Last June, Arica Brandford received an unexpected message: a pair of public-records requests for her syllabi and emails dating back to January 1, 2022.

She didn’t recognize the requester — a man named Thomas Jones — and didn’t know why he was asking for emails containing these words: Asian, Caucasian, White, lynchings, racist, or racism. Jones, as she would eventually learn, is the leader of the American Accountability Foundation, an advocacy group that, in its own words, “deploys aggressive research and investigations to advance conservative messaging.”

To Brandford, the only tenure-track Black faculty member at Texas A&M University’s School of Nursing, the request felt targeted, both because of her identity and the subject of her research — implicit bias and racism in nursing. But she wanted to fulfill the request and move on. So that’s what she did.

Nearly five months later, Brandford’s emails would appear in an article by the Washington Examiner, which took aim at how Texas A&M’s nursing school “required commitment to diversity and inclusion” in its hiring processes. Laura Morgan of Do No Harm, an advocacy group that lobbies against identity politics in health care, told the Examiner that Brandford was an example of a “pro-DEI foot soldier” and that, based on her previous advocacy work, Texas A&M should never have hired her.

The episode and its subsequent fallout — which has been vaguely alluded to in faculty meetings on the College Station campus but has not been widely reported — came on the heels of a scandalous summer at Texas A&M. Administrators had derailed the hiring of Kathleen O. McElroy, a Black journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, in response to conservative critics who denounced her as a proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion. As conservative opponents of DEI efforts intensify and expand their battle against the work and the people who do it, administrators and faculty members are increasingly being caught in the crossfire. In their responses, colleges have struggled to contend with anti-DEI legislation and political pressure as faculty members call on them to defend longstanding practices — and professors.

This account of the incident involving Brandford, which is based on her first public comments on the subject and a review of more than 1,200 pages of public records, sheds light on the methods of the activists, organizations, and media outlets that have been mounting anti-DEI campaigns.

Brandford’s experience also illustrates how many faculty members, especially those of color, feel as the attacks on DEI have escalated. Until recently, expressing elements of their core identity and advocating for diversity programs were widely accepted — if not encouraged — throughout higher education. Now, they feel abandoned, unsure what could trigger a political bombshell and, if it blows up, whether their institutions are willing to defend them.

In Brandford’s case, she felt her only option was to leave.

“I was used as a pawn in a game that we’re seeing play out nationwide,” Brandford said. “Through this experience, I realized there were certain people that did not want me here, or there were those that, in a sense, wanted me to stay in my place. So why stay somewhere that you’re not wanted?”