April 19, 2025
The Trump administration has not demonstrated that DEI college programs are violating the law, causing confusion.
As the Trump administration intensifies its campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in higher education, it has yet to substantiate claims that these programs violate federal law. This absence of clear legal justification has led to widespread confusion and inconsistency across academic institutions–and many institutions have not gottdn rid of DEI.
According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, there have been changes at 324 college campuses across 39 states, with many of those universities opting to fold their DI departments into other departments instead of dismantling them completely.
Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School and a Constitutional and education expert, told The New York Times that the administration’s desire to make colleges and K-12 school districts submit to its desires is alarming.
“The Trump administration is trying to use a relatively narrow decision and turn it into a broad holding that brings about whatever it wishes,” Driver told the outlet.
Although the administration has argued that some diversity programs violate federal civil rights law, they have not, according to legal experts, been able to cite a clear violation of existing law.
According to Politico, 27 of 31 flagship universities in red states have made changes to their diversity offices since 2021, and the response to Trump in particular from higher education has been captured by the responses from Harvard University and Columbia University.
Columbia capitulated, while Harvard refused to comply, which resulted in a declaration from the Trump administration that the letter Harvard received was from rogue actors.
Tabbye Chavous, the vice provost for Equity and Inclusion at the University of Michigan expressed her concern to the outlet that there is no plan from universities for how to address the needs of historically marginalized students without diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
“If we just dismantle things and don’t replace it with anything else, then we actually are not just dismantling an office — we’re actually turning our back on the goal,” Chavous told Politico. “We’re saying we don’t care about increasing our Black enrollment; we don’t care about increasing our Latino enrollment; we don’t care about increasing our Asian enrollment; we don’t care about efforts that support our disability community. None of these goals are illegal.”
Like colleges and universities, companies have also rebranded their DEI programs, although they technically can’t have funds pulled or don’t actually to comply with the unclear executive order unless they’re government contractors.
According to CNBC, this is exemplified by the work of Paradigm, a consulting firm which post-George Floyd, said that it helped its clients “harness the power of diversity and inclusion to create a culture where everyone can do their best work and thrive,” the company’s website now says that its solutions “create an inclusive, high-performance culture where everyone can do their best work and thrive,” a subtle change which its CEO, Joelle Emerson explained to the outlet.
“We started using that a lot on our websites so that companies searching for ‘DEI’ could find us,” Emerson said. “Pre-election, as we were seeing a lot of the backlash, we reduced our use of the acronym because I didn’t think it would be the best description of what we do.”
Fran Harris, an entrepreneur based in Austin, told CNBC that moving away from using DEI or its acronym isn’t necessarily the solution either.
“DEI means everybody has a fair and equitable opportunity to succeed. We have to remind people what DEI is – it is the work. It’s not just an acronym. It’s the work of creating equal opportunities, period,” Harris said.
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