Following the trend of targeting and removing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across the U.S. federal and state governments, the University of Iowa has exited its partnership with the PhD Project. This is directly affected by state legislation and directives from the Iowa Board of Regents that prohibit DEI offices and functions unnecessary for compliance and accreditation.
The PhD Project is a nonprofit organization that promotes diversity in the workplace by encouraging African American, Hispanic American, and Native American students to attain a business doctorate through its partnerships, doctoral resources, mentorships, and annual conference. Since its founding in 1994, and alongside its partnerships with foundations, universities, corporations, and organizations, the PhD Project has helped over 1,500 members earn their doctoral degrees.
Beth Livingston, the Ralph L. Sheets associate professor in Industrial Relations at UI’s Tippie College of Business, explained the difficulties of becoming a professor and how the PhD Project is helpful for students who know little about the process and may not have considered the possibility of becoming a professor or doctorate.
“I think it helps to have faculty who can understand how students think about the world, and the PhD Project does a great job with that,” she said.
The PhD Project has helped increase the diversity of faculty and staff at higher education institutions. Most of the PhD Project’s members go on to work in higher education, with a 97 percent retention rate, according to the PhD Project’s website.
“When we are trying to make sure that the faculty and the staff that we have are able to understand [students] and to understand the various backgrounds that people have, it makes sense we try to recruit from a diverse pool,” Livingston said. “Whether that’s diverse political affiliations, diverse religious groups, diverse in disability or neurotypical, or personalities.”
The PhD Project outlines on its website the benefits of being a university partner, which include the ability to promote open job positions to the PhD Project’s network of 1,800 faculty and doctoral students, access to the member directory and applicant database, and the opportunity to attend the PhD Project’s annual conference.
“Each university made their own decisions about leaving the PhD Project,” Josh Lehman, a senior fellow communications director with the Board of Regents, wrote in an email to The Daily Iowan.
However, as Tricia Brown, the senior director of UI’s internal communication and public relations, explained in an email to the DI that directives from the university’s governing body, the Board of Regents, as well as state legislation, prohibit the university from having programs that promote diversity or inclusion.
These directives include, but are not limited to, instructions to:
- Restructure DEI offices and eliminate unnecessary DEI functions from offices
- Review DEI positions to determine if they are necessary, and if not, eliminate or adjust these positions
- Review services provided by DEI offices and ensure they’re available to all students
- Take reasonable steps to assure no student or faculty must neither submit a DEI statement or be evaluated based on participation in DEI initiatives or discuss pronouns
- Review DEI-related general education categories and update category names
- Explore recruiting strategies for increasing diversity in intellectual and philosophical beliefs of staff
- Explore proposals to promote opportunities for education and research of free speech and civic education
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Alongside these directives, Iowa Senate File 2435 prohibits public universities from expending money “to establish, sustain, support, or staff a diversity, equity, and inclusion office” and allocates funds that would have gone toward DEI initiatives to the Iowa workforce grant and incentive program fund.
Already, these directives and legislature have led to the closure of the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion and opening of the Division of Access, Opportunity, and Diversity, the elimination of 11 full-time DEI positions among other changes, as outlined by DAOD’s Task Force Report.
Livingston said she believed people’s anxieties and fears around programs like the PhD Project stemmed from a fear that these initiatives were discriminatory due to a lack of understanding of what they do.
“[People might think,] ‘It’s just focused on one racial group. Isn’t that discriminatory?’ And so I think there’s a fear that it is,” Livingston said. “That’s not been my experience with it.”