Legislating Epistemic Oppression: Anti-“DEI” Laws and Racialized Knowledge Erasure

We argue that anti-“DEI” legislation constitutes a form of state-sanctioned epistemic oppression that reproduces racial hierarchies by restructuring the boundaries of knowledge in U.S. higher education. Through a critical case study of Texas Senate Bill 17 at a public university in the state, we examine how this law operates as a racial project, invalidating intellectual and situated knowledge tied to racial justice, constraining equity-oriented labor, and producing an epistemic double-bind for faculty members and former administrators whose work interrogates race and racism. Through analysis of interviews, observations, and documents, we show how participants navigate dissonance and constrained agency within racialized hostile institutional environments, some enacting strategic refusals and adaptive practices aligned with the third university and the undercommons to refuse racialized knowledge erasure and reimagine liberatory futures. We contend that while anti-“DEI” laws accelerate racial harm, they also clarify the stakes of epistemic and racial justice, inviting renewed commitments to abolitionist inquiry, collective study, and the transformation of higher education as a site of racial equity.