By Christi Throw­er 
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Under­rep­re­sent­ed. Diver­si­ty. LGBTQ. Woman. 

These are some of the words or phras­es delet­ed from fed­er­al agen­cies’ web­sites and tar­get­ed by grant cuts in the past year – just one part of a sweep­ing cam­paign by Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s admin­is­tra­tion to remove “DEI rhetoric” from pub­lic life. 

In the first year of his sec­ond term, Trump has used threats to fed­er­al fund­ing, exec­u­tive orders and the vast pow­er and influ­ence of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment to try to dis­man­tle diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion pro­grams that he claims are dis­crim­i­na­to­ry and ille­gal. The impact has been felt nation­wide, with some cor­po­ra­tions and school sys­tems renam­ing DEI poli­cies and ini­tia­tives or abol­ish­ing them alto­geth­er. 

Experts who oppose this cul­ture shift around DEI say it is cen­sor­ship, era­sure and an inef­fi­cient use of gov­ern­ment time that could fur­ther harm already dis­ad­van­taged peo­ple in high­er edu­ca­tion, pub­lic schools, the work­force and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.  

 “I think it’s just a way to erase cer­tain peo­ple’s exis­tence,” said Mic­ah Heumann, direc­tor of UConn’s Office of Under­grad­u­ate Research who has researched racism in high­er edu­ca­tion.

Heumann said the attacks on DEI pro­grams and research is a loss for human rights. 

“I real­ly think you can judge a soci­ety by how they treat the most vul­ner­a­ble… and that’s [what] we’re talk­ing about with diver­si­ty, equi­ty, inclu­sion,” Heumann said. “It’s not just race or gen­der. When we’re talk­ing about DEI, we’re talk­ing about first-gen stu­dents. We’re talk­ing about vets… We’re talk­ing about get­ting acces­si­bil­i­ty.”  

The legal­i­ty of DEI  

Accord­ing to Diver­si­ty, Equi­ty & Inclu­sion Inc., a non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cat­ed to DEI edu­ca­tion and resources, the phrase entails frame­works of how orga­ni­za­tions should enable access for mar­gin­al­ized groups. These frame­works are intend­ed to move orga­ni­za­tions beyond sur­face-lev­el rep­re­sen­ta­tion and toward prop­er inte­gra­tion of diverse groups to ben­e­fit every­one, the orga­ni­za­tion explains. 

How­ev­er, Trump has insist­ed that DEI has kept orga­ni­za­tions from hir­ing based on mer­it.  In an exec­u­tive order to “end ille­gal DEI,” Trump calls DEI “rad­i­cal” and “dan­ger­ous” and claims that DEI has reversed “the progress made in the decades since the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964 toward a col­or­blind and com­pe­tence-based work­place.”  

“DEI’s foun­da­tion­al rhetoric and ideas fos­ter inter­group hos­til­i­ty and author­i­tar­i­an­ism,” the order said.  

The claim that DEI is ille­gal is unsub­stan­ti­at­ed in the order or by the White House, as is the asser­tion that “DEI hir­ing” is not based on mer­it. Some legal experts say these orders vio­late the law. 

Accord­ing to Dan Bar­rett, legal direc­tor of the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Union (ACLU) of Con­necti­cut, Trump’s exec­u­tive order that threat­ens fed­er­al fund­ing for schools with DEI poli­cies vio­lates the First, Fifth, and 14th Amend­ments of the Con­sti­tu­tion.  

“You can’t just tell schools there’s a vague list of top­ics that I won’t let you teach, and if you do, I’m going to imme­di­ate­ly pull all your fund­ing,” Bar­rett said.  

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong said he also believes that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment lever­ag­ing pow­er over the states with DEI attacks is a breach of sov­er­eign­ty for the states. 

“You do your job. We’ll do our job,” Tong said. “You can’t com­man­deer state and local resources.”

Trump’s tar­get­ing of DEI 

DEI has become a favorite scape­goat of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion.  

In Jan­u­ary 2025, after the col­li­sion of an Amer­i­can Air­lines plane and a U.S. Army heli­copter, Trump blamed the crash on DEI in a speech while the inves­ti­ga­tion was still ongo­ing, accord­ing to the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. He said he want­ed “some­body that’s psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly supe­ri­or” to the alleged diver­si­ty hires to work in air traf­fic con­trol. 

