President Donald Trump recently put the wealthiest U.S. colleges and universities on notice: If your endowment exceeds $1 billion, prepare for an investigation.
The president said he plans to shut down what he called “illegal and immoral discrimination,” under the umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs with racial or gender preferential treatment in student admission, financial aid, employment, and curricula at elite institutions.
Trump advised that up to nine schools in that category will be audited in the coming months, though any American higher education institution found in violation could lose federal money for research, student financial aid, and other programs under the executive order.
“They are really worried about it—and they should be,” Steven McGuire, a senior fellow at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, told The Epoch Times. “The federal government can do some things that are financially debilitating.”
Many other schools across the country, in anticipation or response to Trump’s order or previous anti-DEI laws at the state level, have already rebranded their DEI offices with new descriptions such as “access,” “community engagement,” or “civil rights” to avoid scrutiny. Northeastern University in Boston, for example, now has an office of “Belonging.”
Louis Galarowicz, a research fellow at the National Association of Scholars, estimates that large flagship public universities in more populated states spend tens of millions on DEI departments that include investigators who investigate harassment, bias, and “microaggression” complaints.
He said schools have been quick to rebrand themselves to avoid lawsuits, let alone layoffs or program cuts.
“A faculty diversity action plan could be renamed: critical needs hiring program,” Galarowicz told The Epoch Times. “It’s just a disguise, but their purpose hasn’t changed.”
Several institutions removed official DEI statements for faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions last year, but that doesn’t mean they scrapped all race-based initiatives.
The University of Michigan’s Museum of Art, for five years, will dedicate itself to anti-racism efforts and prioritize exhibits that expose colonial histories. The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning will de-emphasize singular Western historical narratives and center on the global south and historically marginalized populations. The Center for Academic Innovation is responsible for identifying academic performance disparities by race and recommending curriculum changes for “fostering equitable outcomes,” according to the DEI 2.0 plan.
The University of Michigan did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
Harvard did not reply to The Epoch Times’ request for comment.
The University of Colorado is still “evaluating relevant executive orders” and is reviewing many programs across the campus, Nicole Mueksch, director of issues management, said in an email reply to The Epoch Times.
It urges schools to resist efforts to remove such DEI programs and called Trump’s orders “these unwarranted incursions into higher education.”
“Now is not the time to be complacent,” it reads. “Now is the time to act.”
Despite massive endowments and generous support from private-sector research partners, even the wealthiest schools could not survive without federal aid.
They are hesitant to call the president’s bluff on this issue because of the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision prohibiting racial preferences in college admissions, said Matthew Beienburg, director of education policy at the Goldwater Institute. That ruling and existing Civil Rights law also favor arguments against preferential hiring practices, race-based scholarships, and required training centered around race and gender.
He anticipates that most college and university human resource, admissions, and financial aid offices will comply with the order, and some states already have anti-DEI laws in place.
“It will be difficult for schools to beat this,” Beienburg told The Epoch Times. “No longer do the universities have a fig leaf to hide behind.”
Class instruction is another matter because of the provisions for academic freedom, which is not covered by that Supreme Court case. Beienburg estimates that the national cost of DEI-related general education courses is in the billions. Some of these courses have bland names, like “U.S. Cultures and Communities,” but can be very politicized and ideological, he said.
Iowa, Wyoming, and Oklahoma state legislators are considering the bill, and Beienburg said Arizona could be poised to bring it to a voter referendum.
With curriculum remaining the last bastion of DEI in the years to come, higher education will be ready for a long, drawn-out fight, Beienburg said.
“It’s a self-perpetuating echo chamber,” he said. “I think Americans have rejected identity politics, but academia has not.”
