Higher Ed DEI is in “hunker-down mode… trying to wait out the Trump administration”
My assessment of progress made and lawfare attempts at delay: “Every month they can delay the Trump administration doing something is one less month till [electoral] help arrives in their viewpoint.”
I have written and spoken often about how higher education is trying to rope-a-dope Trump’s anti-DEI efforts through rebranding, masking, and often just ignoring Executive Orders.
About a month after Trump’s inauguration we even had an online event predicting what would happen, VIDEO: Reports of the Death of DEI are Greatly Exaggerated.
At our Equal Protection Project, we have been working non-stop to force schools to abandon unlawful civil rights violations done in the name of DEI, and we have had great success. (Full Impact Report here.)
I was recently interviewed by Fox News Digital (video at bottom) about EPP and where federal efforts stand with the benefit of a year of hindsight.
The Trump administration’s efforts to target discrimination on college campuses have seen some success, but an Ivy League professor is warning that more needs to be done.
Professor William Jacobson, who has worked at Cornell Law School for nearly two decades, told Fox News Digital in an interview that the Republican-controlled executive and legislative branches have urgent work to do if they want their efforts to end diversity, equity and inclusion to have lasting power whenever Democrats regain power in Washington.
“This will all come roaring back. I don’t think anybody thinks otherwise.… Everybody knows [the schools] are in hunker-down mode,” Jacobson said. “They are trying to wait out the Trump administration.”
Jacobson runs the Equal Protection Project, an investigative organization that operates under a nonprofit he founded called the Legal Insurrection Foundation. The organization tracks universities online and files civil rights complaints through the Department of Justice and Education Department, and has occasionally become involved in litigation.
He said his group targets discriminatory versions of DEI and has challenged more than 700 programs across dozens of universities. Jacobson said he has seen what he estimates are 175 successes, where universities succumb to pressure and either eliminate or modify programs that he said have violated civil rights….
While Jacobson’s work largely involves seeking administrative remedies, it has at times risen to the federal courts.
His foundation helped bring an ongoing federal lawsuit in the Northern District of New York in 2024 challenging New York’s Science and Technology Entry Program, arguing the program’s eligibility at 56 schools included racial preferences for Black, Hispanic, Native American and Alaskan students, in violation of the Constitution’s equal protection clause.
The DOJ, meanwhile, is managing a barrage of lawsuits brought in response to the Trump administration attempting to strip funding from states and publicly funded schools, which it says are discriminating under the guise of DEI.
Jacobson described those lawsuits as strategic “lawfare,” given the slow nature of the court process.
“Every month they can delay the Trump administration doing something is one less month till help arrives in their viewpoint,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson suggested that pushing to cut off federal funding and locking in rules through formal regulation, rather than temporary executive orders, are key to dismantling what he says are discriminatory DEI programs in higher education….
“My view is the executive orders have had a substantial impact, particularly in getting these practices out of the federal government and out of the federal government grant system,” Jacobson said, saying the moves have helped “tremendously” to shift a stubborn culture.
He warned, though, that he “never fully appreciated how much of this DEI came from the federal government” and that going through the tedious, sometimes yearlong government rule-making process to eliminate funding was more effective than executive orders.
“They need to engage in rule-making, because that’s more permanent.… It’s harder to change a rule that went through the process. It’s very easy to eliminate an executive order,” Jacobson said.
He added that “obviously” Congress passing legislation would be the most ideal avenue for terminating racial or sex preferences in school programs.
“But nobody thinks they could get any legislation through the Congress as it’s currently constituted,” Jacobson said.
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Comments
The long march through the institutions took decades, so it’s reasonable to believe it can’t possibly be reversed in the near-term.
Setting it up required stealth.
Tearing it down requires attention.
Rats and roaches always hide when the lights come on.
Colleges can outwait Trump, but they can’t outwait their own reputational damage. In another decade or two, people will as soon send their kids to a conventional academic college as they would order a bottle of Fen-Phen, a spraycan of DDT, or an ozone home air purifier.
More and more college-eligible young men are choosing not to put up with this crap and going into the specialty trades. They come out debt free and make a nice living while not having to worry about whether they’re going to get me-too’d for glancing in wrong direction at the wrong time for their whole career.
I hold several degrees, but if I had to do it over today, I would be in a trade school.
No doubt, no question. Best to learn a trade than subject myself to rampant socialist indoctrination and pay for the “privilege.”
Plus make yourself nearly recession proof, avoid office drama/politics and be your own boss if you choose to do so. Go where you are appreciated and depart anywhere else.
Similarly situated with MA from serious Big 10 school. Now retired from a checkered “professional” career in which I never got beyond the lowest ranks and punctuated by several long stretches of unemployment. I was never suited, either cognitively nor temperamentally, for that kind of work and should never have thought I could reach beyond my family’s own blue-collar roots.
Republicans are a gaggle of cowards unwilling to pass laws to make a real change.
Why don’t we have photo ID for federal elections? Cowards.
Have you heard of cloture? The Senate tables a bill if there aren’t 60 votes for cloture. Of course, a simple majority could that the Senate rules to remove that, so I guess you’re right.
Let me guess (with a Walz filter): they think they are hiding like Anne Frank when the Nazis came knocking, right?
They are pathetic wretches, living examples of George Santayana’s very apropos lesson about history and the failure to learn from it.
We are in so deep the only solution now is fascism. I pray for it.
The situation has grown so crazy, bizarrre even, and dangerous that only a dictator who has no rules to follow can clean up the widespread chaotic mess and its stench. People don’t like to hear that, but what other solution is there?
I would rather have a Congress that does its job proactively and properly even if I don’t agree with their policy preferences than this situation where everything is done with executive orders. Congress is the most powerful branch of government, not the executive branch. The instant Trump is not President, DEI returns with more force than ever.
Congress wants it this way. By delegation of their power to the Executive Branch they can avoid responsibility and blame the Executive Branch agencies/departments. ‘golly gee whiz MR constituent taxpayer Agency X is out of control so elect me/send $ to my PAC to get other folks elected and this time, pinky promise, we’ll take action’.
Congress is a house divided and useless at this point.
Congress is by design a house divided. Democracy is about disagreement. Our system of government is a better way to disagree than the other options. If we decide it is no longer worthwhile, then we go backwards to a much worse situation than having to compromise with stupid people. We need to fight to restore health to our institutions and maintain them and use them properly. There’s no magic, quick fix using executive authority.
Doesn’t matter how many “wins” the Equal Protection Project gets. The cancer is deep, systemic and just waiting to resurface. The entire system needs to be shut down and purged.
DEI has always been just one more version of the Left’s obsession with class struggle. Now that their targets have hit back hard they will regroup and rebrand in the shadows like they always do, until most people move on, and the political winds shift enough for them to reemerge in the enclaves of envy and hatred that always persist somewhere. Since they are a manifestation of the primordial evil that accompanies human nature they cannot be totally destroyed, and will always be able to recruit from the despair that inevitably overwhelms those who worship humanism.
It is far beyond time to ask the 60+ white person that is all-in on DEI why have they waited until the end of THEIR lives to elevate unqualified people merely to feel good about your lifetime of soft racism.
There are zero US constitutional prohibitions against an individual mentoring anyone they wish.
I have.
There are zero US constitutional directives for an individual to use another’s (my) funds to pay for what they wish.
Stop.
Please correct me if I am wrong.