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State DEI bans are ‘horribly written’ and typically exclude curriculum, Accuracy in Media president says
A Western Kentucky University School of Social Work employee’s admission that its curriculum still includes diversity, equity, and inclusion programming despite a state ban has raised wider questions about the strength of the law itself as well as accreditation requirements.
“We see this in nearly every state that has banned DEI and in many instances, it’s not that they’re breaking the law, but rather that these laws were horribly written,” Accuracy in Media president and founder Adam Guillette told The College Fix in a recent phone interview.
The investigative group opposes taxpayer funding for DEI in education. It has released a series of undercover videos in Kentucky and other states exposing public university employees admitting that DEI is still part of their work despite efforts by state lawmakers to ban it.
The video of the Western Kentucky University staffer’s admission came out March 9. In the video, Bailey Cooke, an office associate for the social work school, told an undercover investigator that program prerequisites include a “DEI course.”
Cooke said the DEI curriculum remains in place despite a 2025 law that the Kentucky Legislature passed to ban the ideology in public higher education institutions.
Specifically, House Bill 4 prohibits public universities from spending money on DEI offices and programs. It also prohibits universities from requiring current or potential employees to “endorse or condemn a specific ideology or viewpoint.”
When asked about the state ban, Cooke responded in the video: “We’re accredited by the CSWE, which is the Council on Social Work Education. If you go to a college that has a Social Work program that is accredited by the CSWE, yes — it’s in their curriculum standards that we teach about ADEI: antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“That doesn’t have anything to do with what the government would like us to do,” she continued. “We are literally required in order to maintain our accreditation.”
The council is the largest accreditor of social work programs in the United States, with over 900 across the country.
When asked about the video, Council on Social Work Education spokesperson Matt Hooper told The Fix that his organization “has not and will not ask any program or individual to break any laws.”
“For programs located in states where legislation has been passed related to DEI language, we are working with them individually to ensure that they can continue to deliver a quality social work education in a way that aligns with their state’s legal requirements,” he said in a recent email.
As The Fix reported in December, the accreditor still includes DEI among its requirements despite some states’ crackdown and the Trump administration’s scrutiny of accrediting groups and ideological mandates.
The guidelines by which CSWE accredits institutions were last updated in 2022, and include “Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” as one of the competencies. This requires institutions to provide examples of “specific and continuous efforts” to promote their DEI curriculum.
When asked if the accreditor plans to update its guidelines, Hooper told The Fix previously that the guidelines “are revised and released every 7 years, with the next edition coming in 2029. Until then, any updates on that process will be announced on our website.”
Meanwhile, the president and founder of Accuracy in Media told The Fix that Kentucky’s DEI ban has a loophole that lets universities continue to teach DEI.
For example, Guillette said, the law “doesn’t ban DEI from the curriculum so that enables professors in any class they’d like — it could be math class — to promote identity politics, to promote the idea that America is systemically racist, that capitalism is inherently racist into every facet of education.”
Guillette said other investigations have found that Western Kentucky U. is not the only university still teaching DEI.
Another undercover video that Accuracy in Media published last week shows a Northern Kentucky University employee saying the social work program is required by the accrediting council to teach “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
Guillette said most states with DEI bans are having issues with universities obeying the law.
It very much is a twofold issue with universities ignoring these bans, as well as the laws not being air tight, Guillette said, noting that the latter is the most pressing issue.
Still, he told The Fix that the undercover videos are putting pressure on the universities to comply with the laws. He said some parents also are furious when they learn that they are paying for their children to go to universities that are still pushing DEI.
The College Fix contacted the WKU media relations office twice recently via email, asking about the Accuracy in Media video and its compliance with the DEI ban, but it did not respond.
MORE: ‘Be wily,’ Morehead State U. professor tells peers about complying with DEI ban