When asked how he knew diver­si­ty was respon­si­ble for the crash, Trump said, “because I have com­mon sense. OK? And unfor­tu­nate­ly, a lot of peo­ple don’t. We want bril­liant peo­ple doing this.” 

Trump has a his­to­ry of ques­tion­able racial com­ments like these before enter­ing pol­i­tics and in his first term. He has con­sis­tent­ly cit­ed dis­in­for­ma­tion or made dis­parag­ing remarks tar­get­ed toward pre­dom­i­nant­ly black com­mu­ni­ties and coun­tries, lied about Barack Obama’s eth­nic ori­gins and reli­gion, allowed and avowed sup­port from white nation­al­ist groups and shown pref­er­en­tial treat­ment of white peo­ple in his busi­ness prac­tices, the New York Times report­ed.  

Trump has also sought to remove ref­er­ences to diverse pop­u­la­tions, espe­cial­ly trans­gen­der and non-bina­ry peo­ple, from fed­er­al gov­ern­ment web­sites, agen­cies and archives, accord­ing to NPR. This includ­ed direct­ing fed­er­al gov­ern­ment web­sites to be stripped of ref­er­ences to his­toric firsts by women, non-white peo­ple and LGBTQ+ peo­ple. For exam­ple, para­graphs hon­or­ing the Tuskegee Air­men in WWII and the Women Air­force Ser­vice Pilots were removed from the Air Force’s web­site, accord­ing to Time Mag­a­zine.  

“The Tuskegee Air­men brave­ly fought and died for our free­doms before this nation even grant­ed them the full ben­e­fits of cit­i­zen­ship,” U.S. Rep. Ter­ri Sewell, a Demo­c­rat from Alaba­ma, said fol­low­ing the removal.  “To strip them from the Air Force cur­ricu­lum is an out­ra­geous betray­al of our val­ues as Amer­i­cans. Their hero­ism is not DEI.” 

DEI’s pro­mot­ing of var­i­ous groups of col­or and gen­der brings atten­tion to racism and sys­temic injus­tice, so it has become the lat­est accept­able tar­get, Heumann said.

“His­to­ry repeats itself. We know that,” said Heumann, the father of a trans­gen­der son and rel­a­tive of Holo­caust sur­vivors. “You can’t ignore stuff that’s hap­pen­ing, even if it’s not hap­pen­ing direct­ly to you, because it’s hap­pen­ing to anoth­er fel­low human being.” 

The ben­e­fits of DEI 

Pro­po­nents of DEI point to sta­tis­ti­cal ben­e­fits of diver­si­ty in orga­ni­za­tions. Accord­ing to man­age­ment con­sult­ing firm McK­in­sey & Co., which does exten­sive eco­nom­ic research, a greater diver­si­ty of peo­ple with dif­fer­ent back­grounds can pro­vide a vari­ety of per­spec­tives to the group as a whole and boost effi­cien­cy. “The like­li­hood of diverse com­pa­nies out­per­form­ing indus­try peers on prof­itabil­i­ty has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly,” the com­pa­ny said in a 2020 report. 

Some stud­ies have also found that DEI poli­cies are pop­u­lar among the pub­lic. A CNBC sur­vey from 2021 found that near­ly 80% of work­ers want to work in a place that val­ues DEI. 

Heumann said he believes that DEI is “nec­es­sary to cre­ate equi­ty in our soci­ety.” Lin­ger­ing dis­par­i­ties from seg­re­ga­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion still exist and need to be addressed, he said. While DEI ini­tia­tives don’t pro­vide all the solu­tions, “I think these are ways to help offset/balance his­to­ry… get us back to where we need to be,” he said. 

Accord­ing to the U.S. Cen­sus Bureau, Black and His­pan­ic house­hold income, for exam­ple, remains sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er than white house­hold income near­ly across the board. Sim­i­lar­ly, queer peo­ple are more like­ly to face dis­crim­i­na­tion in employ­ment and hous­ing, accord­ing to stud­ies by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Los Ange­les and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. The Trevor Project, an inter­na­tion­al sui­cide pre­ven­tion non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tion for LGBTQ+ youth, said LGBTQ+ youth also face high­er rates of home­less­ness and men­tal health strug­gles. 

Jef­frey Hines, vice pres­i­dent for the Office for Inclu­sion and Civ­il Rights at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut and UConn Health, said he believes DEI is best if it is “ubiq­ui­tous,” or through­out all facets of soci­ety.   

