NEWS: UT-Tyler President Comments on Pending Texas DEI Legislation
On March 28, UT-Tyler President Kirk Calhoun spoke to student government about a number of topics, including his thoughts on the pending legislation in Texas to abolish Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices in public higher education.
His comments are important given that they reveal his approach to these topics as the head administrator at our local state university. So, I included a transcript and video of his statements below.
Before I present the transcript, however, I also included a summary. Readers should still read the transcript (or watch the video) to get a feel for how he approaches this controversy around DEI.
My summary:
Anti-DEI Office Legislation
Dr. Calhoun apparently believes that UT-Tyler will continue to be able to train students in accordance with accreditation requirements without an actual DEI office. He evidently doesn’t believe a DEI office is necessary to meet accreditation requirements or to school students in DEI (such as with the nursing students, whose school has a specific DEI accreditation requirement from its accreditation agency).
“I’m very confident talking with legislators that we’re gonna have the freedom to do what we need to do to make sure we can answer your question and meet the needs of the nursing school,” Calhoun said responding to a nursing senator’s question about how the institution will meet DEI accreditation requirements for the nursing program.
He said one of the greatest challenges in the DEI debate and in speaking with Texas legislators is a lack of common definitions of the terms diversity, equity and inclusion. Calhoun discussed these and I found it interesting to both hear his grasp on the topics and for me to try to discern where he falls on each of the subjects. He sounds as though he leans in favor of the concern for disparate group outcomes, but is not so on board with DEI itself.
At the end of his comments, Calhoun said that concerns about racial disparities were around when he was getting medical training as far back as the early 1980s. He said that there are absolutely disparities among different groups (in the conversation, he was speaking of health disparities), but where the debate lies is around the cause of these disparities.
It seems that Dr. Calhoun believes that the debate about disparities among groups is ongoing and that DEI is mostly a new, popular repackaging of this long-time debate. He did not seem rattled that the legislature may prohibit a DEI office.
Student Comments amidst Controversy
In the end, though Dr. Calhoun repeatedly encouraged students to challenge popular notions and to think independently, yet his discussion of health disparities seemed confined to environmental causes and left me wondering if he accepts that morality and culture play a role in group outcomes more so than environment.
This is important because it marks a significant difference between Progressive and Conservative philosophies of analysis. (Progressives typically ascribe almost all causation in group disparities to environmental factors and Conservatives typically recognize morality, and most particularly, personal responsibility, as a prerequisite for an individual's success.)
So I wonder, Is Dr. Calhoun a structuralist? And if so, then does he understand that Texas voters who rejected DEI in the last election do not wish to merely get rid of buzz words while the underlying structuralist assumptions remain intact, but rather they reject the entire structuralist premise (that environmental causes are solely to blame for human outcomes) and they want personal responsibility and morality instead? I am unsure if he gets it in this respect. I am unsure if he lets go of his approach to environment causes as the basis for his analysis.
The impact of this may be that the university may continue to take a structuralist approach and do all of the things it would have done under DEI, such as recognize group identity, only without DEI officers. I am still suspicious about how much UT-Tyler culture will actually change as a result of legislation. I suppose that time may only tell for now.
The Transcript
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TRANSCRIPT:
[Comments begin at 16:57.]
Sen. Valerie McNamara, Student Senator for The College of Nursing and Health Sciences: I’d like to ask a few question about the new legislation in Texas regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. I know you said it isn’t like the biggest concern of ya’lls, but in nursing—it’s important, but I understand that there are so many things going on right now.
So, the bill will prohibit any office of diversity, equity and inclusion, like funding, promotion, sponsorship of all of that. So according to the American Association Colleges of nursing, one of the core values and interests in nursing is to address pervasive inequities in health care. They also state that the AACN and its member schools commit to accelerating diversity, inclusion and equity initiatives to prepare the current and future nursing workforce to be reflective of the society it serves while simultaneously fulfilling societal expectations and needs.
That being said, how are nursing students at UT-Tyler expected to uphold these values and gain quality education if UT-Tyler does not support DEI?
Dr. Kirk Calhoun: The debate that’s raging right now—and what I find most challenging about this debate—is that no one (at least, to my satisfaction) has come up with a common definition what diversity, equity and inclusion (or whatever you might want to add to it) actually is.
Right now to so many people it implies different things. So when you talk about—and in order to meet the nursing requirements, by the way, medical schools have requirements and they use DEI phraseology, not every university—in fact quite a few universities—not all universities have a DEI office. And a number actually do not or they do not call it that.
You know, it’s really about what you want to achieve sort of in your culture as opposed to necessarily having an office to make it happen, which helps you meet those requirements. ([The] Southern Association of Colleges has these requirements and that sort of thing.)
Diversity
For me, if you begin to break it apart a little bit, there’s Diversity, okay? Well, The State of Texas is one of the most diverse states in The Union, geographically; it’s people, ethnically; and in the way people think. Texas is a very diverse state that people think all sorts of different ways.
