The reverberations of President Donald Trump’s efforts against diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, especially in higher education, are being felt among the nation’s colleges and universities, which are suspending research projects, canceling conferences, and closing offices.
Trump issued an executive order Jan. 20 that ended DEI policies within the federal government, and another on Jan. 21 that prohibits such practices by recipients of federal grants and contracts, including at colleges and universities with endowments of more than $1 billion.
Arizona State University, which reported a $1.59 billion endowment for the 2024 fiscal year, told researchers Wednesday to stop work on federally funded DEI-related projects immediately and avoid using unspent funds, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.
Michigan State University, which reported a $4.41 billion endowment for fiscal year 2024, canceled a DEI webinar and began a review of campus programs to show how they could be affected by the executive orders.
North Carolina State University, with a reported $2.22 billion endowment in fiscal year 2024, directed faculty to stop working on any projects that “included the terms diversity, equity and inclusion” in the program’s proposal. Also, Northeastern, with a reported $1.54 billion endowment in 2022, is among the first New England universities to change language on its website about DEI commitments, the Boston Globe reported Wednesday.
A researcher at an Ivy League school who studies public health and equity told the Journal she is worried Trump’s directives will derail nearly two decades of work building up her lab. She asked not to be identified because it would draw attention to her work.
Federal research grants are seen as crucial to the financial health of major research universities, even though such schools have endowments in the billions of dollars.
The University of California in San Francisco, which reported an endowment of $6.31 billion in 2023, received about $815 million in research funding from the National Institutes of Health for the 2024 fiscal year, making it one of largest recipients in the country, the Journal reported. The school keeps about 40% of that for administrative costs.
Johns Hopkins University, which reportedly has an endowment of $13.1 billion, received more than $800 million in NIH funding in the 2024 fiscal year. Steven Salzberg, a computational biologist at John Hopkins, told the Journal he was reviewing graduate applications and set to make multiple offers for new students until last week.
“Right now, I feel like I cannot make any offers because I don’t know when the funding situation will be resolved,” he said.
Scott Goldschmidt, a lawyer specializing in higher education at Thompson Coburn in Washington, D.C., urged universities to prepare by looking at how public institutions have adapted in states that have already passed legislation banning DEI.
More than a dozen states controlled by Republican legislatures and governors have moved to limit or prohibit DEI, the Journal reported. In 2023, Missouri State University stopped requiring diversity statements from job applicants, eliminated diversity hiring policies and removed scholarship requirements that limited eligibility based on race and sex.
On Wednesday, the school, which reported an endowment of $193 million in 2021, announced it will stop DEI programs on campus and close its office of inclusive engagement, the Journal reported.
“The world didn’t end, right?” Goldschmidt told the Journal. “They’re still able to fulfill their mission. They just have to adapt based on the law, and they’ve successfully done that for the most part.”