“This is nothing short of a bombshell,” said Michael Ross, a lawyer with the conservative advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom. “This is a huge executive order that is basically outlawing DEI across [federal] agencies and any recipient of a federal contract.” Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump declared he would “reclaim” universities from the “radical leftists” he said had come to dominate them, and restore meritocracy and excellence to their rightful place as core values of higher education. That rhetoric was amplified by ideological allies, such as Vice President JD Vance and conservative activist and firebrand Christopher Rufo, who has said a leftist cultural revolution that swept across the country took shape on college campuses during the civil rights era. Opponents of Trump’s order see it as a reactionary attempt to defend the position of white men at the top of the culture’s pecking order. Supporters say it is an essential step toward restoring American values of color-blindness and meritocracy. The only thing the two sides agree on is the potential magnitude of the order. It “puts higher education 100 steps backward,” said Jordan Nellums , a senior policy associate at t he Century Foundation , a left-leaning think tank. “These are all wonderful steps in the right direction,” said Peter Wood, president of the right-leaning National Association of Scholars . Trump’s order sets in motion a range of policies and investigations intended to end what it describes as “dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences” that are pursued “under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’ ” That can include hiring decisions that take race or sex into account, but that may also violate provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the order. It can also encompass diversity administrators or offices, workforce training, or requirements that scientists explain in grant applications how their work will advance DEI goals. The order says any recipient of a federal contract or grant must “certify that it does not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.” That provision could affect universities that receive federal research grants. It instructs the US attorney general and secretary of education to “issue guidance” to all colleges and universities that receive federal funding — which a vast majority do — about “the measures and practices required to comply” with the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in admissions. It deputizes the heads of all federal agencies to use their powers to root out DEI in the private sector, not just at universities but at corporations and nonprofits, and to promote values of “individual initiative, excellence, and hard work.” The directive also tells agency heads to identify up to nine targets of “civil compliance investigations” of institutions under their jurisdiction. In higher education, the investigation targets are to be institutions “with endowments over 1 billion dollars.” The order could focus renewed government scrutiny on large, private universities, such as Harvard, Columbia, MIT, or the University of Pennsylvania, that were investigated last year by congressional Republicans over campus antisemitism while some conservatives accused their female leaders of reaching their positions due to diversity considerations. “Get ready, Harvard. Your Claudine Gay-DEI nightmare has just begun,” Rufo, who helped publicize plagiarism allegations against Gay that contributed to her ouster as Harvard’s president , wrote on social media Wednesday. The proposed federal investigations, said Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, are “an invitation to create lists of shame, which I haven’t seen before in federal policy.” There is uncertainty about the practical consequences of the order. Some supporters say it grants federal agencies broad leeway to adapt its directives to their particular regulatory powers. “I fully expect them to apply very real and significant pressure very quickly,” said Ross, of the Alliance Defending Freedom. Critics see the vagueness as part of the danger lurking within the order. “Trump’s order is broad, imprecise, and impermissibly interferes with the prerogative of universities and their faculty to determine their educational mission,” said Rana Jaleel, chair of a committee on academic freedom at the American Association of University Professors . Some higher education watchers suspect institutions will take preemptive steps to avoid scrutiny. Schools could also ignore or try to “sideline these rules,” said Wood, head of the National Association of Scholars. Nearly all colleges depend on federal financial aid and research grants to fund operations, which gives the Trump administration leverage to influence their policies. Several higher education leaders told the Globe they will continue prioritizing diversity and inclusion, though the way they go about achieving those goals may change. Kimberly Allen, a spokesperson for MIT, said the university is “working to understand the implications” of the order, adding that “MIT is committed to attracting the very best talent, supporting our diverse community, and complying with federal law.” Danielle Holley, president of Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, said she fears college leaders will not stand up for the long-held values of diversity and inclusion to avoid becoming a target. “It’s very dangerous because higher education is at a point now where people are questioning and doubting our value proposition and our values, and if we capitulate . . . we will lose the credibility that we have,” Holley said. She said her school will forgo federal contracts to avoid abolishing DEI. “We obviously can’t enter into contracts with people who don’t allow DEI work,” she said. “So for us, that wouldn’t be an option.” Shaun Harper, a professor of education, public policy, and business at the University of Southern California, said he fears a DEI rollback would lead to “less diversity in the student body, greater pay inequities that disadvantage women, more promotion inequities that negatively affect employees of color, more conflicts between groups, as well as more transphobic, antisemitic, and Islamophobic violence.” “What the Trump administration and many conservative lawmakers don’t understand is that DEI policies and programs actually protect college campuses from these and other related problems,” Harper said. “They’ve instead convinced themselves without sufficient evidence that everything done in the name of DEI is an attack on white men. It isn’t.” Some supporters and opponents said the order could be susceptible to legal challenges on First Amendment grounds, although Ross said the order contains language that may protect it from such claims. The order “does not prevent” individuals or institutions “from engaging in First Amendment-protected speech,” it states. It also does not “prohibit” professors from “advocating for, endorsing, or promoting the unlawful employment or contracting practices prohibited by this order.” Wood, who was chief of staff to a previous president of Boston University, dismissed critics’ free speech and academic freedom objections. “I think telling institutions what they can do with public monies and what they can do to be in compliance with the law doesn’t suppress anybody’s free speech,” he said. “In fact, I fully expect those who disagree with the executive order will be exercising their rights to free speech unhindered for a long time to come.” The result, though, will be the same, he said. Soon, Wood said, colleges and universities “will be caught in the net of corrective measures to pernicious forms of racial preferencing that have taken hold in American higher education.”
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