With President Donald Trump elevating bans of diversity, equity and inclusion programs to the top of national Republicans’ education agenda, Mississippi lawmakers are working to shutter DEI across the state’s higher education system.

Lawmakers in Mississippi’s Republican-dominated Legislature have for months considered the issue and met with university officials. Now, legislators will decide how far they will go in rooting out DEI in the state’s colleges and universities. They are determining what academic concepts count as “divisive” and what legal recourse to provide students and faculty who feel wronged by DEI-related initiatives.   

DEI programs have come under fire mostly from conservatives, who say the programs divide people into categories of victims and oppressors, exacerbate antisemitism and infuse left-wing ideology into every facet of campus life. DEI also has progressive critics, who say the programs can be used to feign support for reducing inequality without actually doing so. Proponents say the programs are necessary to ensure that institutions meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations.

Trump promised in his 2024 campaign to root out DEI in the federal government. One of the first executive orders he has signed did that. Some Mississippi lawmakers introduced bills in the 2024 session to restrict DEI, but the proposals never made it out of committee. With the national headwinds at their backs and several other DEI bans in Republican-led states to use as models, Mississippi lawmakers are poised in 2025 to move forward with legislation targeting the programs. 

In the House, Republican Reps. Donnie Scoggin, Joey Hood and Becky Currie have introduced bills to clamp down on DEI. Scoggin, Chair of the House Universities and Colleges Committee, said negotiations around the proposals are ongoing, but Hood’s bill is the leading contender to move forward.   

Hood’s bill would eliminate diversity training programs that “increase awareness or understanding of issues related to race, sex or other federally protected classes.” It would also seek to regulate academic instruction, barring universities from offering courses that promote “divisive concepts,” including “transgender ideology, gender-neutral pronouns, heteronormativity, gender theory, sexual privilege or any related formulation of these concepts.” 

Scoggin said the Legislature should settle on a finished product that is “semi-vague” in its language to protect universities from a flurry of legal challenges and funding cuts by the state. 

“There may be a professor that gets out here in left field somewhere. Well, the administration may not know it until they’re notified,” Scoggin said. “It’s about trying to be vague enough that we’re not hurting the college, yet strong enough that we’re getting the message across.”

After falling short with little discussion at the Capitol in 2024, the push to write DEI restrictions into state law picked up steam after a growing chorus of lawmakers said voluntary moves by universities to limit DEI programs were insufficient, Scoggin said. 

He said he and Sen. Nicole Boyd, R-Oxford, chairwoman of the Senate Universities and Colleges Committee, made it clear to university administrators that DEI programs, excluding those that benefit groups such as veterans and disabled students, needed to be whittled down.  

“We met with the college presidents and said ‘OK we would like, and when I say we, I mean myself and Sen. Boyd, we would like for y’all to govern yourselves and do what you want to do. But you know what you’ve got to do,” Scoggin said. “Make it happen.”

Over the summer, after other states banned DEI, the University of Mississippi restructured its Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. Other Mississippi universities also made changes to their diversity offices.

Scoggin and Boyd both said in interviews with Mississippi Today that they consulted campus administrators when writing their proposals to restrict DEI.

There are two bills in the Senate aimed at regulating DEI, one from Boyd and the other from Sen. Angela Hill, R-Picayune. Boyd’s proposal will be the vehicle for action in the chamber, as Hill’s bill was “double referred” to two committees for first consideration, a likely indication it won’t move forward.

Unlike some other proposals, Boyd’s legislation does not create a private cause of action that might encourage students to sue employees or administrators accused of violating the law. It would instead require universities and community colleges to adopt a confidential complaint and discipline process for employees of an institution who violate the law.

“I looked for us to create a procedure where a college student who thought that they were not being judged on their own merit because of various policies, that they didn’t have to go to court and file a lawsuit to do that, and that they could use the policies and procedures in the administration to go and object,” Boyd said.

Her bill also includes language that would increase data collection on enrollment and graduation rates at state institutions.

The policy details are unfolding amid the early stages of a potential Republican primary matchup in the 2027 governor’s race between State Auditor Shad White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.

White, who has been one of the state’s loudest advocates for banning DEI, has branded Hosemann “DEI Delbert,” claiming the Senate leader has stood in the way of DEI restrictions passing the Legislature. Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, a Hosemann ally, chided White last week for contracting with a management consulting firm that maintains a robust DEI practice.

