Ohio State recruiter Kieran Duhl resigns in protest of university DEI rollback

When Kieran Duhl learned via email on Feb. 27 that Ohio State University would be closing two campus offices focused on diversity, equity and inclusion, eliminating a dozen staff positions in the process, they wrote to their supervisor and informed them that they would be taking the following day off for mental health reasons.

“I grew up in a small town, so even though Ohio State was a PWI (primarily white institution), it was diverse to me. So, having access to resources provided by [the Office of Diversity and Inclusion] and programming through the Center for Belonging and Social Change was really, really important to my college experience,” said Duhl, who graduated from OSU in 2020 and accepted a job as a recruitment and enrollment specialist in the College of Arts and Sciences in 2023, a position in which they worked largely with underrepresented communities. “It was honestly really heartbreaking, seeing all of these students who no longer know what the rest of their college experience is going to look like.”

Weighing past experiences with current realities, Duhl quickly came to the realization that they could not in good conscience continue in a role working to recruit new students – a majority of whom come from underrepresented populations – to attend a university that they said had effectively turned its back on these communities.

Early signs of trouble first surfaced in small ways roughly two or three months ago, Duhl said, and involved departments scrubbing university websites of certain terms that might catch the unfortunate attention of the Trump administration and threaten funding, including “multicultural” and “diversity.” Even so, Duhl said they were caught completely off-guard when OSU president Ted Carter sent his Feb. 27 email announcing the sunsetting of the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI) and the Center for Belonging and Social Change (CBSC).

“Just for my office, I think a lot of it was, ‘Oh, you know, let’s be careful, guys, and [remove] some of this language preemptively.’ I don’t think anybody really expected this,” they said. “Ted Carter just kind of made this announcement. And he did it preemptively, before any of it was actually law. And he did it without consulting the people who work in those offices and were going to be losing their jobs. And most importantly, without consulting the students.”

In a written response to a request for comment, a spokesperson for Ohio State said the university “remains committed to supporting students, faculty and staff from all backgrounds, every community in Ohio, across the country and around the globe,” pointing to the continued existence of programs such as the Morrill Scholarship Program and the Young Scholars Program, which have historically targeted minority students.

Initially, Duhl planned to submit their resignation via email at the end of the business day on Friday and in advance of a planned Saturday recruitment breakfast. After sitting with the decision, though, and factoring in everything from the relative staff silence that they said met the school’s DEI rollback to the university-led crackdown on pro-Palestine protests in 2024, Duhl opted to take a more public approach.

In a video filmed during the March 1 breakfast at the Ohio Union and later posted to social media, Duhl utilized their short time on the mic to admonish the university for what they termed its lack of transparency regarding the DEI closures, to caution the largely Black event attendees against enrolling (“I don’t feel I can in good faith really tell you to come to this university”), and to offer up their immediate resignation. “I honestly felt like I was going to throw up,” Duhl said, and laughed, “because I knew what I was going to do but it was not easy to do.”

And yet, Duhl said they arrived at their decision relatively quickly owing to a variety of factors, including the pending breakfast and the kick-off of Ramadan, both of which added a gnawing sense of urgency.

“Right after the news came out, I emailed my students, and I was very frank with them. I didn’t tell them I was leaving, but I said, ‘Regardless of what happens, I’m always going to be there for you. Even if that changes shape, even if that changes form, I’m always going to be a resource for you, because this is deeper than a job for me,’” said Duhl, who also serves as a program manager for PASS (Program for Advancing Scholarship and Service) and has plans to begin their doctoral studies at OSU in the fall. “I did feel, though, that it was a moral responsibility of mine [to resign], because I can’t do work that compromises my integrity as a person. … It’s not always easy to do the right thing, or the thing that you feel is right, but if you take the risk and do it, the universe will have your back. And really, so many things have happened in the last couple of days, it proved that I did the right thing and that I’m going to be okay.”

In the immediate aftermath, Duhl said they have seen a notable outpouring from their communities, both in messages of support and in monetary donations aimed at buoying them amid the temporary loss of income. They have also witnessed a growing push within certain faculty departments and especially the OSU student body itself to build and maintain the types of connections no longer supported institutionally by the university.

In a town hall Duhl attended this past weekend, they witnessed professors in one department working to build community with minority undergraduates, asking pointed questions about their needs and the ways they might be able to better provide for them moving forward. And though Duhl is no longer an OSU employee, they said they planned to continue to support the students they met and got to know in their former position.

“I felt like in this last year, with this group of students, I really stepped into that role of mentor, which means being more than someone you just meet with on Tuesday. It means I have students asking me about mental health resources. It means I have students saying, ‘Hey, I just went through this with a friend, can you give me some advice?’ I love teaching, and I love helping students through some of the things I’ve also been through,” Duhl said. “But, yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I don’t have to work for the university to continue to be in community with the students.”