This professor wants to sue ASU, says he was subjected to harm by attending mandated DEI training

SAM DINGMAN: Back in 2024, ASU philosophy professor Owen Anderson filed a lawsuit against the Arizona Board of Regents, over what he said was a university-mandated DEI training. He alleged that the training — which was called “Inclusive Communities,” and discussed subjects like white privilege and transformative justice — imposed a worldview based on definitions of race, and was therefore unconstitutional.

An ASU spokesman at the time denied that the training was a requirement, and Anderson’s lawsuit was eventually dismissed by the Arizona Court of Appeals.

But now, he and his attorneys at the Goldwater Institute are asking the state Supreme Court to allow the lawsuit to proceed. And in light of the ongoing debate about the role of DEI in academia, we were curious to learn more about professor Anderson’s objections. I spoke with him here in our studios recently, and he told me that he has no problem with the individual components of DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — in theory. But, he said …

Abraham Silva

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Handout

OWEN ANDERSON: They're used in order to teach the Marxist dialectic of oppressor versus oppressed. That society is divided into those two groups, and then you can identify those groups based on skin color, which is definitely one of the views out there, but it's not the only way to interpret history or society. And so it shouldn't be given a privileged position in the university as the only view that's taught.

DINGMAN: Just to ask, do you feel that there's a way of looking at history where white people don't have a track record of subjugating people with other skin colors?

ANDERSON: Well, you'd have to look at particular time periods in history. So there certainly are times where that happened, for example, the Atlantic slave trade. But the problem is that it tends to become a very selective interpretation of history in order to fit the Marxist dialectic framework. And so any view that says we're more than just material things, we also include a soul, for example, would give a different interpretation of history.

DINGMAN: I suppose, though, somebody who is supportive of the idea that is the proper framing could say, well, when it comes to, let's say, things like race and gender, there have been historically documented cases where it was, you know, women weren't allowed to have credit cards, for example. And you mentioned the transatlantic slave trade. Like that, obviously that's a very extreme example, but it is obviously a very real thing. Whereas when it comes to questions of the soul and things of this nature, that's less documentable and provable.

ANDERSON: Yeah, that probably is what a materialist would say, but think about the actual arguments that were given against the slave trade. It was that these are human souls, was usually the word that was used. And therefore slavery, that slave system that was being used, is morally wrong. But interestingly, for your listeners, I'm excited about talking about these issues, but this is the case that we want to argue in front of the court, but it's not the case we're going for right now. What's in front of the court is, does the content engage in race blame?

DINGMAN: But let me ask you about this in the context of your field of study, professor, because you are a Christian philosopher, right? The reason I bring up your field of study is because it strikes me that there could be a sort of a discontinuity between the idea which you're expressing, which is that like this particular moral judgment should not shape the policies of the university. But in your classes, presumably, you are arguing for a certain moral framework to guide the belief systems and actions of your students.

ANDERSON: Well, no, I mean, in my job, I don't do that. I mean, my job, let's say I'm teaching an introduction to ethics class right now. I view my job as a philosopher is to help the students think through the major viewpoints that are out there. If anything, you know, you'd label me a classical liberal. I believe the state university, which is funded by all the different taxpayers with lots of different opinions, isn't the place where one view should be the only view.

DINGMAN: So it seems like this notion of racial blame is the piece of the DEI training that is most objectionable to you. Can you give me an example of like what you encountered in the training that adds up to this idea of race-based blaming?

ANDERSON: Yeah, and that really would be, that's the only issue. We're not saying Owen Anderson personally doesn't like this training. We're saying this training violates state law, which prohibits race blame. And I think we would normally say, yeah, race blame. Of course you can't judge an entire group of people based on their skin color.

But when you get into the training, what I encountered were segments that had to do with the problem of whiteness and white supremacy. And again, we say all of us are against white supremacy, but white supremacy defined as if you're white, you're a white supremacist because you either are consciously one or you're unconsciously one.

DINGMAN: OK, but supporters of DEI trainings like this talk about it as not an assignment of blame, but rather an introduction to people who may not be familiar with these things, a sense of context, some historical context for the lived experiences of people who do look like them and who don't look like them.

Do you think that it is an inherently negative thing to give people that kind of context?

ANDERSON: No, not at all. And I think any good teacher intuitively does that already with the classroom they're in. What I'm emphasizing is the individuality of it. So I don't go into a class and I look at a student and think I know them based on what I can assess.

DINGMAN: But so to be clear, let's say that in these training materials, rather than expressing blame towards white people for various historical injustices, there was language to the effect of the United States was founded on the principles of Christianity, and that guides and informs the policies at this university. Would you object to that as well?

ANDERSON: You just asked a question. I could say yes or no. You know, most of the people writing and signing the Constitution went to Christian churches. That's true. But then you'll say, well, let's look into some nuances, some of the differences of denominations, some of them who maybe just went out of tradition and they're actually deists. And so you get into some of those qualifications.

DINGMAN: But there are similar gradations within whiteness, right? I mean, just as it is probably good for some Christians to know that, hey, this faith has been weaponized in devastating ways in the past sometimes. Is it not also good for some white people who bear no animus towards other races or anything like that, also be made aware like, hey, just so you know, sometimes people have used the skin color that you just happened to have been born into to do some pretty horrific things.

ANDERSON: Yeah, the professor, English professor Shelby Steele makes this point. He says that slavery wasn't America's original sin. America's original sin was the use of race to gain power. And that it continues to be done by the left today. So they weaponize race in these kinds of training, he would argue.

DINGMAN: I'm imagining that somebody listening to this might hear you say, that's what people who support DEI are doing is using race to gain power. I imagine what they might say is, it's not about using race to gain power. It is about acknowledging the role of race in creating a power imbalance.

ANDERSON: Yeah, and they would be right if they said that, but the training and the screenshots we provided show where it goes beyond that. So we can't imagine, like, you know, in our minds, I say, I think DEI training should just be saying this. And maybe you say a true thing, that'd be good training, but that's not what this is, right? So we're only going to court over this training.

DINGMAN: So you filed your original lawsuit in 2024?

ANDERSON: Yep.

DINGMAN: You are, as we're speaking today, still employed by ASU. You have not taken the training.

ANDERSON: Well, I did take it, but I didn't complete the quizzes.

DINGMAN: You didn't complete the quizzes?

ANDERSON: And they did take the quizzes down right away. They agreed, because that does compel speech. That is one of the things you can't do as an employer. You have a limited amount of things you can do, but you can make employees sit through training. but you can't compel speech or belief. And that's where the quizzes stepped over their bounds. So they agreed to that already. But the content ...

DINGMAN: But why does that not solve the problem? If you effectively sat through a training at the end of which, in your case, there was not a test you had to pass in a literal sense, how does that not address the issues that you're raising?

ANDERSON: That's a good question, because that's what the basically ASU's lawyers, Perkins Coie, said. I didn't face any harm of any kind. For example, I'm still employed. I didn't get disciplined or have a letter put in my file or anything like that. But the harm, in any other circumstance, for anyone else, we would understand the harm was being subjected to racism. So I was subjected to a traumatic experience, which is itself the harm.