Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has signed a bill banning "diversity, equity, inclusion," and other "divisive concepts" in public colleges.
SB 129, signed on Wednesday, also bars transgender people from using public bathrooms that are meant for the opposite biological sex on college campuses.
Alabama state colleges currently spend a combined $16 million on diversity programs. It is unclear what is going to happen to all of the people employed in those positions, but it is not unlikely that they will be laid off.
The Washington Examiner reports:Such "divisive concepts" include the idea that "any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior," that any individual should be discriminated against because of those characteristics, that the "moral character" of a person can be questioned based on those characteristics, that someone in the present could be "inherently responsible" for acts committed by some in the past based on those characteristics, that meritocracy is "racist and sexist," and that "any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize" based on immutable characteristics.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Alabama has called the legislation a “blow for the activists, students, and everyday Alabamians.”
Republican state Sen. Will Barfoot, who authored the bill, said in February that schools must stop behaving like "ideological activists."
"Higher education must return to its essential foundations of academic integrity and the pursuit of knowledge instead of being corrupted by destructive ideologies," Barfoot said. "This legislation will build bridges to celebrate what people have in common, not erect walls that silo people into the idea that their race, religion, and sexual orientation solely define who they are and how society should view them."
The Alabama State Department of Education had already banned Critical Race Theory in the state.
