The Arizona House is set to vote as early as this week on whether to eliminate state funds for universities and colleges that offer courses on diversity, equity and inclusion.

It comes as lawmakers in the chamber seem unable to agree on exactly what DEI is and on what kind of curriculum could justify a school losing hundreds of millions of dollars in public funding.

The vote comes against the national backdrop of Republican President Donald Trump issuing edicts about what materials and phrases will put institutions at risk of losing their federal funding.

Most recently, Trump’s orders have led the U.S. Naval Academy to remove nearly 400 books from its collection. Officials say they want to “ensure compliance with all directives outlined in executive orders issued by the president.”

Even just the threat of lost dollars has some institutions scrambling, with the University of Arizona eliminating the phrase “committed to diversity and inclusion” from its statement acknowledging that it sits on the lands of Indigenous peoples.

Arizona law already bars the use of gender and racial preferences in hiring and promotion in public agencies. This proposal by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, to tie state funding to the elimination of DEI courses goes even further.

Farnsworth, who is taking education courses at a community college, said he was surprised at what he found in some required reading. He said that included references to ”hidden curricula” that often reinforces the values of the “dominant culture,” meaning white, middle-class, heterosexual, English speaking and Christian norms.

SB1694 would deny state funds to any institution that offers one or more courses that fit into that category of DEI. It contains an extensive set of definitions of what that would include.

For example, courses that relate contemporary American society to issues such as systemic racism, implicit bias, or race or gender based diversity and inclusion would be off limits. Also forbidden would be anything that promotes the idea that racially neutral or colorblind laws perpetuate injustice and race-based privilege, including white supremacy or white privilege.

During the House debate this past week, lawmakers focused on different sections.

Rep. Alexander Kolodin, R-Scottsdale, cited language that bars state funding of colleges whose courses “promote the differential treatment of any individual or group of individuals based on race or ethnicity in contemporary American society.” He said the bill also would include any course that promotes the idea that a student is biased on account of that student’s race or sex.

He called all that “just common sense.”

Kolodin also noted it does not prohibit discussion of “historical movements, ideologies or instances of racial hatred or race-based discrimination” such as slavery, removal of Indians from their land, and the internment of Japanese-Americans. But that’s not absolute: The measure does say those could not be taught if they violate the broader guidelines, like the ones talking about systemic racism, implicit bias and race-based privilege.

Rep. Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, said that still places limits on what can be taught — and learned — in courses like the ones she said this legislation effectively would ban. Consider, said Gutierrez, the nature of running for the Legislature itself.

“Learning about others’ backgrounds makes us more respectful and well-rounded as a body,” she said. Ditto, she said, about being on a corporate board or in a classroom.

“It benefits all of us as a state and a community to incorporate open-mindedness and understanding into academic programs where young people will be interacting with each other,” she said.

Rep. Cesar Aguilar, D-Phoenix, said the legislation amounts to “erasing the very history that makes this country what it is today.”

All that comes back to a point Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake, has been trying to make about the lack of consensus, even among the people making the laws, about what DEI is and what the state should and should not restrict.

Blackman, the first African-American Republican elected to the state House, may have found some common ground with Democrats who see the measure as an improper state intrusion into academic affairs.

He said anything that gives a preference based on race, gender or other basis is a bad idea, if for no other reason than it promotes the belief that someone got a job because of those factors. But he said what is taught about the state and nation’s history of racism and sexism should be left to school officials.

“I don’t want someone hiring me just because I happen to be an African-American,” Blackman said. “I don’t want someone in the background thinking ‘The only reason why you got this job is because of the color of your skin.’ I want to be hired on my merits.”

But then there’s the historical record.

“I was born in a time in 1965 where this was real and it was needed, and my family was discriminated against,” he told colleagues. “And I couldn’t go to some hospitals when I was six and my parents were driving all night long to find a hospital because they would not take Black children or Black people.”

