(The Center Square) – The Goldwater Institute recently released a report showing that diversity, equity and inclusion policies are rampant at Arizona universities’ honors programs.
The report, called “Desert Brain Drain,” details DEI occurring in the honor colleges at the University of Arizona and Arizona State University, both taxpayer-funded public universities.
Timothy Minella, one of the report’s authors, told The Center Square that honor colleges are meant to “enhance the education of the most talented students at public universities.”
However, the report shows “these programs have been hijacked by radical faculty,” said Minella, director of higher education at the Goldwater Institute, based in Phoenix.
He added that these programs are “using required courses to pursue niche topics and promote DEI.”
ASU’s Barrett Honors College offers a two-semester mandatory class called “The Human Event,” which “focuses on key social and intellectual currents in the history of human thought from the earliest written texts to the present,” according to ASU’s website.
The Goldwater Institute found that more than 70% of the content taught in this class contained DEI content. Examples of DEI content included having students engage with reading “focused on ‘violence and capitalism, power and powerlessness, Europeanesness and Africanness [and] physical violence and environmental violence.”
Furthermore, the report said other class content included readings “promoting identity politics and narratives of systemic oppression.”
Minella said the Goldwater Institute examined 14 syllabi that were not available to students before registration.
Minella said he found in some semesters, up to 85% of course sections did not provide online syllabi, meaning students did not know exactly what they would be learning.
If the syllabi are not posted online, students don’t realize their course will focus mainly on DEI concepts, he noted.
Class curriculum examples that stood out to Minella was a book titled “Postcolonial Love Poem” and an article, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Experience.”
”The requirement itself does not say students will be dealing with DEI subjects. But then you see the courses offered to students to fulfill this requirement, and it’s chock-full of DEI throughout many of these courses,” Minella explained.
In response to the Goldwater Institute’s report, an ASU spokesperson said a “university is an academic environment where many viewpoints are discussed and debated.”
“The Human Event is a two-part course that has been taught for decades at ASU and includes the works of Plato, Aristotle and Shakespeare as well as more contemporary readings,” the spokesperson told The Center Square, answering questions by email.
“Currently, more than 50 faculty teach this course resulting in different syllabi and approaches delivering a class in which adult students are required to do the thinking, to conduct research and analysis and to engage respectfully in sharing different ideas and perspectives,” the spokesperson added.
At UA’s Franke Honors College, all students are required to take an “Honors Seminar” course.
Some of the classes students can choose from include “Eating the Globe: The Diverse, Weird, and Queer Food Politics,” “#Black Lives Matter Across the Americas,” “Why Does Difference Matter? Constructing the Self and the Other,” “Cut and Paste: Constructing Identity Through Collage” and “Getting Into Good Trouble: When Government Threatens Civil Rights.”
The Center Square reached out to the University of Arizona, but did not hear back before press time.
To help get rid of DEI content in these colleges, the Goldwater Institute is advocating schools implement provisions from its American Higher Education Restoration Act.
The act would adjust tenure pathways, have professors focus more on teaching than research, create standards for non-STEM research project funding and make sure school boards approve new faculty job postings. (“STEM” stands for science, technology, engineering and math.)
According to Minella, the Goldwater Institute is also advocating for Arizona to pass a proposed constitutional amendment that would eliminate “mandatory DEI courses in curriculum.”
The Arizona state House passed House Concurrent Resolution 2044, which was introduced by House Speaker Steve Montenegro, R-Surprise.
Furthermore, the institute is recommending the Arizona Board of Regents “take a closer look at these courses” and that the state Legislature consider withholding funds until this situation is addressed, Minella said.
He told The Center Square that, despite the efforts of the Trump administration to tackle DEI efforts, the administration said it is not looking into college curriculum, which he called “appropriate” because “curriculum is the province of state governments when it comes to public universities, not the federal government.”
Minella said the Goldwater Institute’s report highlights “the need for states to take a much closer look at what’s actually happening at their public universities.”
Many states have closed their DEI offices and stopped using DEI statements, he stated.
However, Minella said states have not exercised sufficient oversight over the academic curricula taught in their public universities.
“They need to take a much closer look at if we’re going to continue rolling back this nefarious DEI ideology on public university campuses,” he explained.
Minella told The Center Square that parents and students need to examine these academic programs and “consider seriously” whether they will enhance their child’s education.
