President John A. Delaney on the future of higher education, DEI and Flagler College

By Kaia Wright

Within the past few years, there have been heated discussions nationally on what the future of higher education should look like within America. This has caused confusion throughout the country in students, faculty and college administration.

John A. Delaney, the current president of Flagler College, addressed these many questions and what the future of Flagler is within the current administration and beyond.

“The Trump administration did send what’s known as a ‘Dear Colleague letter’ a couple of months ago, stating that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs are considered illegal,” Delaney said.

However, this is not a new debate within our country or the current administration.

“The law has moved a bit in recent years on diversity-related issues,” Delaney said. “For many years to correct past racism and discrimination, there was known as affirmative action to help minority students, et cetera. Now the law is moving to say that that can be discriminatory.”

This caused Flagler College to receive a Civil Rights Act against them in regards to two major scholarships, the Women of Vision scholarship, which raises money for women to attend Flagler, and the Lead Scholarship, which targets male students.

“We subsequently received a letter from the Office of Civil Rights, there is a scholarship program called Women of Vision that goes to women’s students,” Delaney said. “Similarly, we have the lead fund, in which people raise money to be able to go to male students and what the civil rights said is that’s discriminatory. So what we’ve had to do is simply open up the scholarship so that anybody can apply, male or female.”

This leads to many wondering what this means for campus programs that target specific groups. Flagler offers many clubs including the Pride Alliance, Black Student Union and the Latin American Student Union, though these clubs are open for all to join.

Yet, with these clubs relying on some of the resources of the DEI office, many students are concerned with the future of their organizations.

“We still believe that we need to support minority groups, we have a percentage of our students that are of the LGBT community and want them to feel comfortable on campus as well, I don’t think anybody would end up touching, but it’s when it’s a special thing, it’s extra funding for one particular race or gender. That is now considered unconstitutional,” Delaney said.

Though it’s early to know exactly what will be targeted as crackdowns on DEI continue to happen.

“We’ll see if they come back on the clubs or affiliate affiliation groups, but by and large it’s that either money or resources has to be spent and spread fairly,” Delaney said.

So why is DEI such a heated debate in recent years, especially under the current administration? Many of the ideals of DEI date back to the Civil Rights Movement, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the introduction of affirmative action.

Within the past years, these words have shifted to a new meaning and have been at the forefront of debate between Conservatives and Democrats.

“Diversity, Equity and Inclusion have become loaded words that now are kind of poisoned… The idea is that people are treated equally under the US Constitution,” Delaney said. “There was a period of time when the court said, you could do special things for groups that have been discriminated against in the past. They’re now saying that the time limit is coming to an end.”

This has led Flagler College to change some of the language within their campus, shifting from Diversity, Equity and Inclusion to the Office of Campus Excellence and Engagement. This leads to many wondering what else changed within the office.

“We changed the title of the office, but it’s still in effect and does the same kinds of things because we do think it’s important to support various student groups. We actually changed that language or planned on changing it before the Dear Colleague letter and we knew it was gonna become a legal target,” Delaney said.

Though there are many more questions yet to be answered in regards to DEI and its future within higher education, Delaney went on to say that as of now he believes there won’t be a large impact on the student population and that the college will continue to support its students.