JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Super Bowl Weekend is coming up, and the NFL is removing the words - end racism - from the end zone, replacing them with the words - choose love. As President Trump dismantles diversity, equity and inclusion practices, or DEI, at the federal level, organizations across the country are also shifting their approach to diversity.
Chenjerai Kumanyika is an assistant professor at the NYU School of Journalism. He's part of a coalition of organizations that have filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate DEI programs. He is here to talk about the larger impact of these changes. Welcome to the program.
CHENJERAI KUMANYIKA: Happy to be here.
SUMMERS: So this has come up a lot recently as President Trump has been signing these executive orders to do away with DEI programs. But in this conversation, there's a bit of confusion about exactly what we're talking about, even among those who are trying to abide by these orders. An example, recently, a NSA museum covered over plaques that were honoring women and people of color, and then they later reversed course - they uncovered them. So I just want to start with the most basic of questions. What is DEI as we understand it across the federal government and the private sector?
KUMANYIKA: Well, DEI comes out of a, you know, long history of struggles really toward a robust democracy, with the understanding that for the majority of U.S. history, there were sometimes explicit laws, sometimes policies, certainly cultural norms, that blocked women, African Americans and all kinds of groups out of everything ranging from education, higher education, you know, and certainly positions in the government, federal government. And so it's only been recently that you've even seen that reversed. So DEI, I think, broadly comes out of that history, and it's a variety of efforts to try to address what that has meant. And, you know, we're actually quite early in that project.
SUMMERS: President Trump makes the case that the United States should be a merit-based country in his opinion, and he's also said that DEI programs, like those that we're talking about, are themselves discriminatory. What do you say to that line of thinking?
KUMANYIKA: The problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes that - first of all, that DEI somehow doesn't consider merit, which is ridiculous. And what I think we have to really acknowledge and to - like, even a sort of look at the broad strokes of American history will reveal that what you've basically had is a preferential treatment plan for white males for most of this country's history that had absolutely nothing to do with merit.
SUMMERS: As many of us recall, after the murder of George Floyd back in 2020 and the racial justice protest that followed, there seemed to be this collective moment of focusing on workplace diversity. As you think about and look back at that, do you think that the embrace of diversity that we saw has met the expectations that were felt in that moment?
KUMANYIKA: You know, it is true that some of the efforts we've seen toward DEI were, you know, a little bit like corporations taking advantage of that to just promote themselves in certain ways. But we can't lose focus on the fact that, especially in higher education, DEI is about giving everybody a fair shot. Everyone wants to, you know, have their families and children be educated. And, of course, education affects all kinds of people, right? It affects - I mean, what Trump is attacking - right? - actually is affecting things like cancer research, right? It's affecting cancer and diabetes research, health interventions - right? - I mean, people's ability to do all these things that higher education does.
SUMMERS: Yeah. I want to stick with that really granular way that you're talking about this because I do think that in some ways, when we talk about DEI as an acronym or talk about it in the context of all of these executive actions, the fact that it does impact real people gets lost. It feels very theoretical. Can you say a little bit more about what is actually lost, in your opinion, if corporations and the federal government seek to eradicate these types of programs and practices?
KUMANYIKA: The way the federal government is using DEI right now, it's kind of like a mechanism that goes across the different efforts. So if they can label anything as DEI, they can shut it down. But what's actually being shut down? Again, I have colleagues who have been doing scientific research - research on health care and health care intervention in areas like cancer and diabetes. All these organizations, the - essentially, the way this is working is they're saying, if you have any kind of language - this long list of language that I think was issued in the order related to the National Science Foundation that - grants that say things like advocacy, maybe even terms like trauma, all those things can be shut down. So that's how DEI is being used, and it's based on a myth of DEI. I also got to say it's a specific attack on the free speech of students and professors, right?
SUMMERS: Say more about that.
KUMANYIKA: Well, you know, the way that you're seeing these terms being put down, you know, taken off of websites - right? - and what people are allowed to say, how people - what people are allowed to say they're advocating for and what people are allowed to advocate for - right? - I mean, these are ways to essentially say, you can't actually be in public in your institution, in these kinds of institutions, advocating for equity, for women, for African Americans, certainly not for Palestinian liberation or an end to genocide. I mean, all these kinds of things, so this idea, this myth of DEI that they're putting out, right?
I mean, again, let's be clear. This inauguration started with a Nazi salute, so it's not hard to connect the dots to a series of programs which sort of resurrect - I mean, you're not even talking about resurrecting it, to be honest. You're talking about bolstering the predominant hold that white males have on all these positions and all these areas of society and pushing back against my ability as an educator to even be able to sort of talk about these kinds of things in the classroom and raise the critical questions, have robust debates. All that's being shut down.
SUMMERS: What is at risk if we're in a moment where DEI in some places has sort of become this catch-all, this sort of target for any number of societal ills? What's at risk here? What could be lost?
KUMANYIKA: I think that what we have to do, as higher educators, you know, as journalists, is educate people about exactly that - you know, the real effect. So once people really start to see what's actually being affected here, they suddenly begin to wake up, and I think that - I mean, listen. This is one small - important, but small legal step we're taking. I mean, right now - I mean, I'm just going to say it. Elon Musk has access to the Treasury, has access to all kinds of government agencies. One way I can frame it is like this. Elon Musk is one of the main people putting out these myths about DEI, these myths about higher education. You know, you can go online and see him being challenged, even, you know, by many people. And when you see him when he's challenged, he can't really define or back up his claims.
So I think there's actually a lot at stake. I think there's - inclusion is at stake in us achieving and making America into a more robust - and into a robust and inclusive democracy. That certainly is at stake. But there's also something bigger at stake here. It's - people are pointing to this myth of DEI so that you look away from other things that are going on, which are absolutely, I mean, in the realm of constitutional crises.
SUMMERS: Chenjerai Kumanyika is an assistant professor at the NYU School of Journalism. Thank you so much.
KUMANYIKA: Thank you so much.
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