USC scrubs DEI from some webpages as Trump cracks down on campus diversity programs
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- USC says it is “reviewing” its DEI-related programs and practices in response to Trump administration guidance.
- Several USC schools or departments have deleted or modified DEI references on websites or in faculty titles.
- The moves come as the Department of Education has set a Friday deadline for all schools to remove race-specific programs or face federal funding cuts.
As the Trump administration pushes schools to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion programs by Friday or face federal funding cuts, USC has scrubbed several references to DEI statements, renamed faculty positions and, in one case, deleted website references to a scholarship for Black and Indigenous students.
The University of Southern California’s actions this month — similar to some other universities throughout the country— appear to be aimed at avoiding federal scrutiny, according to USC faculty and staff and reviews of portions of the USC website archives.
References to DEI mission statements, diversity programming or DEI staff positions have been changed or eliminated by the School of Cinematic Arts, School of Dramatic Arts, Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, Leonard Davis School of Gerontology, Roski School of Art and Design and the Department of Earth Sciences. They include renaming DEI initiatives and positions to ones focused on “community and culture” and deleting multiple website pages and paragraphs on diversity.
Amid President Trump’s attack on DEI, California schools and colleges aim to keep diversity efforts intact while skirting clashes with the administration.
The changes at USC come as universities nationwide navigate warnings from the U.S. Department of Education, which two weeks ago released a letter telling schools that using “race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life” violates anti-discrimination law.
The letter, which laid out a new interpretation of how federal officials would enforce existing rules, said the department would “no longer tolerate the overt and covert racial discrimination,” singling out white and Asian American students as victims. It said the government would “vigorously enforce the law on equal terms” at all schools that get federal assistance.
The Department of Education has not announced any investigations or specific funding cuts.
National trends
Nationwide, universities have taken different stances. The president of Colorado State University, citing a need for federal funding, said it would remake its race-related programs and avoid a “gamble” in challenging the Trump administration. At the University of Cincinnati, the president said that he had “little choice” but to fall in line. Regents for the University of Alaska voted for DEI to be scrubbed from the system. The University of Iowa will end dorm communities next year for Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ students, according to local news reports.
The president of Wesleyan University in Connecticut has fashioned himself as an icon of resistance and called the White House administration “authoritarian.”
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Jerry Kang, a law professor and DEI expert who was UCLA’s first vice chancellor for equity, diversity and inclusion until 2020, said it was not surprising that “universities engage in risk-averse overcompliance.”
“That’s what universities have always done. That’s what corporations have always done. We tend to follow political winds,” he said. But, Kang added, “You cannot just play defense without articulating a muscular conception of what you stand for in this space.”
Leaders of the University of California and California State University said they already follow state anti-discrimination law, including Prop. 209, which nearly three decades ago outlawed the use of race in admissions to state institutions. Stanford announced in January that it would evaluate diversity efforts after President Trump signed a White House executive order banning DEI in federal programs and contracts. The order is temporarily on hold after a lawsuit filed by a Washington, D.C.-based college diversity officers association.
Mitchell Chang, UCLA’s interim vice provost for equity, diversity and inclusion, said at a town hall meeting Thursday there were no plans to change the school’s programs, such as racially themed graduation ceremonies, cultural dorm room floors or Black and Latino student clubs or resource centers. He cited recent court challenges, including a federal lawsuit by a teachers union over the DEI directive, that could prevent enforcement of the federal guidance.
“We’re maintaining our regular course. ... We’ll adjust as necessary. We have a plan B,” Chang said, adding that “we have to take these challenges to our DEI efforts very seriously and plan for potential dismantling of them.”
USC takes action
At USC, one of the state’s most diverse and largest universities, the response within several colleges and departments has gained attention. To be sure, vast portions of the university’s diversity program descriptions remain untouched on its website. Dozens of webpages reference university support of diversity, including a campuswide Office of Inclusion and Diversity that promotes “USC’s long history of access and opportunity” and support of a “diverse and inclusive community.”
But some USC schools and colleges — including departments within the Dana and David Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, the largest university division — have removed DEI references from their websites in recent days.
Schools are on alert after the Department of Education said it would cut federal funding unless they abolished diversity, equity and inclusion programs, potentially including culturally themed campus housing and graduation ceremonies.
A department chair’s email — sent to Dornsife linguistics faculty Monday and shared with The Times by three USC employees — made the case in suggesting that faculty change or remove public-facing DEI references.
”... In the light of such very real worries, universities and other institutions dependent on federal funding all over the country are now all removing wording from visible sites that will attract the government AI scrapers looking to identify and route out support for DEI,” said the message from Andrew Simpson, a professor of linguistics. “This is obviously shocking and incredibly distasteful. However, the alternative, to lose all federal grant support would simply be catastrophic.”
