Leading a major public university teaches you something the administrative class never quite grasps: Institutions are living things.Further, the people tasked with guiding them are obligated to pivot and adapt in order to remain faithful to our country’s first principles.
I led the University of Alabama from 2015 to 2025.I too watched the DEI movement on the national stage begin as a professed commitment to "opportunity," but evolve into something else entirely — an ideological enforcement regime hostile to merit, to free inquiry, and to the noble aspirations that forged the American university.When the Alabama Legislature passed SB 129 in 2024, prohibiting taxpayer-funded DEI offices, I worked hand in hand with the state to ensure compliance.
In fact, we were commended by the sponsors of the legislation for our complete and swift action.Outreach to gifted students from rural and underserved communities — work that had absolutely nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with talent — continued.
That is because identifying and recruiting those who are smart and burning to work hard is one of the longest-standing charges of the American public university.That clarity of mission is why this moment matters.As America quickly approaches its 250th birthday, the nation needs university presidents who have confronted and triumphed over ideological capture and come out the other side with an even more robust view of the purpose of public higher education.DEI OFFICE CLOSURES AT UNIVERSITIES PILE UP AFTER ANOTHER STATE ORDERS END TO ‘WOKE VIRUS’The statesmen who built our constitutional order believed a particular kind of education was necessary to form citizens capable of self-government.
Benjamin Franklin, the driving force behind the University of Pennsylvania, believed that only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.Thomas Jefferson founded the University of Virginia because he understood liberty could last only among a populace proficient in a ...