Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed a bill that bars the state’s public colleges from requiring students to take “DEI-CRT” courses, with the Kansas Board of Regents tasked to define the term by the end of July. The restriction will apply to course requirements for the 2028–29 academic year, while allowing exemptions for certain program titles focused primarily on racial, ethnic, or gender studies. Higher education leaders and free-expression advocates warned the policy could limit classroom discussion about race and gender and could be implemented as broader censorship. PEN America’s Freedom to Learn director said the measure represents “educational censorship” entering the mainstream, and that the organization plans to monitor implementation. The Kansas move comes amid a wider set of faculty and classroom disputes over race, gender, and academic freedom across states, including court-driven pushback and resignation decisions tied to regents or system-level oversight of what faculty can teach.