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Last month, the department conceded that it could not make universities’ race-conscious efforts illegal, but universities nationwide have yet to reinstate their diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts
Meghnad Bose and Luke Lawson for Prism
The Trump administration suffered a major setback last month in its efforts to end educational institutions’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. In a federal court in New Hampshire, the Department of Education conceded the end of its February 2025 “Dear Colleague” directive that sought to make all race-conscious student programming, resources, and financial aid illegal in schools and higher education institutions across the country.
The concession came as the district court heard a lawsuit filed by the National Education Association (NEA) against the Trump administration’s anti-DEI directives, including the Dear Colleague letter and the EndDEI Portal. Launched last February, the aim of the public portal was for parents, students, and teachers to submit reports of alleged discrimination against white students in publicly funded K-12 schools. On Feb. 3, the Education Department agreed that both the threats outlined in the letter and use of the portal will not be enforced in any way by the department, months after multiple courts sought to block or strike down these efforts.
The department’s concession was celebrated by rights groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and education-focused organizations such as the NEA and The Center for Black Educator Development.
However, even as the department’s anti-DEI guidance is officially rescinded, colleges and universities that scrambled last year to scrap or overhaul their DEI efforts haven’t changed tack, fearful that the Trump administration’s ideology remains the same and worried that the federal government might find other ways to crack down on schools continuing diversity programs and initiatives.
The Department of Education did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
“In all candor, universities are terrified that they will be singled out if they even appear to be supportive of things that fly in the face of things [this administration has previously] forbidden”, said Archie Ervin, former president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education, considered the preeminent voice for diversity leaders in higher education.
A Prism review of DEI changes across several higher educational institutions found the same, highlighting how universities that backtracked on their DEI efforts under Donald Trump’s second term have largely not reversed their approach in the weeks since the Education Department’s concession. As a result, across university campus communities, there is a growing divide between those who believe the damage to DEI in higher education has already been done, and others who feel that DEI efforts are still underway, just under a different guise.
No reversals in sight for changes made in anti-DEI crackdown
The Trump administration’s unlawful DEI crackdown caused universities across the country to remove programs, alter initiatives, and excise references that could be interpreted by federal officials as DEI. These changes ranged from edits in vocabulary on school websites to whole offices being overhauled.
At Durham, North Carolina’s Duke University, for instance, the webpage RacialEquity.Duke.edu was recently changed to redirect to CampusCulture.Duke.edu. An archived version of the original webpage from December 2025 shows the title “Advancing Racial Equity at Duke.” The text that followed read, “Given Duke’s location in the American South and history as an institution that systemically excluded Black Americans from the opportunity to learn and teach, we have an obligation to actively dismantle any remaining effects of that legacy.” The page also included details about the university’s Racial Equity Advisory Council, which examined “how Duke engages in racial equity work through knowledge and skill development” and worked “to increase transparency and engagement related to race and equity work on campus,” according to the archived site.
The new webpage, “Advancing Campus Culture at Duke,” has zero references to race. Sherman Criner, a senior at Duke, wrote about this and other DEI-related changes at the university for a story titled, “Duke’s Quiet Scrubbing of DEI.”
“They’ve completely rebranded the racial equity initiative,” Criner told Prism. “You also hear professors talk about how they’re moving away from the language of equity in classrooms, but they still say the same thing. They just kind of shy away from using certain buzzwords.”
Duke University did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
In many cases, universities made changes to DEI initiatives under threat from the federal government. In the case of Duke, in March 2025, the Education Department placed the university and 44 other higher education institutions under federal investigation for “allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.”
The specter of the Trump administration canceling federal funding for universities also loomed large on college administrators. Some top-ranked universities, such as Columbia and Harvard, were overwhelmingly targeted, with billions of dollars in federal funding rescinded while the Trump administration made unprecedented and unlawful demands.
“We had to literally go through and Control-F [keyboard search] all of these words—we had a table of words, ‘don’t use these words, use these words instead,’” said an administrator at an Ivy League medical school, who served on a university committee tasked with reviewing anti-DEI compliance. They spoke to Prism anonymously due to fears of retaliation.
Giving examples of the words they looked for, the administrator listed “race,” “ethnicity,” “diversity,” “gender,” and “health disparities.”
