This is a letter to the editor. You can submit your own here.
Friday, Jan. 5, two days before Gov. Landry’s inauguration, LSU removed DEI-related statements from its website. Faculty, including department chairs and college deans, became aware only through a Louisiana Illuminator story of that date. 
Such unilateral actions have become the style of our upper administration, with no engagement, leave alone a serious one, with the faculty or its bodies, even as that word “engagement” is bandied around. There is a lack of commitment to, if not contempt for, its own faculty and expertise and a lack of respect for academia’s basic values. 
The upper administration seems to be driven by outside political voices, even pre-emptively to appease an incoming governor. He already inappropriately intruded on the university when attorney general. And our administration is driven by its legal counsel who are often clueless about academic values. 
Political intrusions on academia should be openly, unequivocally condemned even as violations of federal higher education law: “The government is barred from exercising ‘any direction, supervision, or control’ of the curriculum, instruction, administration, or personnel of an institution” (Inside Higher Education, Jan 11, 2024).
And, as we have seen also in the recent example of three university presidents before a congressional panel, hyper-coaching by lawyers does not serve our institutions well. Rather, it brings opprobrium that stains us all, even academia itself. 
So who speaks for LSU? Faculty members making public statements state, even while giving affiliation for identification purposes, that they are not speaking for the institution. But our chief officers speak or post on our website in the name of LSU. That itself behooves closer consultation with the expertise in its own faculty, both on internal policies and procedures and on broader matters, whether legal and medical on Covid mitigation policies or social and political such as historical awareness of past inequitable treatment of varied members of our community. 
Above all, given the history of outside partisan forces trying to bend our universities to their agenda, as in the 1950s’ shameful caving in to self-declared congressional guardians of “Unamerican” activities, universities have a responsibility to stand firm. 
A broader truism is that appeasement of bullies, even if they be presidents, governors and attorneys general, only encourages them further while harming all, even entire nations.
What really matters on this issue of DEI and its demonization by current partisan politics are the values of fair and equitable treatment of all and recognition of historical injustices that have left a legacy of “underrepresented groups” whose inclusion we now have affirmatively to encourage. 
That is in the best interest of the future of our institutions as well as the nation and underlies our basic philosophy. That sincere commitment by a whole institution embracing thousands of faculty, staff and students cannot be changed by some blithe wordsmithing. 
If a deeply held belief that has sunk under our skin, cosmetic replacement of “diversity” by “engagement” in response to some political ill-wind cannot change anything of substance. Is it even worthy of “higher education” and “university”?
A.R.P. Rau is an LSU physics professor.