Trump’s DEI crackdown sparks higher-ed pushback

The Trump administration's effort to dismantle what it calls federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs has widened in recent months — extending from agency offices to infrastructure projects, schools and cultural institutions. 

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Oct. 10 became the first university to reject a new Trump administration proposal that would tie federal research funding to adherence with the president's higher education agenda, including that sex, ethnicity or race no longer being considered a factor in undergraduate or graduate student admissions. 

The University of Southern California, Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania also joined MIT in rejecting the compact. 

The "Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education," sent Oct. 1 to nine universities offers priority access to federal funds if the universities agree to implement a five-year tuition freeze, cap international enrollment and commit to employing strict definitions of gender "according to reproductive function and biological processes."

In a letter to administration officials, MIT President Sally Kornbluth wrote that the compact's premise "is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone." White House spokesperson Liz Huston defended the plan to The New York Times saying, "any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn't serving its students or their parents — they're bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats."

The compact comes amid a broader federal crackdown on higher education. That includes Florida's Broward County K-12 school district, which the Trump administration instructed to shut down its use of Latinos In Action, a national leadership program focusing on postsecondary education readiness for all students, or lose millions of dollars. 

The U.S. Department of Education announced in March it's investigating 52 universities in 41 states, alleging that programs like The PhD Project — which supports Black, Latino and Native American doctoral students in business — violate the Civil Rights Act by using racial criteria in admissions and student support.

Trump's promise to revoke DEI initiatives is one of 75 campaign promises PolitiFact is tracking on the MAGA-Meter. Over Trump's second term, we will periodically evaluate progress, just as we did for Barack Obama, Trump's first term and Joe Biden.  

Trump's anti-DEI efforts also target city infrastructure, museums

The Trump administration's anti-DEI efforts include halting tens of billions of dollars in local transportation infrastructure funding for some cities and scrutinizing how federal museums portray race.   

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said Oct. 3 on X that about $2.1 billion in Chicago projects were being put on hold to prevent money from being distributed through "race-based contracting." 

Days before that, he announced a broader halt in New York City, saying roughly $18 billion worth of infrastructure projects would be frozen because they were tied to what he described as "unconstitutional DEI principles." 

In August, Trump turned his attention to federal museums, accusing the Smithsonian Institution, which runs 21 museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, of focusing too heavily on "how bad slavery was." 

The administration launched a federal review of some museums and exhibitions, citing the president's "directive to celebrate American exceptionalism" and remove what it described as "divisive or partisan narratives." 

That same month, a federal judge struck down administration actions warning schools and universities they could lose funding if they maintained DEI-related programs. The court ruled that the Education Department, which the administration is trying to dismantle, overstepped its authority, marking one of the first significant legal setbacks to Trump's anti-DEI push, but the Trump administration filed an appeal to that ruling Oct. 17. 

Early orders targeted federal workers and offices 

The campaign to dismantle DEI programs across federal institutions is a push that Trump launched immediately upon taking office. 

On Jan. 20, he signed an executive order terminating all DEI mandates, policies and programs across the federal government. That order aligned with his campaign promise to revoke federal DEI initiatives, including Biden's 2021 order requiring agencies to write racial equity action plans. 

The next day, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a memo giving agencies 48 hours to shut down DEI offices, put employees in those offices on administrative leave, and take down related websites and social media. 

Agencies were instructed to report back by Jan. 23 with lists of all employees who had worked on DEI and to submit reduction-in-force plans by Jan. 31. 

FAA hiring policy also rescinded

Beyond infrastructure and office closures, Trump signed a memorandum targeting a Biden-era Federal Aviation Administration hiring program that aimed to recruit people with severe disabilities. The administration argued the program elevated disability status above qualifications. 

But the idea of federal disability hiring predates Biden. The FAA under Obama in 2009 and Trump in 2019 both launched initiatives to prepare people with disabilities for federal jobs, including in air traffic control. 

The MAGA-Meter rating

Trump has taken multiple steps toward fulfilling his campaign pledge to revoke what he  considers to be federal DEI initiatives, including pressuring top universities to sign compacts tied to federal funding, freezing multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects and closing DEI offices.

The administration's actions have been met with legal challenge and pushback, including a federal judge ruling that the Education Department overstepped its authority. 

We rate this promise In the Works.