Now, he said, the question is whether some of the programs have outlived their usefulness and are, in fact, becoming a drawback for race relations among Americans.

“Are we sending the wrong message to young people of color that your ethnic background is what gets you in the door?” Blackman said. “Or is it your heart, your desire to do that job?”

But while the legislation focuses on what can and cannot be taught — with the threat of financial penalties on offending colleges and universities — there’s also the question of whether racism still exists or is simply some historical artifact.

Rep. Quantá Crews, D-Phoenix, said she can answer at least part of that from her own experiences.

On one hand, she said, she has never been given a job because she is Black. But then there’s the other side of that.

“You see, Quantá, when she applies for a job, never gets an interview,” Crews said. “But Marie does.”

That’s her middle name. And Crews said that’s why her resume includes only her middle name.

She said that was true when she got hired as an appraiser with the Maricopa County Assessor’s Office.

Like Kolodin, Crews also went to the language of SB1694 to make her case. But she reached different conclusions of what it would mean.

Consider, she said, prohibitions against relating contemporary American society to “social justice.”

“This country has a very rich history which includes good, bad and very disturbing, including me not getting jobs because my name is Quantá,” she said. “It is racist not to hire someone, not to even give an interview to someone overqualified … because of their name.”

Other lawmakers focused on their own interpretations of what the measure would do.

“One of the worries that I have about the way we are talking about race is that it either seems so big that somehow white people now have to feel guilty for everything that happened in the past … or that Black people have to be disempowered by race,” said Rep. Matt Gress, R-Phoenix, who supports the legislation. “This is a conversation that has gone in the wrong direction.”

On that, Blackman agrees, which is why he is raising questions about whether to advance this measure in its current form.

“We need to have some hard conversations about this,” he told Capitol Media Services in an interview Saturday. He said that means separating out the issue of equal — and race-blind — opportunity, which he supports, and restricting academic conversations on everything that came before, such as how Blacks like he and his family were treated.

“Universities should be a place where kids can go and grow and learn what they want to do,” he said, calling dictating to teachers what the state wants them to teach “counter-intuitive to what we look at as freedom and liberty.”

Blackman said this isn’t an endorsement of what is being taught by all teachers in all classes, saying that he, like Farnsworth, has found some lessons to be inappropriate.

“However, I’m a constitutionalist as well,” he said. “We cannot say that we believe in the Constitution and that we believe in freedom of speech and we believe in liberty and freedoms; however, we are limiting that as a government. That is what we left England for.”

But Rep. Lisa Fink, R-Glendale, said she finds no problem with eliminating what she called “divisive curriculum.”

“What we’re seeing is a decline in academic performance in the universities,” Fink said during the House debate. “What DEI does is take the focus off of academics.”

Fink said in a separate interview she bases that on her belief that students who are graduating lack background in history and civics, something that makes them less prepared to teach. And beyond education graduates, she said some business officials have told her that graduates are not prepared for the jobs they need to fill.

But Rep. Betty Villegas, D-Tucson, questioned why anyone would want to block the teaching of diversity, equity and inclusion, things she said include opportunity, respect, inclusivity, fairness and collaboration.

“As a woman who has gone through many generations, I don’t understand why people are so afraid of that term and so afraid about each other’s cultures,” Villegas said.

Of note is that the only testimony against the measure came from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Arizona Students Association — with no objections from the Arizona Board of Regents. Instead, regents’ spokeswoman Megan Gilbertson would say only that board members are “working closely with lawmakers and the governor’s office on bills relating to our universities.”

But the regents may also be counting on a veto from Gov. Katie Hobbs if and when the bill comes to her. The Democratic governor has a record of rejecting ideas that come to her without support from members of her own party.

Another issue is that the legislation lacks an apparent enforcement mechanism, with no detail on how a complaint can be made against a course and who adjudicates whether it runs afoul of the law.

Farnsworth acknowledged there may be an issue. If it becomes law, he would likely have to come back next year with some new provisions.

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