The board that oversees Nevada’s public colleges and universities is pulling from its code mention of a council responsible for much of the higher education system’s diversity efforts.

The Board of Regents, in a 12-1 vote Oct. 17, decodified the Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access (IDEA) Council, meaning it will no longer be included in the Nevada System of Higher Education’s (NSHE) governing documents and policies. 

The five-person IDEA council is responsible for keeping the system’s diversity statistics as well as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives among students, staff and faculty. Since its inception, the council has held systemwide anti-discrimination training and drafted the system’s Juneteenth resolution, among other inclusivity efforts. The council is led by the chancellor and includes representatives from each NSHE institution.  

The Board of Regents is responsible for overseeing Nevada’s seven public colleges and universities as well as the Desert Research Institute. 

“I’ll tell you what this is and what it’s not. What it is, is an effort to clean up the code and what is not, is an effort to minimize the importance of any of the issues that these councils have addressed in the past,” NSHE Chancellor Matt McNair, who sought approval of the change, said during a special meeting of the Board of Regents on Oct. 17. 

NSHE provided a statement that said the vote “does not end any councils or their work. Those efforts will continue through these groups, as well as numerous other processes and channels within our shared governance environment, in ways that better reflect current needs.”

McNair said that the move was part of an effort to streamline NSHE’s 600-page handbook, pointing out that several other councils are not mentioned in the manual. However, some regents raised questions about its timing, especially given how the Trump administration has increasingly targeted DEI programs, threatening to pull funding from schools with diversity initiatives and launching investigations into schools with minority programs.

“I’m just concerned that the perception of doing this at this time may create a message that is a bit unintended,” said Regent Amy J. Carvalho, a member of the IDEA council and the lone vote against the change.

It comes as several Nevada colleges have restructured or entirely eliminated their DEI programs since the start of the Trump administration. Earlier this month, UNLV announced it will be reorganizing its diversity initiatives, and this May, Nevada State University eliminated its office as part of a restructuring effort that began in 2022. 

Faculty at local colleges have pushed back against those changes, with the UNLV Faculty Senate issuing a letter in support of diversity and inclusion programs. 

During the regents meeting, McNair, referring to the diversity council, said he was going to “continue using that group to talk about how we can more clearly define our values … in ways that don’t attract unwanted attention.”

McNair hinted during the meeting at eliminating the council, saying “we may get rid of it eventually once we get through this first phase of having them redefine some of these things for us.” He added the caveat that he will continue to meet with people on the council and that the issue of diversity comes up in many other spaces.

It’s not the first time the idea of eliminating the council has been floated. In September 2024, Regent Bryan Books submitted an agenda item to “sunset” the IDEA committee, much to the chagrin of local progressive organizations, such as NAACP Las Vegas and Battle Born Progress. 

Regents at last week’s meeting were broadly in support of the change with two of them, Carol Del Carlo and Joseph Arrascada, saying they wanted to support McNair’s leadership. Del Carlo said it would help achieve “uniformity in the way the councils are formed” and the board could always reverse its decision later. 

Regent Patrick Boylan, who has faced backlash for comments against transgender athletes, welcomed the change, saying he “had issues with the DEI before.” 

“We had to be politically correct. We had to do this. You know, this is just decodifying this stuff,” Boylan said. 

Carvalho questioned the change and its messaging. Carvalho said she’s heard of students from different backgrounds — transgender, Jewish and Hispanic — expressing concerns about their safety in the current political climate. According to an NSHE dashboard, more than 60 percent of the system’s approximate 105,000 students belong to a “historically minoritized” group.

“I think that there’s just a lot of trepidation right now from many in our campus communities about their sense of belonging and their place on our campuses,” Carvalho said.  

During the Oct. 17 meeting, the board also voted to decodify the Public Safety Council and Business Officers Council, as part of efforts to streamline the NSHE handbook. 

A brief on the policy changes says “removing operational details about functional councils will make the manual more readable, coherent, and focused on governance essentials while reducing the administrative burden of maintaining nonpolicy content through formal revision cycles.”