Manufactured Rage Against DEI as an Affront to Academic Freedom, University of Michigan, March 13, 2025

Manufactured Rage Against DEI as an Affront to Academic Freedom, University of Michigan, March 13, 2025

On March 13, 2025, the University of Michigan hosted a timely and urgent conversation with Dr. Isaac Kamola, Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College and author of Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023 and Free Speech and Koch Money: Manufacturing a Campus Culture War. I include the video of his excellent presentation below that is complemented with equally excellent commentary by seasoned scholars and administrators who pushed back decisively, reminding us that it is the backlash—not DEI—that poses the real danger. 

Again, the video is a must-see. Very enlightening and very well done.

Kamola’s work exposes how today’s outrage against Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives is not a spontaneous groundswell, but a strategically engineered campaign—fueled by dark money, media distortion, and political opportunism—to erode public trust in higher education.

At the heart of this manufactured backlash is a false narrative: that DEI threatens free speech and academic freedom. I does not. These orchestrated attacks aim not only to dismantle DEI efforts, but also to silence critical inquiry and maintain entrenched hierarchies of race, gender, and power.

What emerged was a shared call to reframe the conversation entirely. We must reject the false binary between DEI and academic freedom. Defending DEI is defending academic freedom. And both are essential to the public mission of the university. I can earnestly say that this is how we have treated it in our struggles here in Texas as detailed in a recent publication titled, Disrupting Colonial Logics: Transformational Resistance Against SB 17 and the Dismantling of DEI in Texas Higher Education (Valenzuela, Unda, & Mena Bernal, 2025).

Kamola put it plainly: this isn’t just about DEI or free speech—it’s about power. Who gets to speak? Who gets heard? And who benefits when institutions of higher learning become ideological battlegrounds?

In response, the charge is clear: our resistance must be collective, courageous, and rooted in long-standing struggles for educational justice. We must forge collaborative strategies within and beyond the university—building solidarity, sharing resources, and reclaiming higher education as a space for critical thought, democratic values, and public good.

The culture war is not about culture—it’s about control. And the stakes for the future of higher education could not be higher.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Mena Bernal, J. (2025). Disrupting colonial logics: Transformational resistance against SB 17 and the dismantling of DEI in Texas higher education. Ethnic Studies Pedagogies, 1(1), [pp. 7-24]. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Volume3-Issue1-Final.pdf

Manufactured Rage Against DEI as an Affront to Academic Freedom

University of Michigan