Since April 2024, The Chronicle has tracked the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in higher education. Initially, our work focused on changes made as a result of state-level directives — including bills, executive orders, and system mandates. Today, more colleges are eliminating diversity offices and staff even though they aren’t required to do so.
Our tracker includes over 200 colleges that have taken one or more of the following actions:
- departments, offices, or centers have changed names, restructured, or closed
- jobs have changed titles or responsibilities, or been eliminated altogether
- policies on the use of diversity statements in admissions, hiring, or promotion have changed
- training programs have been made optional or stopped
- other DEI-related activities have been altered in some way, such as a faculty committee being eliminated or funding being reallocated
The combined changes have so far affected more than four million students, according to national enrollment data from the 2022-23 academic year. We analyzed emerging patterns, including the DEI efforts most likely to be on the chopping block, and the location and type of institutions that have been most affected.
More than 80 campuses acted without legislative mandates.
While 60 percent of institutions making changes to their DEI practices were compelled to do so by state laws, 86 campuses made policy shifts voluntarily or in response to preemptive university-system directives. Twenty-four of those campuses are in states where a bill restricting diversity offices or staff had been introduced but not yet passed, and 50 are in states where such a bill had been tabled, vetoed, or failed to pass.
An additional 12 campuses made changes in states where no DEI-related bill had been introduced. The University of California at Los Angeles, for example, renamed its “Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” to the “Office of Inclusive Excellence,” while the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor stopped requiring diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.
Diversity statements were most frequently affected.
Ninety-seven campuses updated or altered their policies relating to diversity statements, usually either by eliminating them or making them optional in hiring. Another 89 institutions made changes to diversity-related offices, and 77 altered or eliminated jobs. Sixty-four campuses updated, altered, or cut training related to DEI.
At the University of Florida, administrators eliminated all DEI-related roles, closing the Office of the Chief Diversity Officer and firing 13 full-time employees. The university also closed its Center for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement and reallocated $5 million originally intended to further campus diversity and inclusion.
Nearly two thirds of colleges that made changes are in the South.
More than 38 percent of campuses that made changes were located in the Southeast, and an additional 26 percent in the Southwest, almost entirely in Texas. A further 23 percent of campuses were located in the Midwest.
Large public institutions saw the most DEI-related impacts.
Forty-one percent of institutions that changed their DEI practices enrolled more than 20,000 students, and an additional 20 percent enrolled between 10,000 and 20,000 students. That figure reflects that lawmakers’ scrutiny has often focused on large public flagships, such as the University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University at College Station, the University of Iowa, and Iowa State University.
Eight private institutions also made changes to their DEI policies, including Yale and Harvard Universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
