What Will Happen on College Campuses if DEI Is Banned?

Hey everyone, it's Reheel. Diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at public colleges and universities is a hot button issue that's currently being debated in the Texas legislative session. Senate Bill 17 was approved by the House but now heads back to the Senate. The future of DEI is hanging in the balance as we head into the final days of the legislative session. Joining me from the University of Houston is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs Suzanne Pritzker and Associate Professor Samira Ali to explain their views on how this removal may affect students and staff on an even deeper level than you think. It's Wednesday, May 24th. I'm Reheel Roms-Nali and here's what Houston's talking about. Suzanne, Samira, welcome in to Citycast Houston. How are y'all doing? Doing good. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. All right, so let's jump into it. Why do you think the state is targeting DEI? What is the case with that? Like, why is this happening, Samira? Yeah, so I think there's a couple of reasons. In my opinion, it has a lot to do with silencing our communities and identities, particularly black, Latinx, other folks of color as well. There's been a long history of that in different ways, but particularly since higher education are sites of academic freedom. They are vulnerable and we're facing that right now with what's happening. So Suzanne, can you break that down for listeners who may not even know what DEI is and explain how the removal of these policies will affect students and staff? DEI is so critical to kind of who we are in a college, in a higher education environment. When we think about DEI, it's diversity, equity, inclusion. It's part of creating an environment where people experience support and belonging. It's really about who our students, faculty and staff are, where, you know, how are they supported, how we teach, which experiences are brought up in the classroom, which perspectives are shared, how those are valued in our conversations, which are really critical to develop and developing students learning, developing, our learning in a higher education arena. And I think as we see challenges, the potential removal of DEI, we're talking about taking away programs, initiatives that really promote and make sure that people have, the students have the support they need, that faculty have the supports that they need in order to really be part of the institution, to be able to navigate the institution. I'd also like to add, policies are powerful. And I went to cite and just talk a little quickly about Dr. Ibrahim Kendi, who is the author of How to Be an Anti-Racist. And he argues that policies is what keeps racism alive. Right, so if we really think about the power of policies and what anti-DEI and anti-tenure legislation can actually do, that's what really keeps the racism integrated and alive in our societies and for this particular example in higher ed institutions. Yeah, I'd just like to add, I think this is in the context, right, of both anti-DEI legislation and anti-tenure legislation, but on the heels of legislation that passed in the last Texas legislative session, focusing around how we teach about the history of racism in our country and 12 education, bills proposed to do the same thing in higher education. Also the bills focused around book banning, there's really sort of this renewed focused effort around not teaching, not valuing the history of racism in this country and how that forms and impacts the experiences of individuals today and of communities today. And it's a multiple continued set of efforts that build one after another going forward that really feel like they're targeting the state of education and what we teach and how we teach them. When you look at the current state of DEI, do you think there is some way to refine it a little bit better or to meet in the middle with policymakers and say, okay, yeah, you know what, we understand that you see it this way, maybe we can just refine it a little bit better? Great question. I personally don't think there's a way to meet in the middle. I think any even subdued attack on diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives, signals, like I talked about the silencing and really just getting rid of identities. I'm a brown person, so getting rid of my identity, the history, the belonging aspect of being at a college campus. I don't think there's a way to meet in the middle and still be inclusive. How about you, Suzanne, anything to add to that? No, I really agree. I don't, you know, we just talk about Houston, right? We are an extremely diverse city. We are at the University of Houston. That is an extremely diverse campus. Diversity, equity and inclusion are critical to the experiences of our community, to valuing who each other is and how we live in the city that promotes diversity on a very regular basis, right? And talks about that as a strength. What does it look like to meet in the middle and reduce how we honor each other's diversity, each other's experiences? I don't, it feels so counter to the, to our experiences here at Houston. Suzanne, let's talk about the Houston Chronicle article that you, to wrote about how the DEI ban would harm mental health care. Like we're really dialing in now to a really big problem. Why do you believe this will happen in the mental health care space with the DEI ban? Yeah, so I want to talk about actually some of the kind of statistics and