By Mercer Stauch
Colleges and universities nationwide received a Dear Colleague Letter from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on Feb. 14, establishing the Trump administration’s legal stance on all forms of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices in schools. The letter outlines the OCR’s new interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, Title IV of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution as it relates to all academic activity. The Office’s interpretation is broad, and equates all DEI efforts with discrimination, arguing that it is unlawful to consider a student’s race in “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies and all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”
The Dear Colleague Letter is just one of many steps the Trump administration has taken to problematize and undermine DEI efforts across multiple sectors. The letter threatens to revoke federal funding unless higher education institutions conduct internal reviews of their practices and cease efforts to achieve what it calls “nebulous” goals like social justice and equity. Such a review is being conducted at the University of Puget Sound by the newly established State Intergovernmental Federal Transition team (SIFT), which is composed of Cabinet members, faculty, staff in Student Affairs, General Council, the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity and the Office of Marketing and Communications.
According to University President Isiaah Crawford, SIFT isn’t aiming to dismantle the University’s DEI programs. “We’re looking at a variety of our policies and procedures across the entire landscape of the University, as it relates to academics, student life, admissions, the whole thing, just to make sure,” Crawford said. He sees all University activities as currently compliant with the laws the letter references. “At this point, we feel very well situated within the boundaries of the law,” he said. Still, SIFT is tasked with examining “websites, policies and procedures, charters for clubs, all of that,” with the goal of establishing “a clear sense of an inventory, such that if some challenge comes forward, we know where we are and how we can respond.”
At some universities, the threat of losing federal funding has prompted preemptive program changes. The Associated Press reported that references to DEI are being removed from school websites at the University of Cincinnati. Ohio State University closed its Office of Diversity and Inclusion on Feb. 28, and multiple Colorado universities have renamed job titles and offices previously designated as responsible for DEI programming. The University of North Carolina system removed DEI courses as a graduation requirement to ensure its compliance with the administration’s position.
Lorna Hernandez Jarvis, Vice President of Institutional Equity and Diversity, was unavailable to comment on how her office’s work might be affected by name changes and executive actions more broadly. As of publication, no changes have been made to language mentioning DEI initiatives and policies on the University’s website.
President Crawford said that the University won’t rename anything preemptively, nor will it alter graduation requirements or course offerings in response to the letter. Even so, “it could be the situation where we find that we’re going to have to tweak some language,” he said, referring to titles and acronyms used on campus.
For Professor Renee Simms in African American studies, this is unsatisfying. “To me, conceding a name change is just putting you on a slippery slope. I really admire those universities who are saying, ‘No, we’re not going to do anything.’”
Professor Simms and her colleagues in the African American studies department hosted a town hall-style lecture titled “African American Studies in the Age of Anti-DEI” to discuss the history of black studies on our campus and demonstrate that attacks on inclusivity like these long precede Donald Trump. She said it’s difficult to know what to do in these moments. “I know that you don’t run and I know that you don’t concede names, because names matter. I know that you don’t concede fights that took centuries to get a little bit of a win. You don’t give that up without a fight,” she said.
Professor Simms and President Crawford both identified that higher education faces unique new challenges under the current government. Crawford traveled to Washington, D.C. the week of Feb. 3 to meet with Washington State’s legislative delegation to push back against proposed changes to the tax rate on university endowments. Representative Mike Lawler (R-NY) has proposed increasing the tax rate from 1.4% to 10% and lowering the endowment asset threshold from $500,000 to $200,000 per student. This change would subject more institutions to the tax, including the University of Puget Sound. “That would take away resources that we have available to support students, to support faculty and support staff,” President Crawford said.
Crawford said his meetings were fruitful. “I felt it went well,” he said. “One side of the aisle was a little more responsive than the other, but people were respectful, and I felt like I was able to offer some information, particularly around the adverse impact that they may not have understood.” Other Republican legislators have proposed increasing the endowment tax rate to 21% to match the current corporate tax rate.
President Crawford urged students to stay optimistic. “This, too, shall pass,” he said. “I wish I didn’t have to spend time on this sort of thing, but it’s my job. And I’m happy and excited to advocate on our behalf, and we’ll be doing a lot of that. I think that’s going to be a lot of my work, perhaps forever, but I think until the midterm elections in 2026,” he added.