The decision, announced on January 29, eliminated the Office of Inclusive Engagement and ended MSU's support of two events: Collaborative Diversity Conference and the Inclusive Excellence Awards Gala. President Williams said it was necessary to avoid losing millions of dollars of state money, about 38% of the university's budget.
KSMU's Gregory Holman talked with Williams about the decision. Williams also gave an update on MSU's strategic planning process and on the search for a new provost.
Q). You announced January 29th in a memo to the university community that Missouri State University was removing DEI programs, including the elimination of the Office of Inclusive Engagement and the cancellation of a couple of diversity related events. Following that announcement, some students have protested, and I think it's pretty evident that many folks of color and LGBT people are concerned about whether they'll be treated equally going forward at Missouri State. Can you respond to those feelings?
A). Sure. Because of these changes, we're not going to change anything that we're doing to welcome students. We want to welcome students. We want people to feel safe. We're having listening sessions with the students to feel where they, where we can do better. And I think a lot of people don't understand of, you know, the background to this decision. This decision really started about two or three years ago, as you know, being here on campus, directives came from the state, federal and state legislation where we had to start making some changes to programs such as diversity, equity and inclusion. If you remember, we started removing diversity statements and hiring practices. We really engaged in a conversation of how can we make our students feel included, and so this Office of Inclusive Engagement was the result of that. And so it's been happening over a couple of years.
When I came here in July, that is when the University of Missouri made the decision, and UMKC and some of their other satellite schools eliminated their DEI programs. And so we as an administrative council met this summer to say, okay, where where are we at? We've created this Office of Inclusive Engagement. We have our diversity conference, we have the gala, we have this inclusive engagement scholarships. Does this affect us or should we be thinking about this? So as an administrative council we started looking at this to say, okay, are we okay? We felt comfortable this summer to say, you know, there's the election for the United States, the president. Let's kind of see how that goes. We started talking to our local legislators to see where that was, and they felt comfortable as well. In fact, I met with most of our local legislators right before the session to kind of get a temperature of, is there going to be some DEI legislation coming? There wasn't really a sense of that. Then in January, we had an article that came out by the Lion Group, I believe, they're located in Kansas City, and they basically put a lot of information in their article where we as an institution, they claimed, were ignoring the DEI directives from the state. These were sent out to legislators, and we started getting phone calls where the legislators were pretty upset with believing that, you know, Missouri State University was ignoring their directives of kind of going away from this. What happened next is we started getting more and more calls from the legislature. Then I went with the other university presidents to the governor's (office). He called us all to tell us a little bit about the compensation. He was also going to share with us a few other points in his State of the State at that point. He informed all of us that there would be no state funding for DEI, and he actually referred to University of Missouri and what they had done and claimed them to be a model.
Coming home from that meeting is when I started getting many different emails and legislators saying, we are recommending that the state appropriation for the state will be removed unless we cease all DEI opportunities here on our campus. And so we had to act quickly on that. That's 38%. That's $113 million. That's laying off more than a thousand employees here. So that's something we had to take seriously. So that's the decision, the background to the decision. Now, we are going to cater to our students. We are going to have to figure it out with these new parameters. There's federal legislation coming. There's state legislation coming. Many people have asked, well, they didn't put in a law yet that they're going to do this. Why would you act so quickly in the budget? They don't put the budget in law. They just take you out of the budget. And so we had enough information from our legislators that we needed to act quickly. And the day of the announcement, I went to Jeff City and I spoke with many of the legislators, and they were going to act on this. And so we had to act quickly.
Q). So my news director, quick follow ups here, my news director, Michele Skalicky, she reports that some people in the campus community told KSMU they felt blindsided by this decision. What you're saying is this was discussed for a long time going back to 2023. Do you feel that the discussion was public enough for people to understand what was going on? And at the end of the day, are you saying this was your decision? Board of governors? Where does the buck stop?
A). So the buck always stops with me. I mean, I'm the president of the university. But how we come to decisions is talking to the administrative council. I mean, I seek the opinions of many different people. I also sought, took my recommendation to the board of governors, and they thought that we were going in the right direction. I mean, we can't not stop having Missouri State University, and that's essentially what would have happened. If people were blindsided, I think that they probably weren't informed prior to these two years. I mean, this has been going on. I think this is not a phenomenon that's here in Missouri. I mean, it's happening all over the United States. I mean, if we're being blindsided, then I don't think we're really paying attention to what the climate has been the last several years.
Q). Governor Mike Kehoe gave his State of the State speech actually the day before Missouri State's announcement on DEI. Governor Kehoe said his administration will be built on merit and would not support DEI. Those are his words. How much did that play — you talked about some of these discussions with state leaders, but how much did that specific address by our newly elected governor play into that announcement the following day?
A). So as I mentioned to you before, the Friday before is when we presidents went to the governor's office and he, you know, respectfully gave us a heads up of what's going to be in the State of the State. And so I was coming back to campus to have those conversations. But on the way back is when I started getting emails saying, you know, in writing that we are going to remove funding unless you start ceasing and desisting on these DEI. So we were moving quickly on that because I knew that was coming and I felt like we needed to show the governor that we're taking his directive seriously. We can't gamble with our state appropriation. It would just hurt too many people.
Q). At least for now, DEI is in the past. But let's move to a future oriented question. I am really curious about the university's strategic planning process currently underway. I'd love for you to talk about how that's going currently, what your hopes are for the next phases, and if you can also work into your answer, I think a lot of people are probably curious if the new strategic planning process includes some form of element intended to ensure Missouri State is just welcoming to all students, faculty and staff.
A). Sure. I think the process is going very well. Throughout the year, we've had a number of town halls, and we've been almost overwhelmed with the the number of faculty and staff and community members that have shown up at these open forums to really share their ideas. I think the the notion of that this is our plan has really resonated well on our campus. Currently, we have five buckets that we're looking at. The Strategic Planning committee came up with these buckets from those town halls. And so there's working groups right now that are creating goal statements for each of those five. This is all on the website for our strategic planning. So if you want to really dive into what's happening and what has happened and what will happen, you can do that. These committees will come up and have the goal statements, and then we're going to have more open forums here in the middle of this month. And then we'll start looking at strategies for those goal statements. And so, so far they're almost solidifying the new vision mission and core values. They're also looking at these five buckets. And I really think that it's going to be the work of the people that come out in this, and it's going to be exciting. But I, I am confident that having a, well, continuing to have a welcoming campus is going to be a priority.
Q). Missouri State is considering several highly credentialed candidates for the provost job right now. Can you provide an update on how that situation is progressing?
A). We've had a wonderful search process thus far. As you know, we have five very skilled and talented and experienced administrators that have come. Four of the five candidates have been on campus. On Monday and Tuesday, will be our fifth candidate. The committee did a wonderful job. They vetted over 80 applicants. So there's a lot of interest in this position and in Missouri State. And I think people are recognizing where we're going and where we've been. I think here, I'm encouraging as many people that have been to the open forums to get the feedback. That's coming directly to me. We used a third party so that people would feel comfortable. Anytime you have internal candidates, well, you know, can I really give positive feedback? So we assured that the process would be anonymous. So I would love to have as many people submit the feedback as possible, because we'll be making a decision fairly soon.
