A report from an education industry watchdog confirms that hundreds of colleges and universities across the nation are defying President Donald Trump’s executive orders to end promotions for the discrimination found in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” ideologies on their campuses.
Many are simply relabeling the offices, excising the DEI moniker and installing “Advocacy,” “Belonging,” “Community,” “Inclusive,” “Resilience” and the like, the report said.
It’s from Defending Education, an arm of Parents Defending Education, and confirmed 243 universities still are running their DEI agenda through on-campus offices.
The organization reported it reviewed schools in 46 states plus the District of Columbia, assessing the work of 259 institutions.
Colleges and universities with active DEI projects totaled 243 and total active DEI offices/programming (including colleges or departments) totaled 388.
They are found in business schools, law schools, colleges of education, engineering, dentistry, medicine, nursing, health and more.
“This investigation is intended to track the current state of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices and programming (names will vary) at colleges and universities. It is meant to identify which institutions currently have DEI offices, have shut them down, or appear to have renamed or rebranded their DEI offices and programming,” the report said.
“To date, Defending Education has tracked 243 universities which still have institution-wide DEI offices and/or programming in operation, 166 schools or colleges (such as Colleges of Education, Engineering, or Medicine, etc.), with an overall total of 388 currently active DEI offices and programming.”
Further, it reported, “Additionally, 28 institutions and schools/colleges appear to have renamed or rebranded their DEI offices, 16 universities have removed webpages and/or shut down DEI initiatives, and in a few cases, have moved the DEI webpage behind an institutional login. These cases are noted with an archived page of that institution’s former DEI page.”
There are some, like the University of Alaska Anchorage, where officials “seem to have completely shut down DEI operations,” and the University of Michigan, which “has allegedly shut down its overarching ‘Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion.’”
But at Michigan Law, or the LSA Department of Psychology, the ideology, which largely is based on discrimination based on race, sex and such, “still have active DEI pages.”
A report on the dispute, from the Washington Stand, explained the report is not exhaustive.
And Family Research Council Senior Fellow for Education Studies Meg Kilgannon said, “It would be naive to think that reforming educational institutions could be accomplished by the stroke of a pen.”
She continued, “DEI is rooted in a belief system that is enforced, but more than that, it is accepted and believed. The hearts and minds of people running colleges and universities must change if we want true reform. It will take generations to transform higher education.”
Trump condemned the agenda in his order, describing how the agenda violates “the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil-rights laws.”
Further, he said, they undermine traditional American values.
His order included instructions for schools to purge DEI offices and programs and instead, enforce federal civil rights laws.