Butler’s Social Justice and Diversity requirement is gone. Will more follow? Photo by Andrew Buckley.

SILAS OWENS | OPINION COLUMNIST | szowens@butler.edu 

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, higher education institutions across the country have faced governmental pressure to remove programs that could be related to diversity, equity and inclusion. 

The most notable has been the administration’s demands that Harvard “must immediately shutter all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, offices, committees, positions, and initiatives, under whatever name, and stop all DEI-based policies, including DEI-based disciplinary or speech control or speech control policies” or lose its federal funding. This letter, paradoxically, also demanded that Harvard adopt a policy of “viewpoint diversity in admissions and hiring.” 

Although not in the same national spotlight as schools like Harvard, Butler has not been exempt from government threats in poorly justified letters. On May 28 of this year, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita wrote to Butler University alleging that the school’s DEI policies are discriminatory against white students, staff and job applicants. We Butler students are typically happy to complain loudly to the university about things like food, parking and hotel construction — but I haven’t heard a whisper on campus about anti-white discrimination.

Rokita laments the true fact that Butler values DEI and tracks the race of its students. It is readily available on Butler’s website that only 21% of Butler students are either international or people of color, which, if anything, explains its reputation as a school for rich white kids. For context, that makes Butler, a school in the 49% white city of Indianapolis, slightly less diverse than the whole state of Indiana. 

Rokita suggests that Butler may be violating the Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court decision without even anecdotal evidence that Butler has been rejecting the applications of qualified students because of their race. 

In the wake of this governmental pressure, Butler decided over the summer to suspend its social justice and diversity (SJD) course requirement. I’m not here to criticize that decision. It was made clear by the university in its announcement of the decision that these SJD courses will still be offered to students and that education and inclusion relating to diverse backgrounds is still valued. 

The issue here is that it may not be enough for Rokita, who deemed Butler’s response insufficient and ordered an investigation of the university. 

Senior political science major Dylan Noble described his hopes and fears regarding the removal of the SJD requirement.

“Best case scenario, they remove this label to make Todd Rokita or whoever happy, but the classes are all going to be the same,” Noble said. “At the same time, this could also be the start of more attacks on academic freedoms.”

After seeing the conservative takeover of Indiana University and the experiences of professors who have been placed on an anti-left watchlist, I am afraid that Rokita may demand cuts to academic programs, courses and curriculum that acknowledge the experiences of marginalized and minority groups. This would not only be a moral failure, but it would also reduce the ability of Butler grads to live and work in a world that is much more diverse than the Butler bubble.

Logan Goettemoeller, a senior English, German and music industry studies triple major, discussed what his study of literature would look like if it didn’t include the themes that have been under fire from the right. 

“Themes of diversity, equity and inclusion are so ingrained within literature,” Goettemoeller said. “It’s such a heavy part of studying text and having conversations about historical context, and what these stories meant in their day, and what they mean today, and how they reflect the ideologies of the time and how we can learn from that. It’s genuinely impossible to imagine.”

Literature study without any historical context or acknowledgement of how different groups are or aren’t represented would eliminate much of the critical thinking that makes studying literature valuable. Study of “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass” would focus on sentence structure and figurative language rather than its portrayals of slavery and political importance at the time — if the book were to be permitted at all, which it might not.

Junior biology major Olivia Vogel discussed how these topics are important for more than just English and other humanities majors.

“In STEM fields, you can get really bogged down in the analytical, logical mode of thinking,” Vogel said. “It’s important to think [that] biology is the study of life sciences and there are beings and people and lives behind what we’re doing … In clinical trials, it’s primarily white men and pregnant women aren’t studied at all … Making clinical trials equitable is an important thing to understand.”

If they aren’t taught to equitably consider and study different groups, Indiana’s future scientists and doctors won’t have the tools needed to study and treat different populations within the state. Without the knowledge and consideration that comes with diverse study, business graduates won’t be able to market as well to people with different backgrounds or experiences. 

“It’s important to have these discussions in the classroom, because that is an important part of making sure people learn outside of what they’ve already lived through,” Goettemoeller said. “A big part of going to college is being able to change and learning about yourself and learning about each other, and figuring out how you can take your knowledge and work with people going forward.”

If Rokita tries to take away Butler’s ability to teach the topics Trump doesn’t like, such as the ones listed here, which have been flagged by the executive branch and include “women,” “Black,” “rural water,” “elderly” and a variety of other terms, the consequences will be faced by Butler’s student body. Graduates will not learn about the topics and tools they want and need to improve the state or country we live in, or to thrive in other places. 

Even though topics of history and marginalization may be uncomfortable for some students, they cannot be ignored.

“If you don’t learn history, you’re doomed to repeat it,” Noble said. “If you go around whitewashing our history, saying that we’re the best, we’ve never done anything wrong, promoting this overt nationalism, history has shown that can lead to a lot of terrible things being done.”

Todd Rokita, Butler students want to work and better society for everybody after graduation — for people of all identities and histories of marginalization — and to do that we need an education that is diverse, equitable and inclusive. Don’t take that away.