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FIRST ON FOX: Rep. Julia Letlow, R-La., a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate in Louisiana, is saying that she will ensure diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies will be rooted out of schools in her state if she wins.
However, Letlow’s past remarks and actions as a university faculty member, such as promises to open a DEI office if hired as a university president, and her past praise for DEI nationwide, have thrown these promises into question.
In a 2020 video from Letlow’s hiring process, when interviewing to be the president of the University of Louisiana Monroe, Letlow called the school’s record on faculty gender diversity “shameful,” praised DEI efforts around the country, said she wanted to open the school’s first DEI division and suggested that, if hired, she would want “a person around the table that is cognizant and fighting for diversity, equity and inclusion before any decision is made for the university.”
In January, The Daily Caller first reported that, prior to serving Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District, Letlow was in a communications position at UL Monroe, where she helped push DEI initiatives aimed at “diversifying marketing and comms teams” and “establish[ing] diverse content.” She also signed a statement embracing diversity as one of UL Monroe’s “core values” shortly after the death of George Floyd.
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“I was able to go to eight different universities and see some amazing work that other universities have already started – and you don’t even have to keep it to Louisiana, you can go nationwide to see the amazing effort people have been doing for years to address these issues,” Letlow told a panel interviewing her for the UL—Monroe presidency in 2020, in response to a question concerning the percentage of tenured female faculty. “So, one of the first things I would do – I believe we need a division on this campus, a division of diversity, equity and inclusion, with leadership that goes all the way to the top with a full staff because our issues are so great.”
During Letlow’s hiring process to potentially be the next president of UL—Monroe, she also spoke in a video meant to introduce herself to students, during which Letlow called herself a “strong and progressive leader” as the result of many years in higher ed.
The GOP primary race in Louisiana for the state’s open U.S. Senate seat, between Letlow and incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., has become a battle over who is more pro-Trump – and DEI has been a major proving point.
“While Liberal Letlow was pushing DEI policies at ULM, calling herself a ‘strong and progressive leader,’ Senator Cassidy was working with President Trump and others to secure billions of dollars for the state and bring conservative policies to Louisiana,” said a spokesperson for Cassidy’s campaign. “From no boys in girls sports, to co-sponsoring the Save America Act, the HALT Fentanyl Act, and the Working Families Tax Cuts.”
Cassidy himself has been accused of being anti-Trump, and when reached for comment on the matter, Letlow’s team argued that “any honest account of DEI in this race has to include Cassidy’s record vs Julia’s record.”
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Letlow holds both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from UL Monroe. According to her LinkedIn profile, she also held multiple positions at the university, first from 2007 to 2011 and then again from 2014 to 2021. These positions include the director of marketing and communications from 2015 to 2018, executive director of external affairs and strategic communications from 2018 to 2019, and executive assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach from 2019 to 2021 for the university.
In 2020, Letlow wanted to become UL Monroe’s president, during which she was subject to numerous interviews. One included questioning from a panel of UL Monroe officials, which was posted publicly on YouTube.
“Study after study has shown that the more diverse an organization is in its leadership, the more successful it is, and in businesses that converts to actual financial success,” one questioner from the panel began when probing Letlow. “In academia, you know, it’s in the way — all the ways, the metrics that it’s supposed to succeed in a community, and yet we see a lot of slowness in change … so my question is, how would you go about supporting diversity and equity in the faculty ranks?”
In response to the question, which focused specifically on the percentage of tenured female faculty at a university with a majority female student body, Letlow lamented that “we have an issue on this campus,” and promised to create a new DEI division to assist.
“There would need to be a strategic plan put in place on how to address those concerns that you just raised, and those metrics and those numbers, because they are shameful, truly, and I believe that having that strong [DEI] division, having that leadership, if you have a person around the table that is cognizant and fighting for diversity, equity and inclusion before any decision is made for the university, then that’s how you change. That’s how you recruit more faculty,” Letlow responded.
“There are a lot of people on this campus who have never heard of unconscious bias. They don’t know that it exists,” she continued.
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“I was looking at the numbers – we have 8% African-American faculty women on this campus. That’s not enough,” Letlow added later. “That does not reflect our student population, and so that would be number one for me. I’m glad you asked that question.”
