WATCHDOG: How universities are rebranding DEI to skirt Trump's crackdown

As universities across the country have been accused of trying to hide their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts to avoid federal scrutiny, Fox News Digital spoke to a leading parents' rights activist about how serious the problem is and what can be done about it. 

"I look at… the responses to the Trump administration and the executive orders falling into three buckets," Nicole Neily, founder and president of the nonpartisan grassroots organization Defending Education, told Fox News Digital about the continuation of DEI activities despite the Trump administration's efforts to eliminate it. 

Neily explained, "The first bucket are the proud resisters. I put Princeton, Harvard, schools like that in that category, where they're just going to, you know, 'hashtag resist' and do their thing. The second bucket is, I think it's the biggest category, and I think they're the ones that are trying to put lipstick on a pig. They are renaming the departments. The DEI department is now the 'belonging department.' The coordinator, the DEI dean, is now compliance dean or something like that. But those people are doing the same damn thing and just trying to wait the Trump administration out."

Fox News Digital has extensively reported on schools in the first two buckets as defined by Neily, including at Washington University in St. Louis, where one of the nation's top medical schools was accused of moving the DEI office to a restricted floor rather than close it. 

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Earlier this month, Princeton University was hit with a scathing federal complaint over a DEI agenda that allegedly involved female students sharing "gender-neutral" restrooms with gaps in the stalls, as well as graduations segregated by gender identity.

At the University of Utah and University of Virginia, Fox News Digital reported on staffers being caught on hidden camera explaining their efforts to continue DEI efforts by simply rebranding or renaming them. 

"The third category are the schools that actually want to comply in good faith," Neily told Fox News Digital. "I think a lot of schools, a lot of administrators, got pretty frustrated with the excesses of the DEI movement, and they're secretly relieved that they now have a little bit of air cover to wind those programs back. And they might hand wring and do a little performative 'this is the orange man's fault,' but at the end of the day, I think they really are relieved."

Neily told Fox News Digital that the "second bucket" is the "biggest and most challenging category." She said she was recently at a university board conference where speakers on a DEI panel were openly calling for "inclusivity work" to be continued because the Trump administration "only cares about" Ivy League schools and "they can't sue us all."

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"To me, that demonstrates real mens rea, which is Latin for a guilty mind," Neily said. "I think that shows that these people are the real evildoers and those are the ones where I think, obviously, the Trump administration has spent a lot of time over the past few months going after Harvard, going after Columbia, like the real bad actors that are out there trying to, you know that clearly have to be cleaned up. But I think that there is a much more significant and long-term effort to uproot and eradicate the DEI that is just trying to hide in plain sight. And I think that's a really, really important mission."

Defending Education recently sent a letter, first reported by Fox News Digital, to elected officials in all 50 states calling for a top-to-bottom audit of state laws at the K-12 level to ensure that no loopholes are being exploited, allowing schools to continue DEI efforts.

Combating DEI at all levels of education will require a "whole of government" approach, Neily told Fox News Digital, adding that it will be important to not let administrators "whitewash their records" or pass the blame onto someone else for policies they have supported.

Additionally, Neily expressed optimism that the tide is turning against DEI in terms of popularity.

"I think we're at a moment where there is kind of a perfect storm taking place in academia. This incoming freshman class this year is the largest freshman class that American universities will ever have… Clearly, we have seen polling over the past couple years demonstrate a massive loss in public confidence in the institutions of higher education at a time when costs are through the roof, the return on investment for sending your child to some of these schools is horrible. So I think a lot of people are really rethinking, is this the correct track for me, period?" Neily said.

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"We also have fewer international students coming in, thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration, and so I think what we're gonna see over the next several years is a number of universities that actually start to close. And how do those schools differentiate themselves in the marketplace?"

Neily said she has witnessed students "vote with their feet" and choose to attend schools that don't promote "woke" ideologies, particularly in the South as students are looking for a "proper college experience."

Earlier this year, Fox News Digital reported that several Southern states banded together to establish their own accrediting body for higher education in order to "upend the monopoly of the woke accreditation cartels."

"They don't wanna be surrounded by a bunch of pearl-clutching Victorian scolds that are going to reprimand them for using the wrong pronouns and for not wearing masks in the middle of the winter, and so we're watching people and some of those state schools in the South now, realizing, OK, we can get more out-of-state students coming in, paying higher out-of-state tuition," Neily said. 

"But it's also changing and altering what our campus life is like, and so we're also, from constituents in the South, they're now pushing for their in-state universities to put caps actually in the number of out-of-state students. And so, this is very much a kind of evolving landscape, but I think that there is a lot more change coming ahead in higher education. And for those higher ed administrators who have not started to really look in the mirror and think, what do we wanna be when we grow up? I think they're gonna be in for a world of hurt soon."