In April 2025, as ordered by the conservative-controlled Wisconsin State Legislature, the Legislative Audit Bureau in the state of Wisconsin released an audit of activities they deemed to be diversity, equity and inclusion activities that occurred across the 13 Universities of Wisconsin schools and the Universities of Wisconsin System Administration between January 2020 through April 2024. This report however did not have a clear definition of what is DEI. What becomes clear are you read the audit is the varied definitions of what are DEI here are four examples of activities that were considered DEI:
 - The Dean of Students office made its bias response position an assistant director to better support an inclusive campus environment and educate faculty, staff, and students on bias incidents, reporting, prevention, and resources.
- During the 2019-20 academic year, Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education hired new faculty, three of whom were people of color and one of whom had a visible disability. 
- Informed building occupants of the location of single-stall bathrooms.
- The School of Social Work held a virtual visit day for admitted Master of Social Work students.

Universities of Wisconsin System DEI Audit

Price points out that DEI offices being sites of precarity is highly ironic because while these offices are seen by many people on campuses as needing more institutional support and a clear definition of services they can tangibly provide, conservative politicians and political organizing in the United States see offices of DEI as ill-defined existential threats that need to be removed from universities.

University of Wisconsin - Madison

Price offers that the acronym DEI is poorly defined in American academia - what does it mean for an office to be an office of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Often the existence of these offices on collegiate campuses are positioned as the solution to the problem of rampant racism, ableism, misogyny, and queerphobia. Yet, in actuality, these offices often aren't given many tangible tools or actual avenues to address discrimination students are facing. This creates precarity because students, faculty and staff who are already vulnerable because of systemic oppression may be pointed towards an office of DEI by non-marginalized individuals as a resource when these offices have not been given sufficient tangible tools to address discrimination.

Offices of DEI and Precarity

Price, M. (2024). Crip Spacetime. Duke University Press.

Crip Spacetime

DEI and American Politics

Price notes that welcoming is often used as a way of signaling that a learning environment or classroom has a value of being a space for all students to learn. However, Sara Ahmed points out that the term "welcomed" creates this idea that if you are being welcomed into a space that signals that that space is not considered your home - Ahmed asks us to think about who we conceptualize as being "welcomed" into spaces compared who do we build spaces for and expect to already feel at home in spaces. Price notes that this division in who is being welcomed works to entrench precarity.

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