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The journalist Emma Green came to the University of Utah this past winter to explore how diversity initiatives

on college campuses are changing in response to political pressure. And it made sense for her to come to Utah.

Last year, of course, lawmakers passed a bill requiring state universities to eliminate diversity

programs and terminology and offices. In her piece for the

New Yorker, Green writes about visiting the university's student union building. It used to be

home to many of these programs, and Green described the space as in transition. It really works,

though, as a metaphor for this wider dismantling of diversity infrastructure all over the country.

And the student who showed her around wanted to remain anonymous.

She didn't want to attract the attention of immigration officials.

That right off the bat set the tone for the tour that I was about to get, the concern and the sense of recent events that were hanging over that space and the people who were there.

The student walked me around and she showed me the offices that had been and the offices that now were.

We went to one office that was on the first floor of the Student Union building,

which had been called the Center for Equity and Student Belonging.

Now it's basically a bunch of staff offices.

She showed me where she used to sit with her friends, and they would all sit around and just sort of chit-chat and talk about student affairs staff, their clubs, what they were working on, their schoolwork.

And there used to be some beautiful artwork in that space.

There was, for example, a piece that showed these women who each had their own legacy

of activism.

One was Angela Davis, who is the Marxist prison abolitionist.

Another was this woman Grace Lee Boggs, who was an Asian-American black power activist.

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