“Faculty are not being asked to adjust the content of their teaching,” the memo said, adding later: “Please consider how you may be able to help in this unpleasant exercise, for the purely pragmatic reason of survival.”
In response to requests from The Times, Simpson said he “did not mandate any action” but was passing on a message from his dean to department faculty. “The choice of how to proceed in the current situation is entirely individual, to be made freely by each person, and is/was not mandated/ordered by anyone.”
Moh El-Naggar, the interim dean of Dornsife, replied via email to a Times request, saying, “We’re navigating our response as an academic unit of USC.”
In a statement, a USC spokesman did not respond to a question about whether there have been university-wide instructions to change or remove DEI statements or programs.
The spokesman directed The Times to a Wednesday campuswide message from President Carol Folt. In it, Folt said, “we will continue to review our programs and practices to ensure both that their direct relationship to our academic mission is clear, and that we comply fully with evolving legal requirements.” The letter linked to an FAQ that said USC was “reviewing its ‘DEI-related’ programs and practices” in order to “ensure alignment with our compliance obligations in light of recent executive orders and agency guidance.”
At the the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, the “diversity and inclusion” section of its website now says “mission and vision.” The title of a professor, Laura Castañeda, has changed from associate dean of “diversity, equity, inclusion and access” to “community and culture.”
A federal judge found President Trump’s executive orders on DEI likely carry constitutional violations, including against free-speech rights.
Castañeda declined to speak with The Times. Speaking to Annenberg Media, a student publication, she said the goal was to “soften language.”
“I think the idea was — and I think this is true university-wide — [that we would] ‘soften language, just because it might buy us some time.’ We’re going to continue the work — the work doesn’t stop. But let’s not make ourselves obvious targets; let’s not pick a fight,” Castañeda said.
Willow Bay, the Annenberg dean, did not respond to an interview request.
At the School of Cinematic Arts, a “diversity and inclusion” website that was online on Feb. 16 is no longer there. A similar, pared-down “culture and community” page appears in its place. A detailed statement on the school’s “commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion” has been deleted. So have multiple webpages and a video about the Gerald Lawson Fund, a scholarship launched in 2021 that aims to support Black and Indigenous students interested in gaming and tech.
A spokeswoman for the Cinematic Arts division said the dean, Elizabeth Daley, was not available for an interview about DEI-related changes.
Some professors opposed
In an interview, Howard Rodman, a screenwriter and professor in the Cinematic Arts school, said he opposed the DEI changes.
“I think that USC’s strategy is not to call attention to itself — not to ‘put targets on our backs,’” he said. “We are in essence saying: this is just a change in outward-facing nomenclature that will enable us to continue our good work. To me, this is at best self-consoling rhetoric. Everything I know about authoritarianism is that small compliances only lead to larger compliances, until one is left with neither one’s mission nor one’s dignity.”
At the Roski School of Art and Design, a detailed “diversity, equity and inclusion” mission statement website has been deleted. The URL, which appeared as recently as mid-January, now says: “Error 404. We’re sorry, we can’t find the page you requested.”
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The school’s dean, Haven Lin-Kirk, did not reply to a request for an interview. Speaking to The Times, Amelia Jones, a Roski professor and vice dean of faculty and research, called the overall scrubbing at USC “capitulation.”
“I kind of respect what they are doing by trying to maintain the integrity of our teaching by not triggering the Trump and [Elon] Musk administration,” Jones said. “In some ways, that is really smart. Who needs that? But in other ways, if nobody is going to stand up to this, what are we doing here at a university anyway? Are we here to just secretly do DEI?”
While the Department of Education’s letter this month suggested that racially themed dorm room floors are illegal — USC has several “living learning” communities and are open to all races — there does not appear to be changes to their operations. The same goes for Latino, Black and other race-related graduation events, which the Department of Education’s letter said were “shameful.”
Royel Johnson, an associate professor at the USC Rossier School of Education, said he had not heard of instructions to make DEI changes. His school, he noted, still has an associate dean of equity and inclusion.
Schools could be “preemptively making changes at this point as opposed to a mandate from the university,” said Johnson, who is the director of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates in the USC Race and Equity Center, which studies racial climates at college campuses.
“Because there is so much different messaging from the federal government with guidance, letters, executive orders and court cases, most universities are trying to stay silent or wait until there are clear directives. Some are changing names, leaning into ‘belonging’ or ‘community engagement,’ or some places are getting rid of roles altogether, which is unfortunate,” Johnson said.
“But it is not illegal to do the work of DEI. We have a federal mandate to provide safe spaces. It is not the case that we should not be doing DEI. But in some cases, we should make our language on DEI more specific and refined.”
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