LSU President William F. Tate IV addressed the university’s abrupt shift from diversity, equity and inclusion language to “engagement” at Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting, responding to concerns voiced by professors.

The university has removed DEI language, including its diversity statement, from several of its websites in recent weeks. And in early January, Tate announced the Division of Inclusion Civil Rights & Title IX would drop “inclusion” for “engagement” in its name.

Much of the erasure occurred quietly but drew a loud response from some members of the LSU community, many of them faculty. 

Tate spoke broadly on his office’s choice to move away from DEI language to favor “engagement” at the Faculty Senate meeting, echoing many of the same explanations given in recent weeks.

Some professors used the opportunity to air their discontent about the shift and how it would affect the future of the university.

Faculty Senator Roy Heidelberg, an associate professor in the E.J. Ourso College of Business, criticized how Tate’s office had handled the change. 

“I’m struck by the irony that this move to engagement happened without any engagement,” Heidelberg said. 

In May, Tate said, the university launched a survey to look at employment engagement, and in September, it launched another survey to look at alumni engagement. Both surveys, Tate said, led them in the direction that engagement was the university’s biggest issue.

Heidelberg questioned the university’s interpretation of engagement and how they had decided it was needed.

“I can tell you that active engagement is a very weak definition of engagement, not only that but the idea that a survey was used to get our feedback is another incredibly weak structure of engagement, and I’m really concerned about what the implications of this change are going to be,” Heidelberg said. “…I would love to have more engagement, but based upon this actual creation, it doesn’t seem like that’s a real sentiment of what’s going on here.”

Other concerns included the possible effect the change would have on funding for grant research.

Molly Redfield is a jazz professor — the first female one at LSU in the department’s 20 years of existence, she said. She was recently awarded a grant and said she was worried the removal of words like “inclusivity” would reduce the likelihood faculty such as herself would be hired, thus depriving the university of potential research funding.

“Without the word inclusivity, the idea that we are giving equal access and opportunities, people who are from marginalized groups, I would not be here,” Redfield said. “That research would not have been funded.”

Todd Manuel, LSU’s vice president of engagement, civil rights and title IX, attempted to assuage such concerns by emphasizing how engagement can empower researchers and how getting caught up in word definitions could be harmful.

“The idea of engagement, it really does matter,” Manuel said. “It really does matter, and if I had to sit down and write a grant proposal…it would be to talk about the real life experiences and the ways in which we really help people thrive and succeed here, and not necessarily just around the words and definitions…”

Some have drawn a connection from the early January inauguration of Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and LSU’s early January removal of online DEI language. The university has denied this connection.

“The Republican Party in Louisiana and Gov. Landry have expressed hostility towards diversity, equity and inclusion programming, and I think that LSU is responding to the political reality that it now exists in,” political science professor Belinda Davis said in an interview with the Reveille.

Tate insisted at Wednesday’s Faculty Senate meeting, as the university has previously, that the change in language wasn’t related to politics. He said the shift away from DEI language to “engagement” came as an initiative to improve the university as a whole. 

“I can say with certitude that no elected official. . . has contacted me about anything in relation to this office or anything related to our strategic plan,” Tate said. “I have not heard from them before this, and I have not heard from them after this.”

He did, however, speak to wide-ranging disputes over the language and its political nature. 

“There’s been quite a bit of national discussion. . . and to pretend like it hasn’t been politicized would be naive with a bunch of Ph.d’s and J.d’s,” Tate said. “It has been politicized.”

Tate also said that he would be “remiss” to not acknowledge that his office had been closely following the legal changes unfolding throughout the country, including the recent Supreme Court ruling that outlawed affirmative action in college admissions processes. 

“We most certainly have paid attention to the ripple effects,” Tate said. “It has happened to campuses across the country, and we are keenly aware of it.”

Tate said the large-scale changes in language had “nothing to do with” professors’ individual research, but qualified that statement later on. 

“If you have a program that you are worried about and are wondering if you can actually do it, I think you should talk to the general counsel’s office. . .if it’s deemed legally defensible, keep rolling,” Tate said. “If not, it’s probably a linguistic twist, and you need to change that language and maybe a few principles.”

Tate said that the university was “definitely committed to a diverse student population, as well as faculty and staff,” despite the removal of its diversity statement and the word diversity from much of LSU’s online presence.

To begin his talk on the university’s new engagement language, Tate asked the Faculty Senate to imagine that they had the same “charges” to improve the university as he has. Increasing four-year graduation rates, increasing post-graduation employment rates, increasing the number of applications, increasing awareness. The list went on. 

“It’s a hard charge,” Tate said. 

He then told the Faculty Senate that his questions had not been “symbolic,” and that he wanted the Senate to tell him how they would achieve those goals.

Only a few of the faculty senators gave quiet, somewhat confused responses, before one member used the word “engagement” in answering him. 

“Bam!” Tate shouted. “That’s what you would do.”

A previous version of this article erroneously attributed quotes by LSU Vice President of Engagement, Civil Rights and Title IX Todd Manuel to LSU Vice President of Marketing and Communications Todd Woodward. We regret this error.