things that we referenced in our ABED. So Texas is 51st in our country in access to mental health care. Texas is 50th in the country with a number of mental health workers to its population. We have huge challenges in Texas around children and adults receiving access to critical mental health care. And this has been a problem that has really been seen on the state level. And really has been something that the state is talking about thinking about. And so in 2020, the Texas Health and Human Services Commission put out a report on the state's mental health workforce. And I want to specifically highlight a couple of things that were in this report of how do we expand our mental health workforce. They talked about the need for targeted recruitment to increase provider diversity, encouraging providers to meet ethnic, cultural, linguistic competencies in their education. They spoke about focusing recruitment efforts and outreach efforts at minority serving institutions. Right? So this is the state saying, how do we address these critical gaps in the mental health workforce in having folks who can provide mental health care. And they themselves said one of the big things that we need to do is to expand diversity in the mental health workforce. And we intentionally put out efforts to retain recruit, recruit, retain and support mental health professionals. That's what DEI is, right? DEI is focused on how do we recruit students, diverse students? How do we recruit diverse faculty who will teach those, our students? How do we retain students who will be for, you know, for us as future mental health care providers? How do we support them? And so this is so critical to addressing a really critical problem and the state itself has called for it. So now as we look at these efforts to challenge DEI to band DEI, how are we going to meet these large and growing mental health needs in our very diverse state without really creating space and intentionality around promoting diversity, equity, inclusion in our education? So Samira, with those needs and with those recommendations already in place, right? There is a shortage of minorities in the mental health space. I saw that 85% of mental health professionals in Texas are currently white. How does that stat playing to the effectiveness of mental health workers and the access that our citizens might have who need it? Yeah, great question. I want to just quickly start with the multiple access barriers to better experience specifically by black and Latinx communities here in Texas. First for most medical mistrust, that means that folks have had, you know, there's a historical racism legacy component to it. There's various testing that was done on these communities in the past that was illegal and anti-black racist. And so that term is Quinn medical mistrust, which really leads people to go to the doctor or less and has really dire health implications, but it's coming from that mistrust aspect. And we heard a lot about it during COVID. Mental health interventions not created for or by these communities, stigma, the little access issues we fear face here in Houston, just as lack of public transportation coupled with what Suzanne was saying, just like lack of providers. And that results in all of the things that we're talking about right now. And so if we are training providers, right, and we need to train providers who will be open, will be open to thinking about community based solutions around mental health care. Many of the communities here in Houston, Suzanne was talking about the diversity of Houston, aren't going to be interested in traditional mental health approaches like therapy. And so we've really got to meet people where they're at. And that means coming up with solutions with them. And we can't do that without diversity, equity and inclusion. So Suzanne, currently, if a minority student wants to get into the health care space, right, he or she wants to become a provider, how hard is it in terms of being accepted into a school, an undergrad program, even a graduate degree program, how hard is it and how much harder would it be if DEI bans were to be put in place? So I think it's maybe less about how hard it is to get into the programs and more about a couple of different things, right? I think one, as Samir is talking about, when you're talking about communities that have sort of longstanding histories of mistrust, first of all, even going into a mental health care field, you know, is question, is there a place for me in this? Is this the right direction that I want to go in my career? And so it's helpful to see programs that are intentionally reaching out to you, reaching out to your communities that have faculty that reflect you and your communities, right, that are saying, and there were a place that is going to support your experiences, is going to talk about them as trust. And right, it's going to talk about the barriers to access and really grapple with those. And support you in a path that's going to help you find a place for you in this work, right, that isn't only going to teach about traditional methods that don't necessarily meet the needs of the community either, right? And so I think that's part of what we're talking about here, right? It's that what diversity, equity, and inclusion really means is both creating an environment that fosters these different efforts, this different communication, this different work, and then also being able to act upon that, being able to really intentionally recruit, being able to