Letlow’s remarks, which have been publicly available on Youtube but have only 218 views as of Tuesday, add fodder for critics like Cassidy who say she is not sufficiently an opponent of DEI. However, Letlow recently told local media that Cassidy’s claims that she is “woke” are “absolutely false” and that she has spent the past five years in Congress fighting against DEI.
“I saw [DEI] firsthand when I worked at the university,” Letlow told Louisiana First News this month. “DEI was presented to us as something that would help students achieve the American dream and when I quickly witnessed that it was hijacked by the radical left and turned into indoctrination and actually holding people down, I spent the last five years of Congress fighting against it.”
Meanwhile, in comments to Fox News Digital, Letlow’s campaign representatives said that “President Trump endorsed [Letlow] because he knows exactly where she stands.”
“While Letlow was fighting DEI in Congress, Bill Cassidy was working with Joe Biden to pass major federal legislation that funded DEI programs, imposed equity mandates, and embedded gender-identity language into federal policy,” the spokesperson continued, referring to the bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act passed in 2021. “Cassidy authored and voted for a $1.2 trillion spending bill loaded with DEI provisions, voted for the CHIPS Act’s DEI research requirements, and negotiated a gun bill whose grant programs the Trump administration later canceled for being DEI vehicles.”
Letlow’s husband was originally elected to represent Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District but died before he could enter office. Letlow was then chosen via a special election. In 2023, she sponsored the Parental Bill of Rights Act, requiring stricter transparency in school curriculums and allowing parents to challenge classroom materials. She also voted in favor of the End Woke Higher Education Act, which bars university accrediting organizations from requiring schools to adopt DEI policies as a condition.
Letlow’s team argued to Fox News Digital that she “has a clear record opposing DEI,” citing things like the congresswoman’s introduction of a federal Parental Bill of Rights, Letlow’s efforts to “strip DEI from the U.S. military,” and the congresswoman’s vote to reverse a Biden-era revision to Title IX regulations. Letlow’s campaign also said the congresswoman has “stood with President Trump” as he works to dismantle DEI across the federal government.
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“There is no place for woke ideology in schools,” Letlow posted on social media in 2024. “We will keep up the good fight, our children’s futures depend on it.”
But, in January, The Daily Caller also reported on records it obtained showing Letlow’s time as a university employee at UL—Monroe included promoting DEI initiatives.
In a January 2020 email to staff from schools in the University of Louisiana system, Letlow reportedly asked officials to attend a “follow-up meeting” to an “Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Workshop” held the prior semester because they had been “charged with discussing a plan to move these initiatives forward.” These included recommendations of “diversifying marketing and comms teams” and “establish[ing] diverse content” in university publications that “lack representation of the students it serves.”
The Letlow campaign told Fox News Digital that the email Letlow sent was standard operating procedure, and she was just doing her job as an executive assistant to the president for external affairs and community outreach by sending the follow-up email to coordinate attendance for the workshop from the prior semester.
In their report, The Daily Caller also highlighted a statement put out by UL Monroe shortly after the death of George Floyd, titled “ULM condemns racism, embraces diversity,” which was signed by Letlow and 11 other university leaders, including the interim president. The letter stated that “integrity must include condemning racism and racially motivated violence.”
Letlow’s previous membership with the National Communication Association (NCA) came under scrutiny from The Daily Caller as well. The Daily Caller reported the NCA issued a letter in 2020 which slammed statements condemning racism as “White self-reflexivity” and argued that such remarks must be paired with “strategic action” to combat things like “police brutality, Black death,” and “White normativity.” The letter went on to call the Trump administration’s use of the term “Chinese virus” to refer to COVID-19 “racist and xenophobic” and referred to White people as “privileged by Whiteness.”
The Letlow campaign contested she had anything to do with the letter, which came from the NCA’s Diversity Council, not from the NCA as an organization. A copy of the letter reviewed by Fox News Digital confirmed that Letlow was not a signatory.
“Julia is not responsible for statements issued by a professional association because she was a member of it. She has not been a member in five years, and past membership did not mean endorsement of every position that group took,” her campaign said in a statement to Fox News Digital.
When reached for comment about her remarks and the criticism that has resulted about Letlow’s past actions relating to DEI, the White House referred Fox News Digital to the Republican National Committee (RNC), which declined to comment on the matter.
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