The Senate Universities and Colleges Committee could take up DEI legislation as soon as its Thursday committee meeting.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Landon Bryant is a top-notch educator. Whether it is in an art classroom or on Instagram discussing one of the South’s little idiosyncrasies, he has an ability to explain things in a hilarious way.  Known online as LandonTalks, he and his wife Kate have created clever short videos that have tickled the nation’s funny bone. I visited him in his hometown of Laurel (where it all began and continues to this day.)  We traveled to the Lauren Rogers Museum and toured downtown, all while he gave us a glimpse into his brilliant imagination. No longer in the classroom, Landon fills his time as a stand-up comic, author, podcaster, and commentator on all things Southern. It’s fun to watch good people succeed.  And in this episode, you’ll get to know the good man behind the meteoric success story. 

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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Two state lawmakers in Mississippi have introduced bills to restrict the use of Tasers by police following an investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times that revealed lax oversight and dangerous use of the weapons across the state. 

The bills, both sponsored by Democrats, are likely to face pushback from law enforcement officials and significant hurdles in a legislature controlled by Republicans. 

One, House Bill 1596, proposed by Rep. Omeria Scott of Laurel, would ban police in Mississippi from using Tasers. The other, Senate Bill 2317, introduced by Sen. Bradford Blackmon of Canton, would allow Taser use only in circumstances where deadly force by police officers is justifiable. It would also bar officers from shocking people who are elderly, pregnant, mentally ill or intoxicated.

Sen. Blackmon said he drafted his bill after learning from recent reporting by Mississippi Today and The Times that there are no statewide guidelines for how law enforcement officers use Tasers. 

The news organizations found that departments in Mississippi have developed a patchwork of outdated Taser policies that often do not address whether officers can shock children or people with known medical conditions. Most do not bar officers from using Tasers against someone in handcuffs. 

Few departments aggressively monitor Taser use, even though the devices keep an electronic log of every activation. Reporters used those logs, gathered from departments across the state, to uncover hundreds of suspicious Taser incidents, including some where the person was shocked for far longer than experts consider safe.

In 2023, one of the state’s most extreme examples of Taser abuse was uncovered when Mississippi Today and Tthe New York Times found that a group of sheriff’s deputies in Rankin County, some of whom called themselves the Goon Squad, used their Tasers for years to torture people they suspected of using drugs.

Blackmon said that similar abuses could be prevented by his bill, which requires officers to receive additional training and provide detailed reports of the circumstances that led to each Taser deployment.

“That type of activity could be erased,” Blackmon said. “Or at least caught a whole lot earlier than after you terrorize a whole county for as long as they did.” 

After six former officers associated with the Goon Squad were sentenced to decades in prison for torturing three men last year, the Justice Department announced it was investigating a possible pattern of civil rights abuses at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. 

However, the new leadership of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump has circulated a memo, obtained by the New York Times, pausing new civil rights investigations into law enforcement agencies, raising doubts about whether the case will proceed. 

Scott said that because Mississippi has neglected to create safety standards around officer Taser use for so long, she drafted a bill that would take the weapon away.

Developing a standard is “the least that should be done,” Scott said. “We’ve had people tortured at the hands of law enforcement using these weapons.” 

Mississippi Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said that Tasers are critical tools that help prevent injuries to the public and police. 

“I just think an outright ban would not be good policy,” Tindell said, adding that limiting Taser use to deadly force encounters or banning their use on potentially vulnerable groups would put undue pressure on officers making split-second decisions with limited information. 

However, requiring officers throughout the state to report their Taser use and mandating additional training were ideas Tindell said he thought were worth discussing.

Tindell plans to address the issue at the next meeting of the state’s Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training. He said that if Mississippi law enforcement leaders and community stakeholders thought a statewide Taser standard could be beneficial, he would consider what rules would be helpful to establish. 

Pearl Police Chief Nick McLendon rejected the idea of banning the weapon, saying “Tasers have been one of the best advances in technology in modern-day policing.” 

But he noted that some statewide reforms could be helpful, including requiring all departments to document when their officers use Tasers and providing cadets at the state’s law enforcement academy with Taser training, which individual agencies currently must provide.. 

Beverly Padgett, whose son died after being shocked by Simpson County sheriff’s deputies, said she supports measures to bring more accountability to Taser use by law enforcement. 

In 2023, her 34-year-old son, Jared Padgett, said he was hallucinating, so the family called the Simpson County Sheriff’s Department to help transport him to the hospital. Beverly said that rather than helping Jared, who was unarmed and following commands, one deputy shot him with a Taser, causing Jared to flee. 

Taser logs show deputies deployed their Tasers 17 times for 94 seconds during the incident, which ended in Jared Padgett being fatally shot by police after he drove off in an officer’s vehicle. 

“I hope the bills pass,” Beverly Padgett said. “You can’t just repeatedly put someone through that amount of pain and not help them. Their job is to protect and serve, not to hurt people.” 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.