The worried calls have come into Tom Houk one after another. Houk, the former Atlanta radio host and journalist, operates a popular civil rights tour of Atlanta, guiding students, professional groups and visitors through some of the most iconic sites of the Civil Rights Movement.
That subject matter has raised flags for some education groups, worried about running afoul of recent state and federal directives banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across the country.
One Georgia school recently canceled two tours with Houk. A group from the University of Nebraska called to ask about getting its deposit back, worried that its exchange program for Asian students may not survive long enough to travel to Atlanta this spring.
“I’m getting calls like that all the time, people worried to do my tour or even whether they’ll be around themselves,” Houk said. “It’s scary times.”
Houk said the widespread efforts to roll back DEI initiatives have made his clients wary of doing anything that might attract the attention of administrators or government watchdogs, even openly studying the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
“It is fundamentally regressive and curtailing the freedom to discuss history,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“This” is the current environment in Georgia, where there are so many efforts to stop diversity initiatives you practically need a spreadsheet to keep track of them. First, there was the 2023 investigation, ordered by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, to find out how much the University System of Georgia was spending on diversity programs across the state.
That same year, USG Chancellor Sonny Perdue announced that Georgia colleges would ban DEI hiring statements. Later, USG announced that all institutions should hire based only on merit and “remain neutral on social and political issues.” A new bill in the state Senate this year would end state funding for any schools with programs that “advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion.”
But the biggest shoe to drop has been President Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
In January, he signed an executive order calling all diversity efforts “illegal” and “dangerous, demeaning and immoral.” Then came a “Dear Colleague” letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to public and private Georgia colleges.
It warned that any school, from preschools to graduate-level institutions, with diversity programs at the end of February could expect their federal funding to be cut. For universities like Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia or Emory University, that’s billions of dollars.
The results in the state have been changes large and small.
At Georgia Tech, administrators announced a “restructuring” and suggested the Women’s Resource Center and programs for Black and gay students would become a “Belonging and Student Support Center.” Since the school gets more than $1 billion in federal funding every year, switching diversity to “belonging” may just be the cost of doing business.
Other changes in the state leave you wondering what they have to do with “DEI” at all.
At Mercer University’s Tift College of Education, students getting master’s degrees through the federally funded GENERATE grant were notified last month that the U.S. Department of Education had cut funding for the entire program.
“The Department of Education has stated that funding for programs associated with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is inconsistent with department priorities,” the letter to students said.
Matt Henning, an Air Force veteran, is a seventh grade social studies teacher in Newton County schools through the program. Along with coaching soccer and wrestling, he is also a school safety officer.
“I really love teaching and believe that I can make a difference in the lives of the children I encounter in my school,” he said. But without the grant, he won’t be able to finish the program and may even have to repay his first years of tuition, since the program requires that students complete their degrees.
If you’re wondering what a program like the GENERATE grant, which puts trained teachers in rural Georgia schools, has to do with “DEI,” it may have been the grant’s mission statement to help “underserved” areas of the state. According to multiple reports, “underserved” is one of more than 100 words the Trump administration has flagged in memos to agencies to limit, avoid or to single out when reviewing grant funding.
Some of the words are obvious right-wing triggers, like “allyship” or “chestfeeding.” But others, like “women,” “Black,” “mental health,” and “underprivileged,” are mainstream lexicon and required for basic governance. Not on the offensive list for the Trump Administration: “white,” “wealthy” or “man.”
Knowing which words and ideas are verboten in the new world order also explains why a civil rights tour of Atlanta would give a school administrator heartburn or why an article by a researcher with the last name “Gender” was scrubbed from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website or why the people, places and events that have made America what it is are being swept under the rug or targeted for punishment.
And a note to Georgia Tech, “belonging” is on the list too.
Chris Bruce, the policy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Georgia, said the DEI rollbacks are just the start of what’s to come, and not just for minority students.
“Any time your civil rights or civil liberties are being jeopardized, you need to fight like hell, because it’s hard to get back and it doesn’t stop,” he said. “It may not be your group today, but it will be your group in the future. That’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when.’”
Put those two on your list of words to remember in the future too.
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