intentionally then meet that when you come into the program, right? If we recruit you and then you come into our program and faculty don't share similar experiences, staff don't share similar experiences, fellow students don't share similar experiences, that is a much harder place to continue the work and follow the development for yourself into doing this and into mental health care. Gotcha, perfectly explained. Samira, anything to add to that? Yeah, Suzanne, you said it really, I mean, you really encompassed it well. I think the only thing, this is like really reiterating what Suzanne, once students get in, we know from research, both with undergrad, masters, and doctoral students that if they don't see themselves reflected in the programming and faculty and faculty experiences, it's really challenging for them. And then we see the same thing with faculty, if you are the only faculty, Brown faculty or Black faculty, and that's been the case for many, many years, and the programming at the institution isn't reflective of your experience, it's really hard to stick around. So this aspect around inclusion and continued inclusion, that happens because there's resources dedicated to DI, really have a trickle down effect. All right, so where do we go from here? Is there still a way to make sure that people who need mental health services get them from workers of a diverse background? If there is a DEI ban, like what do we do? So I've been working with a couple of community groups the past five, ten years, who have provided a sort of alternative place of care for folks, or not necessarily licensed mental health professionals, but things that work for the community. And honestly, these folks have been doing that for decades, right? Because access has been so limited, we've had to do, communities have had to do what they can to survive and thrive. And so that looks like various types of support groups, kitchen table conversations that happen regularly, right? If we look into trans community groups that they're doing a lot of things out of their house, you know, with chosen family that provides support and that mental health care in a different way, again, just to survive and thrive in the way that they can because that hasn't been there. So I would see if these bans really happen in the way there's probably going to be more of an alternative way to go about care. That's one way. Suzanne, any final thoughts on the DEI ban that we might have missed in this conversation? Yeah, I think we're thinking about two, you know, so there's been a conversation about the legislation is really focusing just on offices is how it's kind of fraying, not on the larger instruction curriculum or recruitment, you know, things like that. I think one thing that I think is really important to name is that it never ends at one place, right? And so can we continue to do what we do to continue to do a lot of the things that we've talked about around diversity and equity and inclusion without a specific named office? Yes, we can. But what happens when curriculum starts to be challenged, which has been talked about, what happens when more specific like some of the challenges around what happened in K-12 around instruction, you know, I think a lot about the, you know, as social work, we actually as a as a educational discipline, we have core competencies that nationally to be accredited as a social work education institution that our students must demonstrate when they graduate, that we must teach. And because diversity, equity and inclusion are so critical to the work that we do as helping professionals, right, the work that we do to support individuals in their, you know, to work alongside them when they're going through life's challenges, diversity and equity and inclusion are core to those. And we are obligated to teach and to structure our programs in ways that value that. So for me, I mean, I have real questions as to what does it mean to continue to teach this way and to teach what is critical to our profession and to serving the mental health needs in our, in our city or state or country, really, you know, if we're not just focused on offices and we see continued movement, right? And this, because this seems like a multiple year movement to see what else can, what else can change, right? And so I think it's, it's really important that we really be mindful that this is a start and not necessarily a stopping point. And so we really need to be allergic. How do we protect really critical aspects of our education and our training mental health professionals to do the kind of work necessary to support the people of our state? Suzanne Samira, thank you so much for joining us on CityCats today. Thank you. Thank you. That was Suzanne Pritzker and Samira Ali from the University of Houston. You can read their op-ed with a link in our show notes. Before we go, as we get closer to Memorial Day weekend, law enforcement is going to be cracking down on unbuckled drivers until June 4th with their annual click it or ticket campaign. Last year, over 1,200 people died on Texas roads because they didn't wear seatbelt. If you're caught unbuckled this weekend, you'll be hit with a fine of up to $250 or more. So buckle up and be safe on our roads. Speaking of Memorial Day, if you're looking for things to do during the long weekend, subscribe to our newsletter, Hey Houston, at Houston.citycast.fm. Now we'll do it for today. Thank you so much for listening and I hope you learned something new. Thank you. the day. ♪♪♪ ♪♪♪