Let DEI die: Trump's playing hardball, and colleges are smart to fall in line | Opinion

Money talks. That’s the message coming loud and clear from the country’s universities, as they respond to demands from the Trump administration to strip “diversity, equity and inclusion” efforts and antisemitism from their campuses. College administrators who might otherwise have rolled their eyes at such demands are paying attention now that their federal funding – provided by taxpayers – is on the line.

It’s great to see. Without forced DEI, true diversity can flourish Last week, the University of Michigan announced it will shut down its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the Office for Health Equity and Inclusion and halt its DEI 2.0 Strategic Plan.



It joins other schools, including Ohio State University , that are making wholesale DEI changes. The Michigan university has been ground zero for DEI efforts in recent years, with a burgeoning bureaucracy that had reached more than 160 employees at a cost of a quarter of a billion dollars . And did that spending help improve diversity or inclusion? No.

If anything, DEI’s explosion at the University of Michigan and on campuses nationwide has led to more division through polarization. It also has been linked to the antisemitic protests and violence at universities after Hamas' terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump ’s second term, he has put schools on notice through executive actions that he expects them to quash both DEI and antisemitism – or face cuts to spending. The federal government spends tens of billions a year on federal education , through loans and grants , as well as research funding and other programs. Opinion: A DEI officer fired for antisemitic comments? That shouldn't surprise you.

Trump’s actions follow years of pushback from Republicans at the state level to rid schools of DEI programs. But the number of colleges now falling in line is rising quickly, thanks to Trump’s hardline approach. Dozens of universities in a majority of states have cut or made other changes to their diversity policies, according to a tracker from the Chronicle of Higher Education .

Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store . Sarah Hubbard, a regent at the University of Michigan, understands why it is important for her university and others to backtrack on DEI.

Hubbard is a Republican, which makes her something of a unicorn on the state’s Democrat-dominated public university boards . On social media, she correctly observed that ending DEI programs will help the university “better expand diversity of thought and free speech on our campus.” “The end of litmus test hiring and curtailment of speech stops now,” Hubbard wrote.

Want to ignore Trump? Plan on kissing federal money goodbye. While some universities are looking for ways to skirt wholesale reforms with nominative changes to existing programs, it’s encouraging to see so many willing to take substantive action. The Trump administration has shown it’s not messing around if college administrators don’t take its demands seriously.

Opinion: Trump is waging war against DEI in schools. New incidents show why he's right. In March, the administration announced it was withholding $400 million in funds from Columbia University , given the university’s pathetic response to antisemitic displays that led to the harassment of Jewish faculty and students.

Late last month, in a move that surprised many on campus and led to the resignation of Columbia’s interim president, the university agreed to strengthen its security and protest policies, among other changes. The University of Pennsylvania also faces a cut of $175 million , because of its transgender sports policies that conflict with Trump's executive order protecting women's sports . Of course, it’s possible for any administration to take things too far, and Trump’s team must be careful to avoid demands or restrictions that would interfere with classroom instruction or other free speech.

Meanwhile, I’m enjoying watching DEI die. Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.

com or on X: @ Ingrid_Jacques You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page , on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter . This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump is killing DEI at universities. Here's why that's good | Opinion.