So, by our nature, our state is very diverse.
A Hispanic-serving Institution
Someone had put a question(sic) they had heard that UT-Tyler was becoming a Hispanic Serving institution. They wanted to know what were our plans for UT-Tyler to become a Hispanic serving institution.
My plan: God is making UT-Tyler a Hispanic-serving institution because of the demographic make-up of Texas. And to become a Hispanic-serving institution you need to have 25 percent of your student body made up of students who are of Hispanic background.
So that was going to happen as the demographics of the State of Texas move along, and that’s why UT-Austin is a Hispanic-serving institution. In fact, most of the UT institutions have that distinction and we’re joining them.
What I’m happy about is that there are a number of resources that will actually benefit all students that come from the federal government and other entities to universities that have that distinction of being a Hispanic serving institution. So it brings me more resources to help all my student benefit by achieving that distinction .
So we have diversity.
Equity
There’s a debate about Equity, and it is: are there equal outcomes, Or does it mean equal opportunity? And by law, UT-Tyler is an equal opportunity employer and we present equal opportunity to all our students. There are those who say that if equity means it is an equitable outcome and 25 percent of your students have to be African-American. Well, if the merits of the case say that 30 percent ought to be African-American , I’m going to want it to be 30 percent.
What I’m saying there is, we are very focused on equal opportunity at UT-Tyler. We want to reach out to all our students and give them the best opportunity they can have to be successful and I believe that with the diversity that exists in The State of Texas, that we will have the equity in the communities that we want to have as a result of that.
Inclusion
[22:58] Uh, Inclusion. What does Inclusion mean? The debate that is going on in the Legislature right now is that there are some who say that the inclusion efforts are leading to less unity because they’re emphasizing differences between people as opposed to how we bring all the students together. That’s the argument against(sic).
The argument for [equity] is that you create an environment on campus where every student—every faculty member, every staff member—feels comfortable; where everyone can express their political points of view, whether it’s a Liberal view or a Conservative view, that your religion doesn’t matter, where your ethnicity really doesn’t matter. We want all students to be successful, we want all students to be comfortable at UT-Tyler. At the end of the day, though, we are all individuals.
Back in college, I was president of our Black students association. And we would get together and we would talk about issues that are unique to us. That wasn’t bad. You know, one of my classmates had a White girlfriend. She came to our Black Students association meetings—and she was welcome! She was very welcome!
So, yes. Those kinds of things…No matter what, I’m gonna celebrate Cinco de Mayo. You know. It’s fun. It’s great. I like Mexican food. You know, those kinds of cultural exchanges are good and valuable and we want to have those kinds of opportunities. So inclusion, what does it mean?
On Having a DEI Office
The point I’m trying to make is that, uh, two points I wanna make here. One is that the debate and the argument and where people have issues; thee office issues. Let me go back to that and answer that.
What the office issue is that, some people believe (and I’m sharing with the legislators how we approach things here at UT-Tyler), but some people believe that when someone has as their job to go and highlight the differences between people and tell people that they are not being treated fairly, that even when they discover it is not the case, then if they want to grow the funding to their office, if they want to grow their position in the colleges and universities, then they will keep hammering home these points even when they do not really exist.
Uh, when I came as president, we did a campus climate survey, and people responded to it in all sorts of ways and had all sorts of different things to say. But what the survey actually says is that the climate at UT-Tyler is not that bad. Could it be improved? Certainly. Were there things that we needed to work on? I’ll tell you one. We wanted to make sure that our female faculty got equal pay with male faculty. That was an issue that we addressed right away. But for the most part, it said that we had a pretty good culture here. Let’s continue to have it thrive and have it be successful.
There are some people who believe that when you have people whose job is to not accept that kind of finding that they are motivated, that they are motivated(sic), to drum up issues where issues do not exist. I’m not saying that I know of any places to do that, but that is what a number of legislators are concerned about.
So I’m going to conclude this discussion—I’m being professorial here—but I’m going to end this discussion with this. To meet our regulatory requirements—all of that—I’m very confident talking with legislators that we’re gonna have the freedom to do what we need to do to make sure we can answer your question and meet the needs of the nursing school. Legislative processes are long. They’re long. They’re arduous. There are amendments in debating these issues. People are asking questions to clarify legislative intent.
Texas Sen. Bryan Hughes’ CRT Bill
I was looking at a hearing that was talking about critical race theory. Another one, bill(sic), the local senator from here has a bill there and in the debate to clarify legislative intent, he was asked specifically, Will university professors be banned from discussing or talking about critical race theory?
And he said, No, it’s higher education. Talk about all these things.
Then what are you concerned about? [they asked.]
And the concern is, they don’t want professors coercing students to actually believe that theory is an absolute fact. They can test on critical race theory. They can have you read materials on it, but they don’t want students indoctrinated or coerced that they would have to agree with it in order to get a passing grade.
