MATC DEI: Anthony Cruz and the Dangers of Preemptive Compliance
As the culture wars are increasingly replaced by more tangible warfare from ICE agents and other state actors, we recall the paths that led us to this moment. Immigration Customs Enforcement wasn’t escalated in a day, and political figures didn’t emerge from the supple womb of the Obama years having ceded zero ground to fascist creep. There were victims of these culture wars, and recently among them were college Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
For half a decade DEI became a significant boogey man on the right. Synthesizing bullet points from anti-trans rhetoric with other anti-signifier precursor “critical race theory” the anti DEI panic was pervasive. This culture war played a significant part leading to some bombshell Supreme Court cases. Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard declared affirmative action in college recruitment unconstitutional, and helped provide precedent for Ames v. Ohio Department of State Services to reject DEI measures in higher education. Not satisfied with these rulings, Project 2025 also provided guidance for a future republican administration to continue the attack.
When Trump came into office in 2025 he wasted no time. Initially crafting Executive Order 4173, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity, and soon followed by sending a Dear Colleague Letter to K-12 and higher education institutions. These moves were threats that would strip federal funding for institutions that used “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences” (referring to inclusion initiatives for non-white people.) This threat knocked the fear of god into mostly white administration at these colleges, and many of them quickly cut DEI and multicultural offices to save face.
Thankfully the courts stepped in and declared that these were unconstitutional in August of 2025. The Trump administration challenged this ruling, but in January the appeal was withdrawn. This means that for now, colleges are safe to continue to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion measures if they have not already made the cuts to that programing. It also means colleges that already cut these programs no longer provide services to these communities.Perhaps the mostly white administrations never really cared to understand these initiatives in the first place? Maybe they were always performative gestures? They are the kind of initiatives that one happily participates in when they provide good PR, but as soon as federal money is threatened they must not seem all that important anymore.
Milwaukee Area Technical College
The only predominately non-white serving institution in the state, MATC was one of the programs that cut their DEI and Multicultural programs. For their part, the student body and Local 212 Union didn’t let it happen without a fight. Unfortunately, Dr. Anthony Cruz and the predominantly white board of directors chickened out and started pushing for changes immediately. This also followed his push to remove work-from-home positions and the firing of those staff members who would not, or could not, comply. Now that there is no threat, and we don’t have those programs, one has no choice but to feel like the only people who paid a consequence for these lawsuits were the employees who worked there, and the students no longer being serviced. The following is a list of the 4 employees most directly impacted by the closure of the Multicultural Office. I’m summarizing much of the information reported by the Hispanic News Network.
Floyd Griffin: African-American Student Services Specialist: a position that provided services that uniquely helped Black students adjust to student life, and worked to provide programming that celebrated that culture. Griffin had previously filed a discrimination suit against the administration in March 2025 having been denied a promotion on the grounds of race. Griffin currently works at MATC in a different capacity.
Tanya Torres: American Indian Student Services Specialists: Similarly served American Indian students and provided programming that celebrated culture. Torres was frequently seen around campus wearing traditional beaded earrings. Torres was not rehired with the college.
Der Vang: Asian American Student Services Specialists: MATC has a history of serving Hmong residents, and Vang was a significant part of that service. Her removal came after 27 years with the college.
Annabel Chavez: Latinx Student Services Specialists: Chavez and her position were instrumental in celebrating Latin American culture on campus, and provided significant contribution to the initiative to bring MATC in compliance as a 25% Spanish-speaking institution. She had previously reported harassment over her nearly 20 years with the college. She has retained her position as a part-time faculty member.
The Trump administration’s unlawful and unenforceable request to remove DEI initiatives was the stated reason that this office was cut, though it has since been replaced by the Office of Community Impact. This new office is overseen by Vice President of Student Engagement and Community Impact Dr. Micheal Rogers. Rogers has been named in discrimination complaints from these former employees.
