender, sexuality and other issues.

In addition to limiting DEI topics in university classrooms, the proposed act also would require universities to teach every student certain topics. The act would require all undergraduate degree programs to include at least one course that focuses on the “study of American institutions.”

The act creates a detailed definition of what such a course must include. Such a course must teach the following:

• An “understanding and appreciation” of the U.S. Constitution and the role of “limited federal government,” the “dual sovereignty of the States,” separation of powers in the federal system, and the network of checks and balances that exist in the Constitution.

• The concept of equal protection under the law and freedom of speech also must be taught, and the course should discuss landmark supreme court cases that have “shaped law and society.”

• The course must include “significant use” of founding documents, including the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Federalist Papers.

The model legislation also would require universities to take certain steps outside of the classroom, specifically mandating certain topics be discussed during freshmen orientation programs.

If the model legislation were approved it would require any freshman orientation program to include the following:

• The text of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

• “Resources discussing the principles and importance of free speech and viewpoint diversity.”

• Historical examples that demonstrate “the necessity of protecting unpopular speech in the United States and other nations.”

The freshman orientation session could offer information about diversity, equity and inclusion, but the act would require that the university offer other sessions on unrelated topics that would be available to students who did not wish to attend the DEI-focused session.

At their December Presidents of Council meeting, KU Chancellor Douglas Girod and university presidents from K-State, WSU, ESU, PSU and FHSU were told by two presenters that various legislators had been studying the Freedom from Indoctrination Act, and had made statements indicating that it was likely to be introduced as a piece of legislation for lawmakers to consider this session. The Chancellor and university presidents, however, didn’t go over the act in any detail, but rather asked to be kept advised of any movement on the topic.

While Texas and Florida have both been in the news for state actions related to limiting DEI activities at universities, the Goldwater Institute said Idaho earlier this year became the first state to adopt virtually all of the Freedom from Indoctrination Act.

Kansas’ legislative session is set to begin Jan. 12.