Alabama’s higher education chief says universities should continue to embrace efforts to address bias and prejudice in the classroom – despite current efforts to ban diversity and inclusion policies in the legislature.
“In the future, [students] are going to solve these problems that we’re all addressing, and I find the college environment as the single place that you can,” said Jim Purcell, director of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education, which oversees state universities and financial aid. “You certainly can’t do it at Thanksgiving, and you can hardly do it in other settings.”Purcell addressed two Republican-backed efforts at the commission’s quarterly meeting Friday morning: A divisive concepts bill and a recent Alabama GOP resolution to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion policies in state institutions.
The Alabama GOP also passed a resolution last month that aims to abolish diversity trainings, pronoun usage and diversity, equity and inclusion departments in state colleges.Rep. Ed Oliver, R-Dadeville, is a primary author of both the ALGOP resolution and the “divisive concepts” bill. His bill allows programming that supports diversity, equity and inclusion, but lets employees opt out if they don’t want to attend.
In an interview with AL.com last year, Oliver said the original bill was modeled after a policy template by Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has been leading the charge against so-called critical race theory in American schools.
“We are fighting for a colorblind America and we believe that it is an abuse of power to subject students or employees who are in a subordinate position to learn racist concepts,” Oliver said on the stand last year.
