Rotarian Joe Stabb introduced Michelle Kwon, a professor of law and UT’s interim associate dean of Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement. He said that he had asked her to talk about several pieces of legislation that had impacted education and higher education and LGBT initiatives.
Kwon began by saying that her area of expertise is tax and business law, but she was happy to talk about DEI, whose policies are intended to bring folks into the workplace and colleges and universities and give them an opportunity to thrive. Opponents of DEI, she said, might say it is a form of reverse discrimination.
For her, she said, DEI is personal. She is the first and only person in her family who went to college. Her dad, of Korean extraction, was working in the plantation fields of Hawaii when he was drafted into the Army in the Vietnam era and made that a career. Her mom is German. She was stationed with a German unit at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, where she met and married Michelle’s dad. “So I was born and raised in El Paso,” said Professor Kwan,
She went on to talk about several bills that had been passed by our legislature and, in some cases, rules unconstitutional by federal courts.
The first was the Police Reform Bill, which prohibits local governments from making laws to impede law enforcement. This was in response to Memphis ending the practice of making traffic stops after the Tyree Nicholas incident.
Another was the 2021 Divisive Concepts Law that said that said instructors and teachers can’t teach a list of concepts such as that one race or sex is superior to another or that a person of privilege is racist or sexist. This was followed by the 2022 Divisive Concepts Law that applied to colleges and universities and prohibited professors in classrooms from endorsing any particular ideology or punishing students for not endorsing said ideology.
“We have not had any students complaining,” said Kwon, who asked Joe to jump in and tell of his being investigated twice because a student complained. One involved Joe’s Introduction to Research class, which included “The Worst Survey,” with intentionally slanted questions and including one about women’s reproductive health. One student complained because the discussion made her uncomfortable. Joe was cleared but the question has been amended to be about something else. Another involved a student who was not doing well and dove back into Joe’s Instagram postings and complained about one from 10 years ago. Joe said this was seven years before he came to UT, and he was cleared on that one, too.
Kwon noted the “chilling effect that the law has had. One colleague, a constitutional law professor stopped teaching constitutional law.”
Kwon mentioned that Florida and Texas have banned DEI offices on state campuses. Tennessee had one in committee, but the Knoxville Jewish Alliance wrote that it would have adverse impacts on Jewish students on campuses, which stopped that bill.
Kwon then talked about anti-LGBT legislation, starting with one in 2016 that said counselors and therapists can refuse to take on a patient from any reason at all, not just religious ones.
2021 brought the Trans Bathroom Bill requiring bathrooms to post signs if trans men were using women’s bathrooms. The courts found this unconstitutional.
Then came the Trans Athletes Bill, requiring athletes to compete on the team of their birth gender.
The Drag Ban was in 2023, criminalizing female and male impersonators. This was also declared unconstitutional.
2023 also brought the No Gender Affirming Healthcare for Minors Bill, which is pending in the Supreme Court.
Of 34 bills filed on these matters, two have become law. One is that people who are authorized to perform marriages are not required to do so.