And my view of that is that I don’t think you all are that malleable. I don’t think just because I’m a professor and I say a political theory is fact that you are actually going to take that for the rest of your life and believe that’s what’s true. But there are folks who think that you maybe aren’t that independent and that as a professor I can sway your thinking.
So they want to make sure that there’s not coercion there. Um, they want to make sure that if you don’t necessarily agree with that point of view—you can answer the question right—but if you don’t agree with it or we require you to agree with that in order to get a passing grade.
[30:26]And when you hear the whole debate about legislative intent then you begin got look it differently.
On Students Questioning Popular Notions
The final point I want to make is that whether it’s DEI or any issue you will be dealing with as leader in the future, I want you to not be afraid to call them out and debate it either way.
You know, we were talking about dealing with underrepresented students when I was in school and we didn’t have the phrase DEI to have that discussion. You know, we talked about those kinds of issues. And so, DEI may not be essential to accomplishing what we need to accomplish. Keep that in mind.
Secondly, for those of you who are very much in favor of the concept of DEI, let me throw something else out there to you. Is there evidence that the kinds of activities that go on in DEI, do they really work? Have they really helped African-American students? Have they really helped Hispanic students? Have they had any adverse impact on majority students? I’m not saying that any of those things are true, but those are questions if you’re going to attend UT-Tyler I want you to ask and challenge. And just because we have DEI as a popular notion right now, is it really accomplishing what it was intended to do in the first place? And as students you should be asking that question, that very specific question.
So you got legislators now on presidents asking them asking these kinds of questions now. That in and of itself is not bad. It’s probably the right thing to be happening right now because it has been written into nursing regulations and medical regulations and law schools and it’s written into a lot, and we ought to be asking the question, Is it really meeting its original intent? Does it work? Are there bad things about it that are occurring? Are they actually emphasizing the differences between people as opposed to be a unifying effort?
I’ve talked too much because these things are much on my mind these days, but I knew it was going to be an important question and it’s one that I think can actually be a teaching point for you all about how you need to think about your future, your politics. Elections have consequences. Elections drive what is talked about and what is debated in legislatures. And I want you all to be independent, thinking adults who don’t just buy into a phrase like DEI.
[34:15]
MacNamera: [You spoke about critical race theory. Does legislators’ concerns that students are being coerced prohibit nurses from talking about their experiences of racial bias in the hospital?]
Addressing Disparities among Various Groups
Calhoun: Well, we’re talking about healthcare here and I’m a professor of medicine, so I will say back in the early 80s, very very(sic) early 80s when I was in training, we talked about health disparities. There are disparities. It’s a reality. There are disparities in the health outcomes from Afrian-Americans and Hispanics ,from White Americans, um, the longevity. There are differences in longevity. There are differences in child mortality. There are just a whole host of differences that need to be taken into account; how you communicate, what cultural myths they have. But these stretch across a variety of different cultures and societies and so forth, and it’s important health care providers understand these things.
So again before it was called DEI or any of this stuff, I was taught these things and I was given the data and it was clear that these kinds of healthcare outcomes exist.
Now, where you’re gonna get a debate here is, Are all of these outcomes the result of racism? Or are some of those outcomes the result of economic disparity, educational disparity, uh, you’re zip code is more important than your genetic code. That’s a phrase that’s been frequently used in health care. There are a lot of different issues that go into that. And so, racial injustice may be just—it may be the most important part—but it may be just a part of it, because clearly economics plays a big role. And if you’re going to fix these issues for all sorts of people, you’re gonna have to address some of those social determinants of health, like economics, nutrition, access to healthcare, all of those other things that may not be entirely driven by racial issues at all.
And that’s another one of those arguments out there. If you’re just going to focus on that and you’re not going to do anything to help a newborn mother learn how to take care of her child., but you focused on the fact that she was discriminated against, or are you gonna focus on helping her be able to take care of her child better? These are some of the debates are taking place and again, I want students to think these things through. But you know, you’re absolutely right. Health disparities exist and there’s little debate about that. The debate actually right now is going to, Are we dealing with all of the different causes of these disparities?
[End of DEI comments]
[38:08]
END OF TRANSCRIPT
*DISCLOSURE: A previous version of this article included bulky paragraph that I removed at 8:14 P.M on April 26, 20223. I felt it was redundant. It was the 14th paragraph and it read, "For example, lastly, during his comments he said he wanted to create an environment where everyone felt comfortable no matter their ethnicity, religion, political persuasion. Yet, this is what they said before the legislative reaction, when they were pushing DEI full boar. Nevertheless, I do not understand how the administration expects to do this without recognizing group identity. If anything goes, then this model sounds as though it is still the Progressive DEI utopia lawmakers were reacting against, but just without embracing DEI in name. I am still suspicious."
Twitter: @jhescock12
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