The Trump administration’s plan to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives on college campuses has sent universities scrambling to determine how to follow the guidelines or risk losing federal funding.
Local colleges said they still are considering how to respond to U.S. Department of Education demands issued Feb. 14 to eliminate race preferences and stereotypes in admissions, hiring, promotions, scholarships and other programs and activities.
The Trump administration, which has made no secret of its desire to dismantle the Department of Education, had said it will begin assessing colleges’ compliance with his DEI orders no later than Friday.
Through executive orders signed on his first day in office, Trump has targeted DEI initiatives across the federal government, educational institutions and private companies. Groups representing college professors and school diversity officers sued. On Friday, a federal judge granted a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocked key portions of those executive orders targeting government aid for programs promoting diversity, equity and inclusion.
Institutions that fail to comply may face investigation and loss of federal funding, according to the Education Department.
“It’s created a lot of anxiety for the institutions and a lot of anxiety for the students,” said Barbara Mistick, president of the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, which represents 1,700 private nonprofit colleges and universities.
Mistick said first-generation college students and those from lower-income families, in particular, have a reason to worry that the Trump administration may pull a college’s eligibility for federal funds for students over claims of racial discrimination and interrupt such students’ educations.
“This kind of situation creates a lot of chaos for students,” said Mistick, former president of Wilson College in Chambersburg, Pa.
Officials from the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University, Chatham University and Saint Vincent College declined to comment.
The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy applauded the proposed changes.
“The DEI party in education is over,” said Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow focusing on higher education reform at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “As commonly practiced, DEI initiatives and offices treat people differently by identity group, stereotype by identity group, and intend to have different outcomes for identity groups that the DEI initiatives privilege.”
Colleges ‘don’t want to be a target’
Universities are deliberately weighing any response on the administration’s guidance because they don’t want attention, said Katharine Meyer, a higher-education policy researcher at the Brown Center on Education at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington, D.C.
“They don’t want to be in the hot seat. They don’t want be a target” of the Trump administration out of fear of a loss of federal funding, Meyer said.
Meyer, of the center-left-leaning Brookings Institution, said DEI programs are not racially discriminatory and people of different color and origins can participate. The DEI initiatives give students of color or racial background a sense of belonging to the academic community and a cohort with which to identify, Meyer said.
The Supreme Court was clear that racial discrimination in higher education is illegal, Kissel said, and privileging students by race is immoral and unlawful.
The Supreme Court ruling, however, was very narrow in that it focused on race-based admissions and did not delve into DEI initiatives, according to Mistick.
“Now they are trying to expand that. It’s not what it was intended for,” Mistick said, referring to the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling on affirmative action in admissions.
Colleges and universities mum
The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education is still reviewing the letter from the Department of Education, said Kevin Hensel, a spokesman for the state system. PASSHE operates 10 universities, including PennWest, which consists of the California, Clarion and Edinboro campuses.
The system “will conduct a legal analysis of how the guidance may — or may not — impact our students, faculty, staff and universities,” Hensel said. As public universities, “we have a unique responsibility to offer opportunities and access to students from all backgrounds — from every county in the state — and we must continue to provide welcoming campuses and experiences.”
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Cassia Crogan, a spokeswoman for Carnegie Mellon University, said the school is still analyzing the orders and could not comment.
Seton Hill University in Greensburg “is working internally and with our national higher education professional organizations to better understand the new guidance from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights,” said spokeswoman Jen Reeger.
Penn State’s leadership team is in discussions to determine how this guidance might impact the university, said spokesman Wyatt DuBois.
“While the university is still gathering information, it remains committed to its mission and to fostering a culture of inclusive excellence for our community. We are at our strongest when we are surrounded by a diversity of thought, perspective and experience,” DuBois stated.
The guidance coming from the administration lacks clarity, Mistick said.
“There is not a clean way to interpret it,” she said.
As the legal justification for its actions, the Trump administration contends it is ending discrimination on college campuses through the landmark 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended race-based admissions. The administration has claimed that poor white and Asian students were discriminated against in the admission process.
An official with the Office for Civil Rights interpreted the ruling as going beyond ending admissions based on racial preferences. The court ruling articulated a general principle that treating a person of one race differently than another violates the law, the administration said in its letter to colleges.