WATCH: DEI efforts were rebranded at 2 red-state colleges to skirt Trump orders, staffers admit
Staff at two of Tennessee’s most prominent universities — Vanderbilt and the University of Tennessee — were caught on undercover recordings admitting to rebranding their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs in an effort to sidestep Republican-led bans.
Despite state and federal orders aimed at dismantling DEI initiatives, school officials described a deliberate strategy to rename, repackage and quietly preserve these controversial programs under new labels like “access and engagement” and “belonging and community.”
“It’s a chess game,” Will Eakin, a coordinator for UT’s “Access & Engagement” office, said in a recording obtained exclusively by Fox News Digital.
“We had to take our current programming and our future programming and make sure that it aligns so that we can do the work that we’re trying to do, while also catering to the Department of Education, the federal,” the staffer went on, adding, “The biggest thing is using language as a tool for protection.”
The staffers at UT also boasted about how good the school’s government relations team is at helping guide staff and faculty on how to deal with anti-DEI legislation at the state and federal levels.
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“We have an incredible government relations team,” Eakin said.
He claimed that UT President Randy Boyd, “though he is a Republican, cares deeply about access and engagement, and he has been fully committed to the work of DEI and access and engagement, and he works very closely with government relations when they go to Nashville.”
“Because our government relations team is so good, they know which bills to be mindful of, how to best prepare and everything. And so here we are. These committees and task forces and offices were built back in 2020, and they’re still up and running,” said Eakin.
The staffer added that a few years ago, when state officials were beginning to scrutinize universities’ DEI practices, the government relations team and other university leaders took steps to “get ahead of the curve” to “make sure the access and engagement, which is DEI, could maintain itself.”
“So they changed the language so that the state government couldn’t put a magnifying glass on us,” the UT staffer added.
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Meanwhile, at Vanderbilt, another major university in the state, an academic coach at the school’s “Center for Student Wellbeing” said that though the names of their offices may have changed, their DEI missions have not.
”At one point, you know, everybody, like different universities, were under investigation for their, like, DEI practices and stuff like that. So, that’s why I think the naming has changed,” said Ivie Carmouche, an academic coach in Vanderbilt’s Center for Student Wellbeing.
“We’re in the Center for Student Wellbeing – like I said, we have things that clue people in and let people know that this is a safe space for everybody,” she said, adding, “Belonging and Communities is like as close to that DEI work you can probably get. Previously, they were the Center for Social Justice and Identities.”
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When asked whether the renamed university center was still doing DEI work, Carmouche responded, “Yeah.”
“The language will be different because we have to kind of be strategic. But there’s a lot of collaborations with them, KC Potter House, Black Cultural Center, Women’s Center, like even in the Women’s Center, they’re very open and welcoming to all gender identities.”
“When I say different, it just looks different now because the language has had to change. Students Center for Belonging Communities is kind of like the DEI,” she added.
Fox News Digital reached out to Vanderbilt University and the University of Tennessee for comment but did not immediately receive a response.
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