Higher Education’s Response to Trump’s Crackdown on DEI

Written by Aoibhin Holmes

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) has been one of the most hotly contested issues in the initial months of President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump has vowed to eradicate DEI from public life. With two enacted executive orders targeting DEI and labelling it “wasteful,” the battle against this organizational framework is well underway.

The DEI crackdown has taken many forms. DEI related roles increased by 55% in 2020, only to be decimated by a recent surge of layoffs that brought attrition rates in the field to 33%. Trump has instructed federal agencies to avoid using a list of words and phrases that have been flagged as referencing anything related to DEI, including “feminism,” “Black,” “pronouns,” and “antiracist.” Federal web pages and government memos have altered their language in accordance. The government is just one entity undergoing a purge of perceived “woke initiatives.”

However, Trump’s war on DEI is expected to hit universities especially hard.

In recent years, many third-level institutions rolled out increased efforts to diversify both their faculty and student bodies. In the summer of 2020, following major protests against the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and other Black Americans who were targeted unjustly by the police, universities were called upon to confront the systemic racism present in their own institutions.

Real progress had been made; student protests across the country spurred action from administrators, eliciting renewed commitment to diversity and updated DEI initiatives. But now, this progress is being threatened. The Department of Education (DOE) has begun investigating over 50 universities for “racial preferences and stereotypes” in their admissions policies, scholarships, and programs.

The DOE has also issued a letter prohibiting colleges from promoting diversity efforts, threatening the loss of federal funding– with a deadline attached. With the Supreme Court decision in 2023 that declared affirmative action unconstitutional, these renewed efforts to slash DEI in universities may be the nail in the coffin for the protection and upliftment of marginalized students.

Universities have had varying responses to this recent suppression of DEI initiatives, but acquiescence seems to be the current protocol. Many colleges are bending to Trump’s strong pressure to reduce or eliminate DEI initiatives for a number of reasons: to preemptively avoid an investigation, maintain federal funding, or to remain in the President’s good graces.

Some have altered their language: Northeastern has renamed its Office for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion to Belonging at Northeastern. The University of Pennsylvania’s graduate and undergraduate programs have scrubbed references to DEI on their online platforms, with the prestigious Wharton School reducing its web page on DEI to a mere three-sentence commitment to “equal opportunity.”

Others have taken more extreme actions; Ohio State University has eliminated its DEI office and programming altogether, whereas North Carolina public schools have removed DEI related classes from their core requirements. We can expect these trends to continue as Trump pursues his crusade against DEI.

As students at Boston College, we must stay aware that these modifications are being made, because BC is no exception to this erasure of DEI. Earlier this semester, BC revised its Office of Institutional Diversity website, redacting information about DEI practices, newsletter archives that highlighted diversity on campus, and names of members of diversity committees.

It also removed an initiative from its mission page that stated its goal to ensure “fair treatment” and “belonging” for everyone in the BC community. These differences are subtle, but they indicate that BC is adopting a more permissive outlook on the erosion of DEI at our university.

Though they are few, there are some universities that are refusing to be forced into breaking their commitments to diversity. The President of Mount Holyoke College, Danielle Holley, issued a statement calling the crackdown “unconstitutional” and urged other higher education leaders to stand up to the administration’s attempt to intimidate them into masking or eliminating their DEI efforts.

“To basically comply with things that are not within our values simply because we feel a threat of investigation is something that we should not be doing as the higher education community,” Holley said.

Harvard University President Alan M. Garber has also publicly shared his belief in the importance of diversity recently at the university’s Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging Forum.

Hope can also be found in the heavy criticism and pushback to Trump’s crackdown. Advocates for DEI are mobilizing to block these efforts. The ACLU have affirmed that they intend to resist Trump’s attacks on their efforts to pave the way for racial justice, laying out in detail their plans to counter cutbacks of DEI in courts, in Congress, and in states and municipalities.

This crackdown is an attempt to roll back the progress that has been made in uplifting students from marginalized communities. It aims to eliminate the concept of social justice in higher education under the guise of equal opportunity and merit-based opportunity. Universities are being strong-armed into self-policing their language and cutting back diversity in order to appease Trump and hang onto their federal funding, which is critical to many universities across the country.

This change will not go unnoticed, but with recent restrictions placed on student protests, it’s unclear what form the opposition to these anti-DEI endeavors shall take. Will we see increased tensions between students and administrators? Will there be an abrupt decrease in POC and LGBTQ+ student enrollment in higher education? Will universities soon be required to eliminate DEI initiatives altogether?

It is difficult to speculate what havoc this crackdown might wreak on the higher education landscape of the U.S., but it is evident that Trump does not plan on letting up soon. We can only hope that more universities speak up against these DEI cutbacks and refuse to accept this attack on their commitment to support their students and faculty who belong to minority groups.