Kansas May Cut Millions From Colleges With “DEI” in Gen Ed

In statehouses, bill titles rarely tell the full story of what’s in them, and the legislation itself can contain seemingly unrelated provisions.

This trend is playing out right now in Kansas, where Republicans are using a budget bill to move forward a host of nonfinancial public higher ed measures that have worried faculty and could mean millions in cuts for public universities. But Republicans, who control both chambers, appear undeterred. The state’s Democratic governor signed a budget bill into law last year that directed colleges to eliminate positions and activities related to “diversity, equity and inclusion.”

Among other provisions, this year’s legislation, called House Bill 2434, contains a mechanism—with garbled wording—that’s apparently intended to withhold $2 million from each of the state’s six public universities until they prove to the State Finance Council that they don’t “require or constrain students to enroll in a DEI-CRT-related course” to earn a degree.

Under the bill, the Kansas Board of Regents, which governs the universities, can exempt academic programs “whose title clearly establishes” that they’re “primarily focused on racial, ethnic or gender studies.” The legislation contains almost identical language to parts of another anti-DEI bill that has stalled in the statehouse. (Kristey Williams, a Republican representative who sponsored that earlier bill, told Inside Higher Ed that universities lack ideological balance and that students “do not want to be compelled or forced into some type of ideological bent.”)

The nearly 400-page budget legislation also says that, at each of the public universities, “any tenured faculty member who is placed on a one-year improvement plan during fiscal year 2027 and does not satisfactorily complete” it “is subject to dismissal, reassignment or other personnel actions as determined by the provost.” Explicitly, professors won’t be allowed to receive a second year to improve.

Furthermore, the bill would require the Board of Regents to create plans to reduce by 10 percent the expenses and number of employees in each university’s leadership offices, excluding faculty or support staff. And the bill would ban the universities from collecting more tuition next academic year than they did this year.

It’s another example of continued Republican attacks on tenure and what conservatives dub DEI in state after state. But not all anti-DEI legislation is alike, and bills like Kansas’s that would restrict curricula without defining what DEI or CRT means have raised alarm among academic freedom and free speech advocates. Gamal Weheba, president of the Kansas Conference of the American Association of University Professors, said curriculum is the “property of the faculty.”

“The faculty determine the curriculum—politics should not get in there,” he said. Weheba, a tenured industrial engineering professor at Wichita State University, also accused the Board of Regents of giving in to political pressure. (The regents didn’t respond to a request for comment.)

Amy Reid, director of the Freedom to Learn program at PEN America, said putting provisions like these into the budget or other pieces of legislation that must be passed “is not a good way to govern—it’s a way to avoid needed debate.”

“By using the carrot of funding to mask the stick of censorship, Kansas is not just discouraging universities from including material about race and gender in their courses, but taking away the opportunity for students to strengthen their critical thinking by engaging with new ideas,” Reid added. “How does that align with the goals of education?”

Kansas Republicans have repeatedly targeted tenure and DEI. A recent committee meeting provided more clarity—and questions—about why they’ve put these provisions into the budget bill.

At a House Appropriations Committee meeting last week, Rep. Adam Turk, the Republican who chairs the separate House Higher Ed Budget Committee, at first said there wasn’t anything new in these anti-DEI provisions. But a Democrat on the Appropriations Committee—Rep. Jo Ella Hoye—questioned that. The language wasn’t in last year’s budget bill.

“Curricula is not something that we have had any mandates around previously—can we get confirmation on that?” Hoye asked.

Turk, after a pause, said, “Debatable, I’m not sure.”

Hoye then added that it’s new to require universities to certify that required courses don’t include content considered DEI or CRT.

“Like new to higher ed?” Turk said. “Yeah, probably. We’ve adopted existing language from other places across—that we’ve used on DEI. And, honestly, I would defer most DEI questions to probably somebody who knows the intricacies of it a little better.”

In fact, Turk himself has called the DEI issue a “massive distraction.” Yet the Republican, who didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment, is nonetheless pushing forward budget legislation that continues to target it.

‘My Least Favorite Subject’

The budget bill would make other cuts to Kansas higher ed. Earlier this month, Turk proposed an amendment slashing $2.3 million from need-based aid, and it passed. Turk also suggested cutting $3 million from the University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University, a change that also made it into the legislation. Democrats balked at the changes, asking for explanation, receiving little.

“I’m just curious why we’re gonna take funds away from those that are trying to get into college and actually need the assistance,” Rep. Kirk Haskins, a Democrat on the committee, said of the need-based aid cut.

“We need to cut the budget,” Turk said. “Anything else?”

Later in the meeting, after Turk introduced the motion to cut $3 million from the three universities, Democratic representative Mike Amyx asked, “So what is the goal here? Is it just to cut money?”

To that, Turk replied, “This particular motion is to cut money. It’s pretty clear.”

Kansas’s House speaker has said the state needs to slash $200 million from its budget. He and the Senate president—who has cited dried-up COVID-19 stimulus funding combined with the Legislature’s tax cuts—have eyed cuts to public higher ed. They even moved to hire Emporia State University’s retired president to consult on this.

These Republican legislative leaders didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment. Turk’s comments to his committee suggested he was carrying out budget reductions demanded from above him.

“If you think any of this is done lightly, you are mistaken,” he told the committee. “It’s easy to add money, it’s hard to cut it. And, unfortunately, somebody has to do it at some point somewhere along the timeline. And some of us here don’t have any idea the gravity that puts on somebody’s shoulders … The number provided to us that we needed to cut, we’re not going to achieve, and I hate failure.”

But then he went on to introduce amendments that weren’t necessarily about saving money, including the one allowing for easier firing of tenured professors and the provision that would allow universities to recoup the millions cut from them if they can prove they don’t require “DEI-CRT-related” courses.

Turk noted that the anti-DEI amendment was included at the last minute and that it was a topic he wanted to avoid “at all costs.”

“It is my opinion that this issue—both internally inside these institutions and externally inside this building—is a massive distraction,” Turk said. “If it was up to me, I would prefer we move on from this entirely and that it didn’t get beaten to death. But I think, in order to do that, action needs taken.”

He said the amendment, which passed and made it into the budget, wouldn’t permanently cut the $2 million from each university. Instead, he said, “we’re holding it aside for confirmation.”

Then, at last week’s Appropriations Committee meeting, Turk said he’s “received dozens and dozens and dozens of text messages concerning DEI this and DEI that. I’ll tell you, it’s my least favorite subject. It is a distraction in higher education. It is a distraction across the board.”

He went on to defend universities.

“A lot of the things that you receive from your constituents, your friends or your colleagues or whatever—I get 10 text messages, nine of them are a snapshot of something in their archive,” Turk said. But he noted “institutions are required to maintain archive data, so it’s something from 2020 or 2022 or whatever that they can’t, by law, delete.”

Hoye, the Democratic minority whip, took issue with the lack of a definition of “DEI-CRT” in the bill and asked how universities are “expected to prove that they don’t have any DEI-CRT-related curricula?”

Turk replied, “A lot of it comes down to ‘I promise.’”

Hoye said the provision violates academic freedom and free speech and that lawmakers shouldn’t be determining curricula. Turk countered that “Victim Status 101 has no place in higher education” and “if higher education has the mandate to produce our future citizens and workforce, they cannot have this in the way.”

To Hoye, the anti-DEI language was “inappropriate” for a budget document. But her motion to remove it failed. And the budget bill continues to make its way through the Kansas House.