Most, but not all, Chicago-area universities are holding firm in the face of President Donald Trump’s threats against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher education.
The University of Illinois Chicago, the University of Chicago and Dominican University have maintained their offices for diversity, equity and inclusion and related initiatives. Northwestern University, on the other hand, has systematically removed mentions of DEI from webpages for its library, medical school, college of arts and sciences and several other departments. This week, officials at the Evanston school took down the website for the campus Women’s Center.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued two executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion; these are now on hold through a temporary court injunction. Meanwhile, the Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague letter” in mid-February, threatening to remove federal funding from colleges and schools that differentiate students by race. The letter itself states it does not have the force of law.
A group of legal scholars from across the country is now circulating guidance urging university leaders not to capitulate to Trump’s threats. They argue that diversity, equity and inclusion efforts are consistent with federal rights law.
“The memo was just meant to be really clear … ‘You’re on the side that is both legally correct and morally just, and so, you should defend your existing programs appropriately,’ ” said Jonathan Feingold, a law professor at Boston University and signatory on the memo.
Lisa Kurian Philip spoke with Feingold about the legality of efforts to make college campuses more inclusive, plus how Northwestern and other schools have been responding to Trump’s threats. Their conversation has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
What was your initial response to the executive orders and the Dear Colleague letter threatening diversity, equity and inclusion efforts?
I was caught off-guard by how grotesque the language was, which is consistent with the Trump administration and the way in which many of Trump’s closest advisers openly use the term “DEI hire” and “DEI” as thinly veiled slurs to suggest that all women and people of color — and women of color in particular — are just presumptively unqualified and incompetent.
One of the reasons why institutions have become more proficient and competent is because various DEI policies have actually broken down all sorts of mechanisms of exclusion that meant you were not actually getting the most talented and qualified people in the door.
The Trump administration is marshaling dangerous and deeply troubling narratives and also trying to leverage the full force of the federal government to prevent institutions from doing the most modest work that … cultivates environments free from bias or harassment and just mitigates the various headwinds that certain folks face because of their identity and living within a society that remains, in many ways, dominated by racism and sexism.
Tell me about the memo you signed onto addressed to university leaders and their attorneys.
What really motivated the memo is that there were reports daily of universities scrubbing websites, of folding up shop, of reassigning personnel … failing to marshal any sort of meaningful defense of a whole range of policies that aren’t just lawful but are mission-critical. You can’t achieve the goal of robust and open inquiry and discourse and teaching and learning if you’re not creating environments that are free from racial bias, stigma, stereotypes and harassment.
It is wholly permissible and consistent with federal civil rights to take steps to promote racial diversity and racial inclusion and equity. That work is so critical, particularly when the federal government is openly demonizing and attacking immigrants who are either undocumented or have different sorts of lawful status, trans people and pro-Palestinian protesters, including Jewish faculty and staff and academics.
When it comes to diversity, equity, inclusion, when it comes to desegregating institutions, when it comes to meaningfully reckoning with all the ways in which privilege and hierarchy is not just out there in the world but also internal to most universities in the country, the Trump administration was probably banking on universities folding without putting up a fight. And unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of that.
Northwestern, here in Chicago, has been scrubbing DEI from its websites.
It’s deeply troubling for some of the most well-resourced universities in the country, that are needed now more than ever to actually defend democracy, to be offering … [an] unpersuasive rationale for [scrubbing websites].
My sense is that most universities just want to duck and cover and hope that the administration doesn’t come after them, because universities want to avoid investigations, they want to avoid the financial cost … and the PR hit that you know comes with being in media headlines.
But as a matter of how to strategically respond to an authoritarian administration that is bent on snuffing out any political resistance, it’s a terrible strategy. It also communicates to all university stakeholders that they are not in any way the priority.
What do you hope universities do in this fraught moment?
I would hope that the most well-resourced universities — with endowments in the tens of billions of dollars — say, “We’re going to use these endowments to protect all the universities in the country, so that the Trump administration cannot simply, through the threat of withdrawing federal funds, prevent us from doing the work that we need to do to keep the country safe and healthy.”
When the Trump administration says, “You can’t do vaccine research or we’re going to cut your funding,” Harvard says, “Don’t worry. Keep doing it. If they come after you, we’ll be your funding backstop.” Or if the Trump administration says, “If you have gender-inclusive restrooms so that your institution is just more inclusive, we’re going to come after you,” Stanford says, “No, keep doing the work that you need to do in order to build inclusive democratic institutions, and if the Trump administration comes after you, we will will foot the bill.”
But I also think it’s a moment in which that’s not going to happen, because institutions are not currently structured to do that. And so, what a separate hope I have is that … university stakeholders and university workers, including faculty, are able to promote efforts to actually democratize institutions, so that power is not centralized within unaccountable boards of trustees and administrators.