Flags are never just fabric. While they may be visually simple, they are symbolically complex statements of allegiance, identity and aspiration. The same is true for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Emerging from student and community activism that led to landmark civil rights legislation, DEI reflects a long-standing push to transform values into action. Each term in the DEI acronym stands on its own as a distinct idea. But together, they work as an interconnected framework to expand access, level fairness and ensure dignity. Like flags, DEI efforts illuminate that there is more than one truth about who belongs, who decides and what a community values.
As an organizational culture strategist and chief diversity officer in higher education, I’m curious about how campuses and communities experience belonging through symbols — like flags — and how the promise of inclusion interacts with the everyday structures that shape who feels seen, safe and supported.
In Utah and across the country, flags wave as both official declarations protected by law or as bold symbols of protest in the fight for visibility. In March 2025, Utah passed HB77 (Flag Display Amendments), which restricts the display of certain flags in public schools and government buildings. Only a specified list of flags is now permitted: those representing government, history, education, the military, the Olympics or those tied to official facility use. LGBTQ+ pride flags are excluded under this law.
Around the same time, possibly inspired by the state’s new flag redesign — and perhaps in quiet defiance of HB77 — Salt Lake City’s elected leadership sought a way to signal inclusion, respect and representation in the state’s capital city. The result: three reimagined civic flags featuring the sego lily, Utah’s state flower, overlaid on designs of the Juneteenth, pride and transgender flags.
Salt Lake City Council Chair Chris Wharton noted in the May 6 Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office press release: “Like other civic symbols, these flags reflect our shared humanity and the values that help everyone feel they belong — no matter their background, orientation or beliefs.”
We don’t have to look far to see the double edge of flag symbolism. The Confederate flag, which originated during the Civil War, continues to fly in parts of Utah and throughout the American South not only as an example of heritage, as some claim, but also as a statement of resistance to inclusion. This flag, with its divisive history, is a stark contrast to the Juneteenth flag, which honors the delayed freedom of enslaved Black people in Galveston, Texas. Together, they reveal how flags can carry competing stories about identity, struggle and hope.
Even how the American flag is displayed and treated provokes political, cultural and emotional tensions locally, nationally and globally. In 2023, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox ordered flags at state facilities to be lowered to half-staff in recognition of Israeli victims of the Oct. 7 attacks, part of a deadly conflict still impacting both Palestinian and Israeli communities. This flag directive could be framed as an act of empathy on one level, yet one that also ignites controversy over whose suffering prompts official acknowledgment. Following President Jimmy Carter’s death in December 2024, the same half-staff gesture overlapped with incoming president Donald Trump’s 2025 inauguration; flags were ordered to return to full-staff status for the Jan. 20 event.
These examples show that flags don’t just flutter without purpose or intent. Their presence, placement and position signal significant moments to prompt reflection on what and who a nation chooses to remember or ignore.
Like words, flags are shorthand for values, histories and hopes. They can unite or divide, include or exclude. DEI is undergoing political, cultural and social erasure similar to Utah’s pride flag ban. It is being strategically redefined through executive orders, legal challenges and political rhetoric as part of a coordinated effort to dismantle DEI initiatives across federal agencies, educational institutions and the private sector. Like flags that have weathered countless storms over time, the values and principles of DEI can, will, and must endure. This current backlash does not mark the end of DEI. It is an invitation to reimagine it.
Flags tell the story of who we are and hope to become. Hopefully, the city’s new flags will not be dismissed as a malicious or disrespectful workaround to the new state law but as a thoughtful, compassionate, prophetic declaration for its upcoming role as host of the Winter Olympic Games for a second time in 2034. What better time to show the world that inclusion is not some random loophole, but a core value rooted in Utah’s civic identity.
As Utah and Salt Lake City keep growing through birth, immigration and migration, the work of inclusion and belonging must continuously improve, too. The state flag redesign process, which included civic engagement, artistic collaboration and public input, offers a practical model of viewpoint diversity to guide us on how we can keep updating our symbols, systems, and structures to better reflect the people they represent and serve.
Let’s reimagine together.
(Tamara N. Stevenson) Tamara N. Stevenson
Tamara N. Stevenson, Ed.D., is the vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion and chief diversity officer at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, Utah. She has taught in communication and educational leadership programs for more than 25 years at institutions in Michigan, Ohio, and Utah. Dr. Stevenson was recently selected for the 2025-26 American Council on Education Fellows Program, a distinguished fellowship preparing the next generation of higher education leaders.
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