The Ball State University Chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)
April 19, 2025
The Ball State chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) strongly condemns the actions of the President, Provost, and the Board of Trustees in adopting their April 17th resolution and closing the Office of Inclusive Excellence (OIE). These actions, while not impacting faculty instruction directly, indirectly affect our curriculum and pedagogy by removing resources that were available to our diverse student body, particularly those belonging to marginalized groups. While University Leadership claims that these actions are in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order (EO) 14173, the Department of Education’s February 2025 “Dear Colleague” letter, and pending legislation at the state level, we assert that Ball State University was in compliance before the April 17th resolution. Specifically, we condemn the actions of the President, Provost, and the Board of Trustees on three grounds: 1.) legally, the April 17th resolution signals overcompliance with current law; 2.) ethically, as an institution of higher education, we adhere to evidence-based principles that demonstrate the continued existence of racial disparities; and 3.) organizationally, University Leadership has shown a lack of transparency to its faculty, staff, students, and stakeholders.
First, the legal issues concerning the April 17th resolution are threefold: the breadth of EO 14173, the legal power of the “Dear Colleague” letter, and pending Indiana legislation. Regarding the former, EO 14173 specifically targets hiring and admissions processes that give preference based on race (citing Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 2023) and emphasizes “the policy of individual initiative, excellence, and hard work”. Prior to the April 17th resolution, Ball State University was already in compliance, as the 2024-2025 Faculty and Professional Personnel Handbook repeatedly affirms the university’s equal opportunity employer status, “governed by professional consideration, not by political or other nonprofessional factors,” “prohibiting discrimination and being inclusive of individuals without regard to race, religion, color, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression, disability, genetic information, ethnicity, national origin or ancestry, age, or protected veteran status”. As of an event with Ball State’s Office of People and Culture on February 21, 2025 (after the February 14th release of the “Dear Colleague” letter), the representatives’ interpretation of EO 14173 was that Ball State University was already in compliance due to the above policy. Further, EO 14173, by focusing on hiring and enrollment, does not prohibit the creation and maintenance of units that provide resources and services to underrepresented groups, such as the Office of Inclusive Excellence. By adopting the April 17th resolution, Ball State University Leadership is signaling overcompliance, as they were already in compliance with EO 14173’s stipulations and have gone beyond the law by closing the OIE.
Regarding the “Dear Colleague” letter issued by the U.S. Department of Education in February 2025, we warn that “Dear Colleague” letters do not enact new law, but rather provide interpretation of existing law. The “Dear Colleague” letter provides an interpretation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that asserts that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives discriminate against white and Asian students, and that federal law prohibits the use of race in decisions relating to “all…aspects of student, academic, and campus life”. As stated above, Ball State University was already committed to refraining from using race in hiring and admission decisions. Additionally, the OIE was an expansive office that addressed issues pertaining to identities and statuses beyond race to encourage the success of all faculty, staff, and students, using the tagline “we value the intrinsic worth of all community members”.
Regarding pending Indiana State legislation, SB 289 – as we have addressed in a prior statement on anticipatory compliance – has not yet been passed and may change in conference committee. Indeed, the current version of the bill asserts that prohibited DEI programming “does not include…programs, services, activities, or other efforts to attract, retain, or support students; or employees; provided that such programs, services, activities, or other efforts do not promote differential treatment and are open to all individuals irrespective of race, color, ethnicity, or any other protected status.” While there are still areas of SB 289 that are in conflict with the above-quoted section, we ask that University leadership utilize its lobbying resources to address these aspects while the bill is yet unpassed, rather than engage in early and overcompliance.
We also must remind University Leadership that EO 14173 itself does not prohibit universities from engaging in First Amendment-protected free speech, the EO specifically seeks to investigate universities with endowments of over 1 billion dollars (which excludes Ball State), and that the EO and the “Dear Colleague” letter are already facing legal challenges (e.g., Chicago Women in Trades v. Trump et al., 2025). The April 17th resolution therefore signals a fearful, unnecessary overcompliance that will ultimately harm the health of the university.
Second, regardless of the legal status of the EO and “Dear Colleague” letter, complying with these policies is ethically troubling. Systemic racism is not, as stated in the letter, a “false premise”; rather, it is a reality proven through countless peer-reviewed studies across the disciplines. To deny it is to betray our students and faculty of color and ignore their lived experiences, to dismiss the validity of academic research that evidences systemic inequalities across our institutions, and to shirk our responsibility for preparing our students to engage with the realities facing all industries, including education, health care, and criminal justice.
Furthermore, EO 14173 and its sister EO 14151 target DEIA programs, requiring the removal of all language related to DEIA principles. DEIA programs do not discriminate but rather support students from a vast number of groups, including not only racial minorities but first-generation students, disabled students, non-traditional students, and students with minoritized religious viewpoints. To follow this executive order is to deny our students’ diverse backgrounds and needs and to abandon our commitment to the best, most accessible teaching practices for all.
The EOs, “Dear Colleague” letter, and Indiana’s SB 289 also rest upon a disingenuous premise, defining DEI differently from academic conceptualization and practice by conveying that DEI teaches that specific characteristics are “inherently superior or inferior to a person with a different personal characteristic,” that a person can be blamed for group injustices of the past, and that a person’s character can be determined based on their group identity. DEI, as implemented in institutions of higher education, opposes those premises and instead recognizes that historic and systemic injustices still require that some marginalized groups receive additional resources for a chance at obtaining the same opportunities as other groups (e.g., accommodations for people with disabilities). Additionally, given the Trump Administration’s targeting of any marginalized group – such as the removal of the Tuskegee Airmen and Women’s Airforce from the Air Force website, and blaming of DEI for aviation tragedies, we warn that compliance with such insincere and dangerous manipulation of the concept is a slippery slope into further censorship.
By granting these orders legitimacy, President Mearns and the Board of Trustees fundamentally shift not only Ball State’s commitment to inclusive excellence but our commitments to excellence and rigor in academic research and teaching.
Third, we object to the fashion by which the Provost, the President, and the Board of Trustees passed the April 17th resolution. The Special Meeting of the Board of Trustees was not publicized until Monday, April 15th, and then it was only posted to the President’s webpage and not advertised through any other means. Faculty and staff were not entrusted to participate in responding to the EO and “Dear Colleague” letter, indicating a failure to take shared governance seriously. Furthermore, the meeting only lasted seven minutes. At the end of the meeting, the President announced that an email would soon be sent to the campus along with a video that he had made the day before explaining the resolution to the campus community. The email was sent six minutes after the end of the meeting. It seems that the decision to pass the resolution was made prior to the Special Meeting, which raises questions regarding the Board’s adherence to open meeting laws and to transparency more generally.
The statement provided by Mearns, as well as the power granted to him by the board to be the sole arbitrator in making compliance decisions in relation to these illegal and unethical edicts, signals a disturbing abandonment of the principles of shared governance. Faculty at other universities have chosen this moment to form or join coalitions of universities that stand up for academic principles. We call on Ball State to listen to the cries of our faculty, staff, and students to not comply and affirm our commitments to diversity, equity, inclusion, and access.