The new office may provide the next generation of students with some structures of support. It claims to prioritize “Intercultural and Campus Programming” as one of its 3 primary goals, and will provide “cultural engagement and community-building across all MATC campuses.” Of the listed community partners for this new office both African American Leadership Alliance of Milwaukee, and Ho-Chunk Nation Milwaukee Branch Office are listed. This office will not assuage the feelings from community members that leadership has dismissed specific cultural services to be unnecessary expenditures, and that specific groups may require specific assistance. The damage has already been done.
It Takes a Village (To Ruin Another Village)
Dr. Anthony Cruz has faced the brunt of the anger following these controversial cuts and firings. To that we say, ‘good!’ The buck stops with him after all, and he is the president of the college (with an annual salary of $200,000.) It is not only him who is responsible. When he took over in 2025, he had the opportunity to start and steer the ship back towards equity for the college. His predecessor Dr. Vicki Martin left after 10 years, cashing out, and leaving on her own terms, and without being pressured by the public.
A public scandal was brewing however, as Martin’s final year was marred in controversy. In 2024 the administration fired the first ever DEI Officer, Dr. Eva Martinez Powless, after she blew the whistle on systemic discrimination against employees of color. In early January of the following year she and her legal team filed a lawsuit against the Technical College for “violations of Dr. Martinez Powless’s right to equal employment, and unlawful discriminatory and retaliatory employment practices against her.” This lawsuit is still ongoing, and trial will likely occur over the summer. So, while we cannot say anything definitive about this incident, I will say that the pattern of disrespect towards Multicultural/DEI initiatives at MATC has historical precedent, reported by the Journal Sentinel in October 2024
The response from Cruz was less than helpful, but the trouble isn’t just that he did not respond with the proper words. With a new administration there was hope from activists on campus that there would be a “cleaning of the house” of some of the administrators who have been implicated in bullying and discrimination over the years, including alleged racial harasser Dr. Philip King. There has been consistent reporting that the administration has created “a culture of fear and retaliation.” There is a lot more to be said on the problems with the Dr. Cruz administration and you can look forward to more reporting on that soon.
What Does It Say When We Relinquish Our Responsibility to Racial Justice?
The dismantling of the multicultural office was completed after the initial request from the Trump administration was declared unconstitutional in court. An administration unwilling to stand behind the diversity initiatives it championed in the times that are good is straightforward cowardice. In many ways “coward” is much too gracious. The ability to throw away efforts that assist marginalized groups and will have little effect on yourself is callous. It displays a commitment to injustice in the name of comfort.
MATC has a lot going for it as an institution. It has a highly reputable nursing program, and has helped countless residents of Milwaukee County to find new careers in important fields. They offer an affordable education, and have an unusually high number of instructors of color which we know is important to the academic pursuits of minorities. The college has a strong faculty union that also supports students through its FASTFund organization. This service often collaborates with the institutional support found in the Student Resources Center (that is complete with a food pantry AND has its own dedicated social worker for students.)
It seems however that all of these positives are not because of administration, but increasingly in spite of them. If you have ever had a job before, you know that any work you can feel proud of is not coming from your stupid-ass boss, but because of the people doing the actual work! These instructors of color, and people who do so many other important jobs on campus are constantly fighting for dignity from their supervisors out of dedication to the mission of MATC to serve students and the community.
Dr. Anthony Cruz and his team preemptively complied with an order from our fascist president. This is unfortunately not limited to him, but is a choice offered to all of us every day when we do not take the active step to oppose authoritarianism when it manifests in our lives. Milton Mayer also talks about this in his book They Thought That They Were Free. We are, and have been constantly presented with little compromises with a fascist agenda that we can justify in some way. I encourage all of us to reflect on places in our lives where this is so. This will be vital in the fight against fascism going forward
Few of us have the power that Dr Cruz does, and thus he has the greater capacity to hurt more people. His actions indicate that people of color in the school he serves at are expendable in the name of the bottom line. No, he is not himself the author of these racist attacks on higher education, but his willingness to go along with them without a fight makes him a collaborator. His failure to stand firm against these attacks allow us to conclude that he has more in common with the Trump administration than he does the student body he has so easily sacrificed. MATC deserves better.