“We overdid it, I would say,” the administrator said.
The confusion among university officials about what needed to change and what could stay the same was magnified by the Education Department’s failure to specify exactly what the government alleged constituted a violation of its anti-DEI directives, effectively leaving universities scrambling to guess how to interpret the guidance.
The Ivy League administrator said that to ensure that their school’s federal grants weren’t canceled, the committee reviewed biographical information for researchers working on projects and even bibliographies. “We were like: Oh shit, is this journal name a problem?” the administrator recalled. When asked to provide an example of a journal name they thought could become a problem, the administrator cited the “Journal of Health Disparities.”
In addition to federal threats, schools in many Republican-led states also have to contend with statewide anti-DEI policies and legislation. Universities that made changes based on state laws are also unlikely to reverse course anytime soon. For example, in 2025, Tennessee passed the Dismantling DEI Departments Act that “aims to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts across various levels of Tennessee government,” including public higher education institutions. In the aftermath of this legislation, the University of Memphis shut down its multicultural affairs office.
Back at the federal level, even though a court revoked the Dear Colleague directive and associated measures that resulted in panicked university changes, the Ivy League administrator told Prism that reversing strategy in higher education seems highly unlikely.
“Universities are not going to be the vanguard of this. They’re just not,” said the administrator. “They’re too vulnerable in some ways.”
But others, such as Ervin, feel that there have been instances when universities conceded more than they needed to. “I think leadership has acquiesced in some ways in order to avoid the pain of defending what they’re doing,” Ervin said.
A question of commitment?
It has become increasingly common for universities to rename efforts that included or referenced the words “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
“If they use the term DEI, they’re going to be chased because of the terminology they’re using,” said Ervin. “Most [university] leaders initially believed that they could better serve their interests to maintain these things if their nomenclature did not challenge the ongoing political perspective that was being pursued.”
Just last month, according to a database of DEI changes maintained by The Chronicle of Higher Education, Indiana’s Purdue University at West Lafayette renamed its university senate’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee to the “Community Connection Committee.” In another example, Washington, D.C.’s George Washington University renamed its annual Diversity Summit to the “OneGW Community Summit.” The University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s Faculty Senate also renamed its Diversity and Inclusion Committee the “Access and Engagement Committee.”
“I advise some universities to do that because I can take an ‘Office of Community and Engagement’ and do the same thing I was doing under DEI,” said Ervin, who also formerly served as chief diversity officer at Georgia Tech and now consults with around 10 universities annually. “Exploring ways that they can make fairness, opportunity, equity, and inclusion a part of their university, even in this environment.”
According to Criner, the Duke senior, the university appears to remain committed to DEI, though the college is now going about it “by different means.”
“You can’t see a DEI office on Duke’s campus, but you’re going to see an institutional equity office and the inclusive excellence principles and all these sorts of things that are just vague enough to where they get away with it, but de facto the university culture is not really going to change,” Criner explained.
There’s a lot of fear, and I don’t see [DEI] coming back immediately. And I guess that is a marker of how easily discarded it was.administrator at an Ivy League medical school
The February concession by the Department of Education led to celebratory reactions from rights groups. “This ruling ensures that educators can engage in scholarship and teach history, literature, and other subjects where race, gender, and the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion appear, without fear of arbitrary or discriminatory enforcement,” said a statement from the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program deputy director, Sarah Hinger.
“[The] decision protects educators’ livelihoods and their responsibility to teach honestly,” read a statement from Sharif El-Mekki, CEO at The Center for Black Educator Development, an organization focused on rebuilding the national Black teacher pipeline.
But in the realpolitik of university life under the Trump administration, insiders aren’t confident about the return of DEI efforts—at least not by the same name. According to Ervin, this is already having an effect on campus communities nationwide.
“You see universities becoming less diverse in significant ways,” Ervin said. “You see the enrollment characteristics of students changing in a significant way. You see the institutions losing their sense of community and belonging in significant ways.”
According to the Ivy League administrator, universities’ reluctance to reverse course may also be an indication that these institutions weren’t fully committed to DEI.
“There’s a lot of fear, and I don’t see [DEI] coming back immediately,” said the administrator. “And I guess that is a marker of how easily discarded it was.”
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