A number of colleges and universities have stopped hosting identity-based, or affinity, graduation ceremonies, as the Trump administration's federal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ban trickles down to state level prohibitions.
According to The Washington Times, Maricopa Community Colleges and Harvard University are among the schools that have done away with affinity graduations for the class of 2025. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Ivy League institution announced that it would no longer offer the ceremonies last month, after the Education Department warned that violating President Donald Trump's DEI ban risked grant funding.
"I think school-sponsored race-based graduations will fade as the legal and financial costs mount," Cornell University law professor William A. Jacobson told the Times. "Separating students by race is the very definition of segregation."
Jacobson said that, although school-sponsored affinity graduation ceremonies are theoretically open to all, they could run afoul of civil rights law due to their exclusionary advertising and practices.
Such ceremonies do not replace commencement, but they do generally include several commencement elements, including graduation robes and program speakers.
Under the Biden administration, higher education leaned into the identity-based celebrations, and the outlet reported that the 2024 graduation season saw an uptick in the number of colleges and universities that adopted and expanded affinity graduations. Last year's commencement season was also the first since the Supreme Court overturned the use of race as a factor in college admissions practices.
Shortly after taking office, Trump issued an executive order to shutter the DEI offices in higher education that organize the ceremonies.
A White House spokesperson told the Times that Trump "promised to terminate DEI in the federal government, protect equal opportunity, and force schools to end discriminatory admissions policies, and he delivered."
"Every man and woman should have the opportunity to go as far as their hard work, individual initiative, and competence can take them," the spokesperson said. "In America, excellence, grit, and determination is our strength."
In some states with Republican-controlled legislatures, lawmakers have moved to codify the president's executive order, passing DEI spending bans that caused public colleges and universities to cancel affinity events.
With the help of Project Rainbow Utah, LGBTQ students at Salt Lake Community College, the University of Utah and Weber State University reportedly held "lavender graduations" off campus, while students at the University of Louisville and Bellarmine University in Kentucky organized a Black graduation ceremony with local colleges at a church.
University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, who is also an independent member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said it's "a problem when a university holds a program for one racial or ethnic group and not for another."
"On the other hand, there is no law to prevent students from holding an event of their own so long as they aren't drawing on the resources of the university," she said.
Proponents of affinity graduations say they allow those with "marginalized identities" to openly express their cultures.
"The Black ceremony just provides a space for a more intimate, inclusive, culture-affirming ceremony in addition to the larger ceremony," Randi Bryant, a Washington, D.C.-based DEI consultant, told the Times.
Bryant, who is Black, hosts the Amazon Prime Video talk show "Truthing." She said that, regardless of whether schools sponsor them, "the ceremonies will never go away."
"Black people have always created our own spaces to exhale and feel safe and unburdened from living in a racist society, and we will continue," she told the outlet.
Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars and former associate provost at Boston University, said that institutions "may not be able to prohibit" affinity graduations, but "they could and should discourage them."
"Because such segregated celebrations emphasize racial division, they play a divisive role in American higher education," Wood told the Times.
Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.