Jaychele Nicole was active in social justice work as a teen, even organizing a 10,000-person protest after the murder of George Floyd. When it came time to apply to colleges, she enthusiastically picked Bentley University for its brand new DEI program.
“I was like, ‘This is a perfect combination of my passions,’” the 20-year-old from Providence recalled.
Now she isn’t sure if she’ll actually graduate with that degree.
Across the country, universities are grappling with how to respond to the Trump administration’s threats to cut their federal funding if they don’t comply with its executive order targeting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. This comes only a few years after schools like Bentley created their DEI programs. Students say they want more clarity.
“Honestly our school has been, like, relatively silent,” Nicole said. “We haven’t really got any assurance about whether our degree is going to be valid or not.”
Bentley University declined interview requests for this story. In a statement, a university spokesperson said Bentley has always adapted to the marketplace with “rigorous and relevant business education that is based on extensive research and input from CEOs and business leaders across industries.”
The school was one of the first in the U.S. to offer a DEI degree, recognizing the opportunity to appeal to students as more corporations launched diversity initiatives and hired personnel to support them. Tufts , Harvard and Cornell introduced DEI certificates. The University of Kentucky even created a DEI Ph.D .
But now, the Trump administration is ordering schools to get rid of these programs. While President Donald Trump’s executive order has a carveout for “First Amendment-protected speech,” it also states federal grant recipients must “not operate any programs promoting DEI.” Last month, the Department of Education launched a federal tip line encouraging people to report efforts they see as discriminatory.
“We’re getting wokeness out of our schools,” Trump said in his speech to Congress last week . “Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad. It’s gone.”
The administration’s goal, DEI advocates claim, is to stoke fear and pressure. Shaun Harper, director of the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California, said schools find themselves in a bind.
“There are many institutions that are scrambling to figure out how to remain compliant with the federal demands, while also upholding their DEI commitments,” he said.
USC announced last month its Office of Inclusion and Diversity would no longer exist as its own entity. Certain schools and departments at USC also scrubbed or modified DEI references online and in faculty titles. Other schools, including Northeastern and Harvard, are also removing certain language from their policies.
“Where are the leaders who are fighting like hell?”Shaun Harper, director of the Race and Equity Center at the University of Southern California
Harper acknowledged some universities rushed to create academic programs for financial rather than educational reasons, making them an easy target for conservatives.
“DEI happened to be one of the popular flavors of the day,” he said.
And now he questions universities’ commitment to them.
“Where are the leaders who are fighting like hell?” he asked. “We haven’t seen them. We haven’t heard from them. Where are they?”
Even before Trump’s second term, Republican-led state legislatures had begun banning DEI programs or cutting their funding. Since Trump took office, the opposition has accelerated. Military academies have scrubbed their websites of DEI minors, and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered them to eliminate any race-based initiatives, including race-conscious admissions — something the Supreme Court allowed in its 2023 ruling against admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Steve Maguire, a campus freedom fellow with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, predicts military academies will soon phase out any DEI offerings completely. But, he noted, many other schools are simply rebranding or repackaging them.
“The people who are running these programs are still fundamentally committed to these ideas,” he said. “So they’re not going to just give it up easily.”
Andrès Acebo, interim president of New Jersey City University, is one of the only college leaders who agreed to be interviewed for this story. In a letter to New Jersey’s congressional leaders, Acebo urged them to protect access and equity programs in higher education. The son of Cuban exiles said the Trump administration’s directives to dismantle DEI threaten the very scaffolding that supports first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students.
“We have a moral obligation to speak,” Acebo said. “Not every law is just. These are unprecedented times and they call for unprecedented leadership.”
While colleges may have to approach their work and curricula differently to comply with state and federal laws, he said higher education must stay true to its stated mission of social mobility.
At the same time, he admits, colleges, including public universities, operate like businesses and are often “too reactionary” as they focus on their bottom lines. Many students say that’s an upsetting reality.
At Bentley, Anyshja Villegas-Brown said the school’s lack of communication stands in stark contrast to what she’s learning in one of her classes.
“We’re talking about sense of belonging and what it feels to be in a community,” said Villegas-Brown, a 21-year-old from Roxbury who transferred to Bentley specifically for its DEI major.
Even though she was attracted to Bentley’s program, the anti-DEI backlash was already brewing when she transferred to the school. So she picked a minor in nonprofit leadership “just in case.”
“It gets frustrating,” she said, “especially when you’re in a class that supports your major, like Intro to DEI, and you hear your professor say ‘Your degree might mean something. It might not.’”
Jaychele Nicole shares that frustration.
Between her sociology and law classes, she grabbed a quick bite and settled into a booth in one of Bentley’s dining halls. She opened her laptop and looked for jobs.
“There’s a lack of career support to find a job in the DEI field,” she said. “I used to have a LinkedIn alert for ‘DEI intern,’ but I’ve transitioned to just ‘intern’ at this point.”
Stepping out into a light rain, Nicole crossed the quad and headed back to class. But first, matter of fact, she said she isn’t waiting for answers from administrators any longer. She’s already added a second major – public relations, with a marketing minor – just in case the assault on DEI doesn’t let up.
“I could still go into DEI after I graduate if I wanted to,” she said. “But obviously all this pushback makes me feel like I definitely don’t want to do that, because I don’t want to be out of a job one day out of the blue.”
