A Western Kentucky University employee admitted on camera that the school's social work program still includes mandatory DEI coursework despite a state law that was supposed to eliminate the ideology from public higher education.
The College Fix reported on the undercover video published by Accuracy in Media on March 9. In the footage, Bailey Cooke, an office associate for the social work school, told an investigator that program prerequisites include a "DEI course" that remains in place despite Kentucky's 2025 ban.
"We're accredited by the CSWE, which is the Council on Social Work Education," Cooke explained. "If you go to a college that has a Social Work program that is accredited by the CSWE, yes — it's in their curriculum standards that we teach about ADEI: antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion. That doesn't have anything to do with what the government would like us to do. We are literally required in order to maintain our accreditation."
House Bill 4 prohibits public universities from spending money on DEI offices and programs. It also bars schools from requiring employees to endorse or condemn specific ideologies or viewpoints. But the law apparently contains gaps that universities are exploiting.
Adam Guillette, president and founder of Accuracy in Media, told The College Fix that the problem extends far beyond one Kentucky school.
"We see this in nearly every state that has banned DEI and in many instances, it's not that they're breaking the law, but rather that these laws were horribly written," Guillette said. He noted that Kentucky's law "doesn't ban DEI from the curriculum so that enables professors in any class they'd like — it could be math class — to promote identity politics, to promote the idea that America is systemically racist, that capitalism is inherently racist into every facet of education."
The Council on Social Work Education accredits over 900 programs nationally. Its 2022 guidelines include "Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" as a required competency. Programs must demonstrate "specific and continuous efforts" to promote their DEI curriculum. The accreditor told The College Fix that it will not update these standards until 2029.
Spokesperson Matt Hooper insisted the organization "has not and will not ask any program or individual to break any laws" and claimed it is working with programs in affected states to find compliance solutions.
Accuracy in Media has released similar undercover videos at other Kentucky institutions. Anothervideo published last week shows a Northern Kentucky University employee making the same admission about accreditation requirements mandating DEI instruction.
Guillette said the undercover work is putting pressure on universities and angering parents who discover they are paying tuition for schools that continue pushing the ideology.
Western Kentucky University did not respond to The College Fix's requests for comment.
The Western Kentucky case demonstrates that state level DEI bans accomplish nothing when accreditors and federal bureaucracies continue mandating the ideology through back channels. Purging wokism from American institutions requires confronting the entire civil rights regulatory apparatus that enables unelected bodies to impose ideological requirements on universities regardless of what voters or legislators decide. Until the Right moves beyond symbolic bans and dismantles the legal infrastructure of the Civil Rights Revolution itself, the Left will continue using accreditation, disparate impact liability, and administrative mandates to enforce its agenda through every institution in American life.
