Shad White, Republican state auditor for Mississippi, addresses the crowd at the pavilion in Founders Square at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, Miss., July 28, 2022. White announced Monday, Jan. 9, 2023, that he is seeking reelection.
The office of State Auditor Shad White released a report detailing spending on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, across all eight of Mississippi’s public universities earlier this month, raising concerns with some university administrators over academic freedom in the state's university system.
The report chronicles how roughly $23 million was spent by Mississippi universities on DEI initiatives between 2019 and 2023, less than half of which – about $8 million – was funded by tax revenue collected by the state.
White says the nearly 350-page probe was a preliminary step to reach a fuller understanding of just how DEI programs in the state are spending those funds.
“I wanted to make sure the taxpayers knew what their public universities were spending on DEI trainings, and then give them some transparency into where their dollars were going and let them ask questions about whether or not they liked that their taxpayer dollars were going to this," said White. “If they do that’s fine, but if they don’t they have the knowledge that they need to call their legislator and make requests for changes.”
He said those initiatives, ranging beyond just trainings and among dozens of others at Mississippi universities that were itemized in the report, lack a clearly stated mission of what DEI is meant to accomplish and leave too much room for interpretation and abuse. The auditor’s office also did not provide a definition of DEI initiatives in the report or during an interview.
“When we asked that there was no standard definition or clearly stated intention of what DEI was trying to accomplish, and I think therein lies the problem,” White said. “When you have this very amorphous idea of diversity, equity and inclusion middle managers and administrators at universities can decide on their own what they count as DEI. Some may have a reasonable interpretation of what the university may be doing and some may not,” he said.
What – or who – is DEI for?
With its origins in the 1960’s civil rights movement, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programming has since grown to include education on gender, ethnic and religious differences in government agencies, academic institutions and private corporations.
Debate around the trainings, especially in the federal government, reached a new height in the last year of former President Donald J. Trump’s term when he issued an executive order banning them. It wasn’t until March 2021 when his successor President Joseph R. Biden took office that the executive order was overridden and trainings were restored at the highest level of government.
Noel Wilkin, provost and executive chancellor of academic affairs at the University of Mississippi, says DEI programming and education is critical to student success and can range from topic-specific programming to student affinity groups.
“If diversity, equity and inclusion education is done well, no one comes away feeling bad about who they are or feeling that they’re a victim. If done well it helps people understand who they are as people and what differences exist in the world,” he said.
“And given that 30% of our residents are minorities, spending of appropriated funds on helping to ensure that every student who comes to us feels that they have every chance to to take advantage of the opportunities is really important. And where else would they learn these things if educational institutions did not include these opportunities?” ”
When asked what motivated him to conduct the report, auditor Shad White said he could not point to any specific polling but that his sense was that most Americans – and a majority of Mississippians – would find DEI material to be broadly disagreeable.
“This originated both from my office and taxpayers. I had read a substantial amount about DEI trainings around the country, specifically in universities in Florida and Virginia. I’d also seen snippets on social media of people saying, ‘Hey this is an odd thing happening at the University of Mississippi.’ So I took all of this information and decided this was an important analysis for us to do.”
University
State $ Spent on DEI (FY2020-FY2023 YTD)
Overall State Budget (FY2020-FY2023)
% of state funds spent on DEI (FY2020-FY 2023 YTD)
Alcorn State
$3,558,549
$84,445,029
4.21%
Delta State
$141,944.02
$86,638,603
0.16%
Jackson State
$43,323.29
$158,772,870
0.02%
Miss. State
$906,645.07
$386,427,462
0.23%
Miss. Uni. For Women
$222,531
$65,607,627
0.33%
Miss. Valley State
$673,577.39
$56,165,515
1.19%
University of Mississippi
$1,512,386.00
$345,691,326
0.43%
UMMC
$1,174,966.59
$706,084,269
0.16%
Southern Miss.
$572,123.90
$253,175,210
0.22%
Data collected from the Office of the State Auditor’s report. (Michael McEwen / MPB News)
Academic freedom
Administrators like Wilkin, a nearly 20-year veteran of the University of Mississippi, worry about the future of academic freedom and integrity in the wake of the state audit, especially following recent successful legislative measures in states like Florida, Texas and Tennessee to ban or monitor DEI programming. A bill that would have permitted the tracking of DEI employees and their wages at Virginia universities was defeated in committee in January of this year.
In publishing the report on the state auditor's website alongside his personal twitter account, White made specific mention of a number of initiatives and events that served as examples of what he says are DEI programs gone awry, including an institutional goal of addressing systemic racism at the University of Mississippi and a presentation of author Ibram X. Kendi’s book How to Be an Antiracist at the same institution.
Wilkin says White’s critiques display a fundamental misunderstanding of DEI, as well as the role and institutional procedures of academia.
“There are a lot of things done on our campus to understand what’s happening in the world and to advance our knowledge and understanding of society, and so to make the assumption that what is being researched or understood in a lab is being taught to students in a classroom would not be appropriate,” said Wilkin.
“We have to have that mechanism, which is the importance of academic freedom and understanding. Anytime that something tries to limit our ability to expand the knowledge base and understand what’s being espoused, that challenges our ability to serve our role in society.”
An alumna of the University of Mississippi, White said he is unaware of DEI offices at his alma mater or other schools providing a counter-argument to many of the disagreeable ideas he sees in their programming, as well as a reluctance to use state resources to bring speakers or authors of a different persuasion.
“There are plenty of thinkers who agree with me that the ideas put forward in Ibram Kendi’s book are corrosive to society,” said White. “They could have Jordan Peterson come on campus and talk about a response to Ibram Kendi if they want to, but the thing that concerns me is that I’ve seen no evidence of DEI offices doing exactly that – bringing speakers to campus to counter an Ibram Kendi idea, for example.”
