The Billion-Dollar DEI Pivot Nobody's Talking About
CHEA shaped policy at thousands of colleges. Now it's quietly backing away—and leaving taxpayers with the bill.
Diogenes In Exile is reader-supported. Keep the lamp of truth burning by becoming a paying subscriber—or toss a few drachmas in the jar with a one-time or recurring donation. Cynics may live in barrels, but websites aren’t free!
The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) has quietly scrubbed its “diversity pledge” from the website—but like a guilty teen trying to shove enough of their mess into a closet to get their smartphone back, it’s not clear what CHEA is really cleaning up, yet directly or indirectly, the American taxpayer will pay for it.
CHEA is an accreditor of accreditors. Founded in 1996 by college and university presidents who wanted to prevent governmental oversight of accreditation, this organization has become a dominant gatekeeper that sets the tone for other accreditation bodies across the country and lobbies the federal government on issues involving higher education.
In May 2021, CHEA made its "DEI pledge,” concluding:
CHEA’s commitment to higher education, families, students, and other communities is grounded in the assurance of academic quality. We believe that the rich values of diversity, equity and inclusion are inextricably linked to quality assurance in higher education. Additionally, CHEA affirms that diversity, equity, and inclusion contribute to student success; and, that student success contributes to a better, healthier, and more enlightened, progressive society.
While that page still exists on its website, similar language has been removed from its more public-facing Mission, Vision, and Values page, which now reads more like a brochure for academic freedom, academic quality, and institutional autonomy.
But is that the reality? That’s harder to say.
On 1 August 2025, Nasser Paydar, former Biden Administration Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, stepped in as the new president of CHEA. Since taking the helm, Paydar has released a polished op-ed and a five-part video series, all variations on a single theme: “Trust us.” Trust earned through transparency, trust that protects curiosity, trust that widens participation instead of narrowing it. The phrasing is elegant, almost moving.
What you don’t hear is any mea culpa for the role it played in ramming DEI down the throats of higher education, or any acknowledgement of how that huge breach of trust will be mended, other than proceeding like nothing ever happened.
The timing is convenient. In June 2025, House Republicans advanced H.R. 2516, a bill that explicitly forbids accreditors from mandating DEI compliance. It passed committee on a party-line vote. If this bill is passed into law, which is a real possibility, CHEA’s old pledge would become illegal.
Potentially even more destabilizing for CHEA is H.R. 4054, which would codify another Trump Executive Order, creating space for states to choose industry-specific accreditors and directing student outcomes to be the metric of educational quality.
Against this backdrop, Paydar’s videos feel less like leadership and more like crisis PR, with each video amounting to three minutes or less of platitudes. Viewers searching for specifics—say, how CHEA plans to unwind the DEI standards it forced on thousands of campuses—will come away empty-handed.
If that wasn’t deliberate, it speaks to an embarrassing misread of the public assessment of this situation.
Perhaps CHEA assumes the average citizen isn’t paying attention or won’t notice. Time will tell if that’s a winning strategy, but in the meantime, taxpayers will foot the bill in more ways than one.
We Paid for the DEI Regime - Tax dollars funded Pell Grants and Federal Loans to higher education accredited by organizations CHEA-accredited, and under the Biden Administration, we paid for loan forgiveness on fraudulent degrees with similar accreditation pedigrees.
We’re Still Paying for the Cover-Up - CHEA presided over the development of race-based hiring, recruitment, and the formation of “BIAS-response teams,” and the bureaucrat bloat that went with them. But I don’t see it saying it will forgo further fees or pay back the wasted capital its accreditation process drained.
Our Students Paid in Lost Quality - Recent graduates are accustomed to self-censorship, but academic rigor, not so much.
Our Workforce Will Pay in Lost Competence - These same students will be rejected by employers or will require remedial training because their DEI diplomas in alternative pronouns are not a valuable skill. Even worse some professionals may be unqualified. Fields like social work or counseling have been thoroughly dominated by DEI while under the CHEA umbrella. The ramifications for that dereliction of duty are frightening.
Of course CHEA could argue that it only accredited the accreditors, it didn’t inspect the universities those organizations went on to approve, in the same way those groups would say they aren’t responsible for what the professors teach. At some point the public must wonder, what is the value of accreditation at all if it doesn’t bear any responsibility for ideological capture happening under its watch, especially an ideology that until five minutes ago it making statements of fealty to.
Now skeptics are left with a simple question: If CHEA’s new gospel is trust earned through transparency, why is its own about-face the least transparent pivot in recent higher-ed memory?
Paydar’s op-ed closes with a flourish: “The strength of American higher education has never come from mandates or compliance.” He’s right. Too bad the organization he now leads spent years trying to prove exactly the opposite—and still refuses to admit it.
Help Keep This Conversation Going!
Share this post on social media–it costs nothing but helps a lot.
Want more perks? Subscribe to get full access to the article archive.
Become a Paid Subscriber to get video and chatroom access.
Support from readers like you keeps this project alive!
Diogenes in Exile is reader-supported. If you find value in this work, please consider becoming a pledging/paid subscriber, donating to my GiveSendgo, or buying Thought Criminal merch. I’m putting everything on the line to bring this to you because I think it is just that important, but if you can, I need your help to keep this mission alive.
Already a Premium subscriber? Share your thoughts in the chat room.
About
Diogenes in Exile began after I returned to grad school to pursue a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at the University of Tennessee. What I found instead was a program saturated in Critical Theories ideology—where my Buddhist practice was treated as invalidating and where dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy was met with hostility. After witnessing how this ideology undermined both ethics and the foundations of good clinical practice, I made the difficult decision to walk away.
Since then, I’ve dedicated myself to exposing the ideological capture of psychology, higher education, and related institutions. My investigative writing has appeared in Real Clear Education, Minding the Campus, The College Fix, and has been republished by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. I also speak and consult on policy reform to help rebuild public trust in once-respected professions.
Occasionally, I’m accused of being funny.
When I’m not writing or digging into documents, you’ll find me in the garden, making art, walking my dog, or guiding my kids toward adulthood.