Trump’s win put DEI on life support— here’s how he can pull the plug

With President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, radical and discriminatory Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs could be — finally — on the way out.

DEI has captured almost every level of education and government.

Our CriticalRace.org project has documented how deeply DEI permeates higher education, medical schools and even elite private boarding schools.

The Biden-Harris team itself was birthed by DEI, after then-candidate Joe Biden came under intense pressure to pick a “woman of color” as his running mate.

His choice, Kamala Harris, fully embraced DEI in her 2024 campaign, even creating Zoom calls for different racial, ethnic and sex-based interest groups: “White Women for Harris,” “white dudes,” “black women” and so on.

Turns out, voters didn’t buy Harris or the DEI she was selling

Trump’s win, driven by a broad multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious coalition, puts DEI on life support.

It’s time to pull the plug and let DEI die.

In a July 2023 video posted as part of his Agenda 47 policy series, Trump focused heavily on his promise “to fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics.”

Elon Musk, Trump’s new government-efficiency adviser, re-circulated the video this week, indicating its importance in the president-elect’s agenda.

Focusing on accreditors will make a real difference long-term.

The US Department of Education has oversight authority over higher education accreditation agencies — and groups like the American Bar Association, for example, use legislative-appointed near-monopoly status as a means of driving DEI into universities and graduate schools.

Trump has also promised that his Department of Justice will “pursue federal civil rights cases against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination,” defying the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision outlawing affirmative action in admissions 

We are all for that, but to ramp up the pressure Trump should also empower private parties to pursue those actions. 

Our Equal Protection Project has filed more than 40 civil rights complaints with the Department of Education, leading half of the schools involved to change or drop discriminatory criteria after adverse publicity and public shaming.

But don’t leave it to slow-acting government agencies alone to do this work: Trump can also work with Congress to empower groups like ours, giving us standing to sue in court in our own name under civil rights laws and agency regulations.

Individual victims of DEI often fear retribution and will not sue in their own name, so their grievances go unanswered.

If advocacy groups have standing in court, we can pursue their cases while protecting victims’ safety.

All of the above are systemic changes that will have a lasting impact.

But the quickest fix should be Trump’s highest priority: Cutting off the supply of money that feeds the DEI industrial complex on campuses and elsewhere.

People are entitled to their viewpoints, but they are not entitled to federal money to promote discriminatory conduct.

The federal government must eliminate funding for any program, anywhere in the federal government, that includes race- or ethnicity-based eligibility or preferences — including the use of DEI statements for admission, hiring or promotion.

Indeed, it’s also time to cut federal funding completely for any institution, public or private, educational or otherwise, that uses such discriminatory DEI criteria.

That’s a much-needed hammer over the heads of institutions that play whack-a-mole, repeatedly setting up discriminatory programs and dropping them only after public complaints.

Only the credible threat of losing federal funding will wake up the wokesters.

The Trump administration should also initiate the revocation of federal non-profit status of foundations that fund openly discriminatory grant programs, like those of the Rhode Island Foundation, which recently came under fire for a student loan forgiveness program that benefited only non-white teachers.

Under clear case law, such private discriminatory grant making is illegal, and it too must stop.

Cutting off funding for non-compliance with anti-discrimination laws can begin as soon as Trump takes office. Combined with longer-term systemic changes, such action would help restore equality as our governing principle.

We have an opportunity to destroy divisive DEI once and for all, and to enable Americans of all races and ethnicities to come back together.

Let’s not lose the chance.

William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University and founder of the Equal Protection Project and CriticalRace.org, where Kemberlee Kaye is operations and editorial director.