Commentary: The crisis surrounding the dismantling of DEI in schools

Illustration by Jasmine Boquer-Velasco

Free speech has lost its place in America in recent developments. The Trump administration has launched its attacks on DEI programs in a series of executive orders. This acronym, which the White House referred to as “radical,” stands for diversity, equity, and inclusion. These executive orders are designed to terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government and prevent the advancement of equal opportunity. 

• EO 14151 - “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.”

• EO 14168 - “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.”

• EO 14173 - “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”

In threats spewed by the Trump administration, federal funding is to be withheld from schools that have diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. The issue with this is that it places Universities, Colleges, and other educational institutions reliant on federal funding under immense pressure to succumb to these decisions rather than be considered non-compliant. Beyond that, there will be impacts on the structure of education and especially STEM research, which is a sector that DEI generally thrives in.

The University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa has made recent accommodations for this war against academia and DEI. Various diversity and inclusion programs have tried to censor themselves to ensure that federal funding is not compromised. A lot of that work is starting with the websites

There have been some reports of “scrubbing” websites that have content of any semblance of affirmative action. For example, the Office of Student Equity, Excellence, and Diversity made revisions to their previous mission statement that aimed to “promote diversity in higher education.” Now called the SEED Office, their mission reads, “cultivating the SEEDs of students success for a brighter future.” 

A very important thing to know is that an executive order is not a law. It is the responsibility of UH and all its campuses to follow the law, and so there is no sense in succumbing to these haphazardly issued administrative policies. However, it gets to a point where the violations of executive orders could and are bringing up dire consequences. Lexer Chou, the student life coordinator at Leeward Community College and one of the diversity trainers for the National Coalition Building Institute, brings up a point about executive order violations, suggesting that its main focus is taking down affirmative action, which is meant to uplift historically disadvantaged groups. “What is deemed as DEI-related violations are things like if we are offering a scholarship for women in the STEM program. [...] We cannot provide something of an advantage to one particular group over another,” she says.

Harvard became the first university to openly defy the Trump administration. They sent out a letter on April 11 addressed to Harvard president Alan Garber that demands aggressive policy changes, a few of which are limiting activism on campus, eliminating every aspect of DEI, and restricting international student admissions. The president later said in a statement that the “University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.” There has been a $2.2 billion funding freeze on Harvard, and they have sued the Trump administration on Monday. 

UH President Wendy Hensel has been able to recognize Harvard and stands in solidarity with them in noncompliance with authoritarianism. In an open forum with the UH President held on Monday, she addressed the impacts made to the UH System and students by recent federal policy changes. 

“There were 48 research programs that have been terminated, paused, or phased out, totaling $36 million in awards. That equates to about $250,000 in payroll each month. Currently, the number of employees is escalating significantly to now 82 affected,” Hensel says. These statistics are expected to rise, especially with the speed at which these policies are being issued, which are too stressful to keep up with.

Concerns over funding do not stop at UH Mānoa. At Leeward, various programs pose a “threat” to federal policies. One example would be Leeward’s Kīpuka lounge. “We have a lot of employees, and a lot of Kīpuka staff are on a grant. So we would be concerned that if the grant gets cut, all these people are going to lose their jobs,” Chou says. 

Anyone, whether associated with the college or not, can make reports on anything they deem to be DEI-related. An example of this is the webinar series “Queerphoria” by Queerify, a program by Kalei Ruiz that seeks to address decolonization, especially within the LGBTQ+ Māhu community, has been reported and demanded to be shut down. However, Chou makes it clear that, “It’s educational. It’s not violating any executive order. So, I'm happy to say that at Leeward, I'm still doing Safe Zone trainings. We are still doing the NCBI training. We're still doing any training that we can.”

Thankfully, with the support of Leeward Chancellor Dr. Carlos Peñaloza, students and faculty can remain cautiously optimistic. Chou mentioned that DEI operations can and should still be running with the support of the upper administration, but the unpredictability of these policy changes leaves only so much that the upper administration can handle.

An important reminder to have, especially being under an administration that has seemed to have already forgotten, is understanding what your rights are, that we have them, and to have that information easily accessible.“Something that I hope our university system stays true to [...] is that we don’t take down sites. I don’t think we should scrub sites. Our communities need to know the resources that we have here, and how to access them because especially as an example, our LGBTQ+ community, they're going to need to know what their rights are. How are we supporting them?” she says.

No campus is entirely safe during times like this where authoritarianism is wielding its pen. This intense political pressure that educational institutions are being put on is something that has not really been encountered before. Hawai‘i being such a naturally diverse place, we must assert our rights to free speech and be able to recognize the power that educational institutions hold and use it to the best of our ability.

Leeward offers various educational resources and workshops, and as Chou put it, she encourages students not only to attend but to “implement that back right into the world,” while also recognizing that this sort of qualitative data can show how these programs are impacting the community. As students and faculty who make up these institutions, we must be able to show up because protecting education is protecting future generations of valuable knowledge.