If the Trump administration’s goal was to sow chaos among America’s colleges, it has definitely succeeded. Last month, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights sent a letter to universities explaining the agency’s view that, because of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down affirmative action, any consideration of race—not just in admissions, but in hiring, scholarships, support, “and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life”—is now illegal. Even race-neutral policies intended to increase racial diversity are not allowed, the department stated. It gave schools two weeks to comply with the new guidance or risk losing their federal funding.
The reaction from universities could best be described as “panicked bewilderment,” Peter Lake, a law professor at Stetson University, in Florida, told me. “There’s a sense of, Should we run, hide, or counterattack?” The first challenge was figuring out what changes the department had in mind. Because the letter partly targeted “DEI,” which has no legal definition, university administrations said they weren’t sure what it applied to. Many will likely get rid of the most overt and controversial forms of DEI, such as required diversity statements for faculty, but beyond that lies an immense gray area.
Then there was the question of whether universities had to comply at all. This type of document—called a “Dear Colleague” letter—states an agency’s interpretation of the law, not the law itself. Derek Black, a law professor at the University of South Carolina, told me that the letter’s definition of what the Supreme Court has outlawed goes far beyond what the Court actually ruled. “The Court is not saying that you can’t pursue diversity, but that’s what the letter says,” he said. Already, education groups have sued to block the letter’s enforcement. The American Council on Education, a nonprofit trade group that represents universities, has told institutions that if they were following the law before Donald Trump took office, they’re still in compliance now.
Still, no school wants to be the first to find out the hard way whether that’s true. This, combined with the amorphousness of the term DEI, and the fact that so much of it was performative to begin with, has led to a flurry of nomenclature modifications—a kind of anti-woke theater. The University of Alaska system instructed departments to replace the words DEI and affirmative action with terms that communicate the “values of equal access and equal opportunity for all.” Carnegie Mellon University’s old DEI page is now titled “Inclusive Excellence.” Northwestern University has scrubbed almost all mentions of diversity from its websites. The University of Pennsylvania edited its Diversity and Inclusion website, removing most of its content and renaming it “Belonging at Penn.” The school’s former vice dean for diversity, equity, and inclusion is now the vice dean for academic excellence and engagement. The University of Southern California merged its Office of Inclusion and Diversity into its Culture Team. The University of Arizona deleted the words diversity and inclusion—from its land acknowledgment. (These schools did not directly answer when I asked whether they had made changes beyond nomenclature, other than the University of Alaska, which confirmed that it had not.)
These universities seem to be betting that changing job titles and editing websites will be enough to keep the Trump administration off their back. Meanwhile, they’ll continue the work of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion—the actual things—just without using that terminology. In their view, the programs they are retaining were legal all along, because they don’t involve race-based discrimination. Services such as guiding low-income students through the financial-aid process and providing support groups for those whose parents didn’t attend college help universities recruit and retain students. “The first-order reaction is just to try to get out of the target zone,” Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, told me. “When the investigators seem to be using word searches to identify potential investigations, it makes all the sense in the world that you’d want to get ahead of that.” Universities are also emphasizing that identity-focused programs are open to students of all races, or expanding them so that they are, he said.
For any individual school, the odds of the federal government peering under the hood to figure out the precise difference between, say, the Office of Belonging and the Office of DEI are low. The Education Department’s civil-rights section has always been small. And Trump has repeatedly signaled that he wants to shut down the Education Department in its entirety. Even if the inquisitors are spared, investigating more than a few schools will be difficult. Many universities might conclude that as long as they don’t stand out, they’ll be able to get by.
The cost of getting that bet wrong, however, could be severe. On Friday, the administration announced that it was canceling $400 million of Columbia University’s federal grants and contracts as punishment for allegedly insufficient efforts to combat anti-Semitism. The legality of the move is unclear, in part because the administration’s announcement alternately refers to “canceling” and “freezing” the funds. Black, the law professor, told me that Title VI requires a number of procedural steps before the government can revoke a university’s funding, steps that don’t appear to have been taken in Columbia’s case. Notably, however, Columbia did not announce that it would fight the decision. Rather, in a statement, it pledged “to work with the federal government to restore Columbia’s federal funding.” (According to The Wall Street Journal, Columbia will have 30 days to prove that it’s doing enough to have the grants reinstated.) “Most universities are not interested in getting into legal squabbles with the Department of Education,” Black said. “It’s like, do they like diversity? Yes. Do they like it more than not being investigated? No.”
If some private universities are betting on lying low, public universities in red states, where state legislatures and university regents might share the Trump administration’s hostility to DEI, may have little choice but to go beyond cosmetic changes. Ohio State University shut down its Office of Diversity and Inclusion at the end of February. Ohio University postponed its Black Alumni Reunion, technically open to everyone, while it reviewed the event for compliance. When Texas banned DEI policies at the state level, the University of Texas at Austin first changed the name of its DEI office to the Division of Campus and Community Engagement. After state lawmakers said the effort was insufficient, however, the university closed the office and laid off 60 employees. Jackie Wernz, an education civil-rights lawyer and former Office of Civil Rights staffer, says that few people will mourn the name changes or the end of some diversity trainings. “It’s this other type of support that I think could have a really important impact on students,” Wernz told me. “Creating spaces on primarily white campuses for minority students to connect and to find support from staff who look like them and who come from their backgrounds.”
“DEI” is clearly dead. But it’s too soon to say what will happen to the underlying principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. On February 28, the Department of Education published an FAQ document walking back some of the most extreme implications of the Dear Colleague letter. It acknowledged, for example, that it had no power over university curricula, and that observances such as Black History Month are fine “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination.” Language changes and the elimination of the most overtly progressive DEI efforts might allow the Trump administration to declare its mission accomplished. “The word belonging is being used a lot,” Lake, the Stetson professor, told me. “And I think what everybody’s trying to figure out is, Is the B-word a target?” Universities are also talking about “thriving,” “retention,” and “outcomes.” They might be able to continue working toward some of the same goals they have been for decades. Just don’t call it DEI.
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