Dr. Sylvester James (Jim) Gates, Jr. received the Dr. John Hope Franklin Award presented by Diverse at this year's AABHE conference.
Many of the 400 or so attendees related stories about DEI crackdowns in their home states. They expressed frustrations about feeling hamstrung in their efforts to serve students from underrepresented groups and conceded that many of them had begun to self-censor.
Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and recipient of AABHE’s Distinguished Cultural Award, urged attendees to “fiercely defend academic freedom.”
“When governments or donors or even our own fears pressure us to narrow the boundaries of acceptable discourse, we must resist,” Toldson said during the opening keynote speech.
That resistance can take on different forms, as evidenced in talks that several scholars gave urging attendees to be strategic in their responses to government efforts to curtail DEI.
Dr. Lover Chancler, an assistant professor of child and family development and director of The Center at the University of Central Missouri, urged those in attendance to refrain from voicing the idea that they’re doing the “same work” that they did under the old DEI regimes.
“Here’s what I’m going to caution you: Stop saying, ‘we’re doing the same work,’ because that got several people in Texas fired,” Chancler said. Instead, she said, program administrators should talk about how they are “reimagining how we are going to be supportive of our students at the university of whatever it’s called.”
Chancler spoke of how various programs and initiatives at her university have been rebranded in the wake of efforts to push DEI out of higher education. For instance, the center that Chancler directs was once known as The Center for Multiculturalism and Inclusivity. Now it’s just “The Center.” And the president’s commission on diversity, equity and inclusion at her university has since become the president’s commission on access, opportunity and community.
“Think about the programs you’re doing. How do you restructure them in a way in which they're inclusive?” Chancler said, citing the school’s First-Year Experience Abroad program – or FYE Abroad – as an example. The program offers a service-learning trip to Treasure Beach, Jamaica. Though it is open to all first-year students, a university website says priority is given to First-Gen, Pell-eligible, or historically underrepresented students, and students who have never travelled abroad.
Chancler was joined by Tiana Key, assistant director of FYE at the University of Central Missouri, who launched the service-learning trip to Jamaica as a way to boost Black student participation in study abroad. They spoke during a well-attended session that summed up the sentiments of many conference-goers. It was titled: “Supporting Y(our) Students While Feeling Unsupported: Addressing the impact of DEI legislation.”
Dr. Michele Heath, an assistant professor in management at Cleveland State University, shared preliminary findings from a study she is conducting about institutional responses to state-led efforts to restrict DEI. Among other things, she found that colleges and universities are scrubbing their websites and other materials of certain DEI “trigger words” and rebranding by using phrases such as “inclusive excellence.” They are also removing DEI from their leadership titles.
Some schools, she said, are folding their DEI work into their strategic plans. Heath says she is skeptical of that particular move.
“I don’t think higher education takes strategic plans seriously,” Heath said as attendees nodded in agreement.
One attendee told Heath their school DEI office got eliminated and they’re at risk of losing other federal funding linked to DEI.
“Our dean is telling the faculty to be creative” and to “come up with other ways to shape it or frame it so that they’re not using the trigger words, because the trigger words, whether we like it or not, is what’s causing grants to either be denied, applications to be pushed back and funding to not be released,” the attendee said. “How do you respond in an environment where you want to continue your work but the reality is it’s being stopped?”
Heath urged program administrators to study the legislative efforts to curtail DEI on campus before they make any changes.
“These bills are very vague,” Heath said. “They don’t really go into ‘you have to do this.” So, a lot of universities are just assuming this is what you need to do.” She said the focus should be on figuring out what the legislation requires and how it affects funding.
Despite anti-DEI legislative efforts weighing heavily on conference-goers’ minds, the gathering nonetheless afforded attendees a chance to celebrate and destress.
Much of that celebration took place at Diverse’s annual Dr. John Hope Franklin Award ceremony, created in 2004 to pay homage to Franklin, a renowned historian, writer, educator and humanitarian.
The 2025 Dr. John Hope Franklin Award went to Dr. Sylvester James (Jim) Gates, Jr., a theoretical physicist credited with pioneering a concept known as supersymmetry. Gates holds an endowed chair in the physics department at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Gates spoke of how stereotypes often provoke questions about how he became a scientist – something to which he credits his parents and how they exposed him to the world of science-fiction.
“A lot of people – when they meet me – wonder what is a Black man doing in that space,” Gates said. “See, I work on the kind of stuff Einstein did. And most people don’t expect Black folks to be able to do such a thing.”
He explained that math is “very much like music.”
“Just like you compose a jazz piece or you compose an R&B piece, I’m one of those people who composes mathematics,” Gates said. “And so there are mathematical ideas that exist right now because I said so,” he said to applause. Sunday’s events culminated with a “Sneaker Ball” in which contestants not only had to show off their sneaker game but also their dance moves in a classic “Soul Train” line. Quite a few contestants uttered chants associated with their respective fraternities and sororities.
For Dr. Bryan Hotckins, an associate professor of higher education at Texas Tech University, the sneaker ball was a chance to escape the dread of dealing with legislative efforts to limit identity expression on college campuses in Texas.
“This was cool. I needed it,” Hotchkins said, sporting a pair of Travis Scott Fragment shoes by Nike. “This is my escapism.”
Hotchkins took second place in the sneaker ball contest. His prize was a one-year membership to AABHE.