“Diver­si­ty is broad­ly defined. There’s diver­si­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, diver­si­ty of per­spec­tive, and diver­si­ty of where you live,” he said. “That diver­si­ty actu­al­ly improves for all, so it’s not a ben­e­fit that sin­gu­lar­ly ben­e­fits and affects one group of peo­ple.” 

The cul­ture shift sur­round­ing DEI in fed­er­al gov­ern­ment 

In addi­tion to Trump’s purg­ing of alleged DEI ter­mi­nol­o­gy and his­to­ry from fed­er­al web­sites, Trump has direct­ed all fed­er­al DEI pro­grams to be shut down, accord­ing to Time mag­a­zine. DEI staff were also placed on paid leave and even­tu­al­ly ter­mi­nat­ed. Trump’s order and the memo from the Office of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment did not define what “DEI offices” were, but said that DEI offices may try to “dis­guise” their true inten­tions behind obscur­ing lan­guage and encour­aged employ­ees to report them. 

The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment is the nation’s largest employ­er. Some fed­er­al employ­ees who are minori­ties told NBC that they were afraid of the DEI cul­ture shift, and some LGBTQ+ work­ers said they would go back in the clos­et.  

The U.S. State Depart­ment said in Novem­ber 2025 that it would be imple­ment­ing new require­ments for what is defined as a human rights vio­la­tion in diplo­mat­ic rela­tions. It includ­ed DEI poli­cies as well as abor­tion and facil­i­ta­tion of mass migra­tion.  

“In recent years, new destruc­tive ide­olo­gies have giv­en safe har­bor to human rights vio­la­tions,” State Depart­ment deputy spokesper­son Tom­my Pig­ott said in a state­ment, accord­ing to CNN. “The Trump admin­is­tra­tion will not allow these human rights vio­la­tions, such as the muti­la­tion of chil­dren, laws that infringe on free speech, and racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry employ­ment prac­tices, to go unchecked.”  

The cul­ture shift sur­round­ing DEI in com­pa­nies 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also tar­get­ed DEI out­side of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, hav­ing a major impact on cul­ture more broad­ly.  

Orga­ni­za­tions that rely on fed­er­al fund­ing, such as arts orga­ni­za­tions that receive grants from the Nation­al Endow­ment for the Arts, have seen fund­ing cuts that some sus­pect are relat­ed to new anti-DEI fed­er­al guide­lines, accord­ing to NPR. Con­necti­cut the­aters have been among those nation­wide that were left scram­bling to make up costs for pro­duc­tions years in the mak­ing.  

Along with the pres­sure and rhetoric from the White House, there has been a cul­tur­al shift around DEI, with sev­er­al pri­vate com­pa­nies announc­ing that they have rolled back DEI pro­grams in their orga­ni­za­tions, accord­ing to AP News. Major com­pa­nies includ­ed Google, Ama­zon, McDonald’s, and Meta — the par­ent com­pa­ny of Face­book, Insta­gram and Threads. 

Google rescind­ed a goal to increase rep­re­sen­ta­tion of minori­ties among the company’s lead­er­ship team by 30%, accord­ing to AP News.  Mean­while, Meta and Ama­zon are among those com­pa­nies who have end­ed DEI pro­grams, with Ama­zon refer­ring to DEI pro­grams as “out­dat­ed.” 

Com­pa­nies have shaped their poli­cies and pub­lic state­ments around Trump’s rhetoric. Some com­pa­nies stat­ed in press releas­es that they had not engaged in prac­tices like “hir­ing quo­tas,” which are one of the things Trump’s ref­er­ences when he claims DEI is dis­crim­i­na­tion. Wal­mart said it would end pri­or­i­ty treat­ment for diverse sup­pli­ers, make sure fam­i­ly tents at pride events are sep­a­rat­ed from drag shows and mon­i­tor third-par­ty items to make sure they do not include prod­ucts for trans­gen­der youth, such as chest binders.  Dis­ney didn’t men­tion the word “diver­si­ty” in its annu­al report for the first time in sev­er­al years, Busi­ness Insid­er report­ed. 

