As a university faculty member and librarian for more than 20 years, I have dedicated my career to helping students succeed. As a doctoral student in Educational Leadership at Eastern Kentucky University, I am deeply concerned about Kentucky House Bill 4 , which aims to prohibit diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in Kentucky’s public postsecondary education institutions.
This bill misrepresents the purpose of DEI in education and threatens to deprive students — both those I teach and those like myself — of essential learning experiences.
Last semester, I taught “Foundations of Learning,” a required course for all incoming students. In one lesson, I used short YouTube videos to introduce a simple but profound concept: we all have aspects of our identities that shape our experiences. One video featured a student with a vision impairment struggling to navigate inaccessible websites. Another told the story of a young woman from Eastern Kentucky, proud of her dialect but pressured to hide it. A third highlighted a first-generation college student who felt lost until she found support and belonging through a campus diversity office…