Students at public universities in North Carolina no longer need to take classes related to diversity, equity and alumni.
Akron University will no longer hold its annual “Rethinking Race” forum, which has been held annually for more than 20 years, citing changes in state and federal guidance.
The University of Colorado has deleted its main DEI webpage and posted a new page for its collaboration office.
Around the country, numerous universities and universities are beginning to scrub websites and change programming in response to President Trump's growing crusades for diversity and inclusion. But much remains unknown about the legality and scope of President Trump's new order.
So some schools simply look and wait.
“It's because it created chaos and was successful in higher education,” said Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, about President Trump's attempt to end day activities on campus. “The response is on the map.”
The president has signed several executive orders that sought to ban diversity practices across federal government, educational institutions and private companies. Orders are wiping out their language and scope. Requires institutions and schools to terminate DEI's offices, positions, action plans, grants and contracts. Another ban, “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology,” threatens to withhold federal funds from schools that do not promote “patriotic” education.
Already, some orders have been challenged in courts, and believe the government is using “illegal” preferences to “discriminate, exclude or divide individuals based on race or gender.” It remains to be seen how to pursue an institution. The Secretary of Education has not yet been confirmed. Candidate Linda McMahon will appear before a Senate committee on Thursday.
Managers of more financially insulated K-12 institutions are doing their own calculations. However, higher education has seen hundreds of millions of people appear. University administrators debate whether to freeze existing programs, stand in principle and resist, or fly under the radar, checking whether they have an executive order held in court. It's there.
In Princeton, for example, President Christopher Eisgluber urged the community to “keep calm and hold” until the legal status of the executive order becomes clearer.
Meanwhile, the Athletics division has posted a modified trans athlete participation policy to comply with the new NCAA rules that have been changed as President Trump's orders have been changed except for trans athletes in women's sports. Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania have also removed references to transgender inclusion from their athletics websites.
At Akron University, administrators said the decline in attendance and enthusiasm was the added reason for the school's suspension of funding the annual Rethinking Race Forum.
The American Association of University Professors is one of several organizations that have filed a lawsuit in federal courts to block two executive orders related to diversity and inclusion.
The lawsuit accusss the executive order of violating the due process clause of the Constitution by failing to define conditions such as “DEI”, “fair” or “illegal DEIA.”
Yet ambiguity in diversity, equity and inclusion measures has led some universities to take wider views when they want to follow.
For example, the University of North Carolina campus in Asheville designated certain courses as “diversity-intensive” and could be used to meet diversity graduation requirements. The list of classes that met the requirements included Appalachian literature, global business, developmental psychology, and cultural anthropology. University spokesman Brian Hart said they are still on offer but will no longer be part of the requirements.
North Carolina System spokesman Andy Wallace said the system is evaluating changes to federal government policies to ensure that funds are still received. “This will not affect the content of the course,” he said. “We will pause the requirements for DEI-focused courses as a graduation condition.”
Beth Moracco, dean of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, said the university's actions were bothering me.
“My concern is that these types of instructions and notes have a calm effect in terms of discussion that classrooms and faculty will develop new courses,” she said.
In Michigan, administrators cancelled the month's New Year's lunch, apologized for the overreaction and rescheduled it. A university spokesperson said the College of Communications and Arts and Sciences cancelled the event without consulting with a wider university. Approximately 70 people appeared at the rescheduled event on Tuesday.
Trump's order follows a long-standing push by state-level Republicans to roll back the diversity program. Twelve states, including Texas and Florida, have passed laws targeting DEIs, with more than 12 other states considering or implementing laws.
More than 240 universities in 36 states have tracked changes in diversity policies since January 2023, and have sought several aspects of programming, including offices of diversity and race-based affinity groups. It's excluded.
However, while most of these moves occurred before Trump's recent orders, it is unclear how actions in the first few weeks of office will affect the long term, especially in the K-12 district. It remains.
So far, few public schools are in a hurry to change their practices. School districts do not rely on federal funds more than universities, with 90% of their funds coming from state and local taxes. And the country's 13,000 districts always have a wide range of autonomy to set their own curriculum and educational policies.
The Trump administration has launched an investigation into at least two K-12 districts. Denver Public Schools and Ithaca City School District in New York. According to the education department, Denver is investigating the bathroom of one girl from high school into a non-binary bathroom. Ithaca is currently investigating to hold a series of meetings for students of color. Some of them may not be open for white students to attend, according to the Equality Protection Project, an advocacy group that filed federal civil rights complaints against the school system. .
However, Denver introduces policies to affirm students who question their gender identity, to help those students access their chosen bathrooms and rename them on the district's computer system. We instruct educators to provide detailed “LGBTQ+ toolkits.”
Also, Ithaca's website continues to feature pages promoting the “anti-marginized” curriculum despite scrutiny of district practices regarding race. It aims to support students in “the development of anti-racist understanding and practices.”
The Ithaca city schools did not respond to requests for interviews.
In a written statement, a spokesman for Denver's public schools said the district was waiting for further federal guidance before making a “final decision” on policy changes. He added that the district “continues to our values, including providing a safe and inclusive learning environment for all students.”
Some democratic education leaders have been frankly saying they are not going to change their practices according to Trump. Regarding issues of gender and sexual orientation, “California's law has not been affected by recent changes to federal government policies,” state school principal Tony Thurmond.
In New York, the state Education Bureau issued a statement called “ineffective” and “opposite” by Trump's actions on the history of federal education policy.
“We condemn the intolerable rhetoric of these orders,” the state agency said. “Our children cannot thrive in an environment of chaos. They need steady and stable leadership that strives to provide.”
Perhaps the biggest impact on education occurs in schools that are more directly managed by the federal government. For children living at military bases and military officer academies.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegses has declared that official celebrations for events like the Black History Month are no longer welcome. The Department of Defense K-12 Schools have finished several clubs. Children use bathrooms to match their gender identity and combine book shelves with themes related to diversity, according to Star and Stripe reports.
The US Military Academy in West Point disbanded 12 student affinity groups, investigating whether they were compliant with the administration's DEI directive.
Paulette Granberry Russell, president and CEO of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, says he is suing the Trump administration to overturn the Day Order, but the new policy is ambiguous. He said that it would have a wide range of calm effects.
“And I think the cold effect is expanding whether you're in a red, blue state or not to anything in between,” she said. “There's no agency I want to target.”