A study by Grav­i­ty Research found that com­pa­nies quick­ly aban­doned DEI lan­guage once Trump took over. The May 2025 study found a 98% decrease in the men­tion of the word “DEI” among 1,378 pub­lic doc­u­ments from For­tune 100 com­pa­nies. There was also a 72% decrease in gen­er­al DEI lan­guage and sig­nif­i­cant­ly less men­tion of work­force demo­graph­ics. 

The cul­ture shift sur­round­ing DEI in edu­ca­tion 

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has also gone after DEI in K‑12 schools by threat­en­ing fund­ing for schools with DEI pro­grams or that use “gen­der ide­ol­o­gy” in sex edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum. Activist Zin­nia Jones, a trans­gen­der woman who writes a blog called “Gen­der Ide­ol­o­gy,” said the phrase has a his­to­ry of dehu­man­iza­tion against trans peo­ple because it asserts that being trans is an ide­ol­o­gy rather than an iden­ti­ty.  

Hines said attacks on DEI in schools as well as the Trump administration’s dec­i­ma­tion of the fed­er­al Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly impact already dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties.  

It “will affect com­mu­ni­ties his­tor­i­cal­ly mar­gin­al­ized. So, as you dis­man­tle Title I, many of those under-resourced schools are com­mu­ni­ties of col­or. That’s a direct effect of the DOE being dis­man­tled,” Hines said.  

Uni­ver­si­ties have also been tar­get­ed for DEI pro­grams and oth­er ini­tia­tives.  

In a memo issued on July 29, 2025, the fed­er­al edu­ca­tion depart­ment advised schools and uni­ver­si­ties that DEI pro­grams were “dis­crim­i­na­to­ry” and unlaw­ful and would lose fed­er­al fund­ing. On Novem­ber 3, 2025, UConn’s Sen­ate vot­ed to delay a require­ment for under­grad­u­ates to take an anti-black racism course that was in devel­op­ment since 2023, cit­ing Trump’s orders as one of the rea­sons for doing so. Instead, they will estab­lish a task force to reeval­u­ate the ABR course and like­ly won’t offer the course until 2027. 
 
UConn’s Under­grad­u­ate Stu­dent Gov­ern­ment Pres­i­dent Andy Zhang vot­ed in favor of the task force and believed man­dat­ing the course would bring “unwant­ed atten­tion” to UConn.  “We don’t want to get rid of [the anti-black racism course require­ment], but we want to do it in a way that is fea­si­ble and suc­cess­ful and works for every­one,” Zhang said. 

UConn has also renamed its Office of Diver­si­ty and Inclu­sion and merged it with oth­er UConn depart­ments; Hines said this is not a result of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion, how­ev­er.  

“UConn firm­ly stands by the core that DEI is foun­da­tion­al for our mis­sion,” he said. 

Made­line Perez De Jesus, direc­tor of Cam­pus Cli­mate at Con­necti­cut State Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege, said the col­lege will also be refram­ing and renam­ing diver­si­ty depart­ments and that it is doing so in recog­ni­tion of a cul­tur­al shift in pub­lic think­ing about DEI. She said the renam­ing is not being done to “hide dis­crim­i­na­tion” as the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has accused agen­cies of doing, but to con­tin­ue serv­ing every­one in the best man­ner they can. 

DEI “means that because there’s been a his­to­ry of exclu­sion, part of undo­ing and part of being tru­ly equi­table is to kind of high­light those groups only because they’ve had a his­to­ry in this coun­try where they have been inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed,” Perez De Jesus said. “I think now we’re using dif­fer­ent lan­guage to high­light serv­ing every­one.” 

Uni­ver­si­ty research has also been tar­get­ed. For­mer UConn Pres­i­dent Thomas Kat­souleas said the admin­is­tra­tion is comb­ing through titles and descrip­tions search­ing for key­words that indi­cate the research might relate to DEI or focus on a par­tic­u­lar minor­i­ty group.

“The con­tent-spe­cif­ic attack is a whole­sale can­cel­la­tion of research grants and con­tracts that have any­thing to do with ide­olo­gies that the admin­is­tra­tion does­n’t sup­port,” Kat­souleas said.  

Heumann said this is gov­ern­men­tal over­reach that pro­motes a cul­ture of fear in acad­e­mia as well as anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism. Plus, attempts to com­ply with the Trump administration’s edicts are mak­ing things much less effi­cient.  

“The amount of work we’ve had to do at high­er edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions to redo grants, redo things…  that’s about as waste­ful of time as you can get,” Heumann said.