DEI—“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”—has been the talk of the town in Louisiana recently. Earlier this month, Governor Jeff Landry claimed that DEI language is no longer present in the state government’s civil service employment policy.

However, DEI—or, anti-White and anti-Asian discrimination—is still present in many facets of Louisiana life—particularly in the higher education sphere.

Last September, I published an article here on The Hayride detailing the Louisiana Board of Regents explicitly promotes anti-White and anti-Asian performance objective in the Board’s budget. Here is a pull from that article:

In fact, at the top of the Louisiana higher education chain of command is a registered Democrat who worked in the Obama administration “leading post-secondary diversity and inclusion work”–Kim Hunter Reed.

Soon after Reed’s appointment as Commissioner of Louisiana Higher Education in 2018, the Board of Regents and nearly all state universities adopted a policy objective in the Higher Education Executive Budget that openly prioritizes non-White and non-Asian students.  This discriminatory objective first appeared in the FY21-22 budget (pg. 16) and has been listed every year since, including the FY25-26 budget (pg. 12).

The language of the Board of Regents’ current executive budget is unambiguous. It defines its target population as “all races other than white [and] Asian.” By its own terms, this performance objective applies to every racial group except White and Asian students. That is an extraordinary—and extraordinarily divisive—policy choice for any state government to embed in its official budgeting documents.

This push for DEI does not stop with the budget. The Louisiana Board of Regents’ website shows that its Master Plan for Higher Education through 2030 prioritizes “equity” over merit. In fact, the Master Plan uses the term “equity” in seven separate instances—specifically to describe how the Board plans to focus on students’ racial characteristics as a means of improving higher education attainment in Louisiana.

Parents and taxpayers deserve to know exactly how much money is being spent to advance such a race-exclusive mandate—especially since the objective has appeared in every Louisiana Governor’s executive budget since the 2021-2022 budget. But despite living in a Republican-leaning state, Louisiana citizens still do not even know just how much of our state tax dollars go to funding anti-White and anti-Asian policies.

Just two years ago, the Louisiana Legislature passed legislation (HB 904, 2024) that encouraged Louisiana’s higher education institutions to voluntarily self-report DEI spending. However, this self-reporting mechanism has produced uneven, limited data concerning the discriminatory DEI spending in Louisiana higher education.

Our elected officials cannot, in good faith, provide future state funding to the Board of Regents and higher education institutions without knowing how state tax dollars are funding objectives that explicitly discriminate against White and Asian students.

Before the Legislature approves millions of dollars in new spending in the Governor’s next budget, Louisianans should know the answers to the following questions:

• How much money is currently being spent to support Objective 6711-09 from the Board of Regents budget?
• Which staff positions, training programs, contracts, and grants fall under or support DEI-linked efforts?
• How many non-DEI programs are being counted toward the objective’s performance metrics?
• How much general-fund revenue is being directed—directly or indirectly—toward this racially exclusive state target?

Consequently, the people of Louisiana deserve an audit from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor (LLA) to conduct a comprehensive, non-partisan review of how much money is being spent on Objective 6711-09 by the Louisiana Board of Regents. The state legislature should request an audit from the LLA to uncover all of the costs associated with achieving this objective that explicitly excludes White and Asian students.

An audit is not an attack on Louisiana higher education. On the contrary, an audit will provide necessary transparency to taxpayers and state legislators alike.

Louisiana families want their children to thrive in higher education. They deserve a higher education system that focuses on academic excellence and merit over opaque DEI policy goals that quietly reappear in each year’s executive budget without proper scrutiny.

What’s more, Louisiana higher education could be at risk of losing key federal funding if the Board of Regents is found to have violated Title VI through the discriminatory Objective 6711-09.

To put Louisiana first, we citizens deserve transparency from our elected officials and public institutions. We deserve nothing less.

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Nathan Koenig is a frequent contributor to RVIVR.com, a national conservative political site affiliated with The Hayride. Follow his writing on the Louisiana First Standard Substack, on Twitter (X) @LAFirstStandard, on Tik Tok @la.first.standard & on Instagram @lafirststandard. Email him here: louisianafirststandard@proton.me