DEI Didn’t Fail; Institutions Did

During the recent State of the Union address, members of Congress rose to their feet and applauded when the president proclaimed his administration had “ended DEI in America.” Let that moment settle. Elected officials, sworn to represent all Americans, gave a standing ovation to the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion. Whatever one thinks of the strategies deployed in this work over the decades, that moment should give pause to anyone who believes in fairness, opportunity and human dignity.

Not long after, Inside Higher Ed ran an op-ed arguing, convincingly, for a systems-based approach to fairness and inclusion—essentially everything serious DEI practitioners have championed for decades—under a headline designed to signal distance from the very work it endorsed. This is indicative of the moment: Even people who believe in the substance of DEI feel compelled to bury the brand to protect the idea. The problem, so this strand of argument goes, was always with the performative commitment that surrounded it.

The Misdirected Fury

But the anti-DEI movement is not a principled critique of flawed implementation. It is a political campaign to demonize decades of work that opened doors to women, first-generation college students, people with disabilities and communities systematically excluded from the full promise of American higher education.

And here is the cruel irony no one seems willing to say out loud: The people bearing the brunt of this campaign are those who staked their careers on the belief that fairness and access matter even in the face of formidable challenges. The faculty who redesigned their syllabi with care. The admissions counselors who built pipeline programs in underresourced communities. The chief diversity officers who stayed in underfunded offices, fighting battles they were not given the tools to win.

Many institutional leaders today face genuine and serious constraints. The threat of federal funding loss is not abstract. The harm to faculty, staff, students and programs is real. Navigating this environment requires legal precision, political judgment and courage. And yet, the infrastructure of this work was often underfunded and underprotected long before the current political crisis arrived. Presidents who hired chief diversity officers without budget authority or a seat at the table, boards that approved diversity statements without accountability mechanisms, systems that mounted public displays of commitment and then retreated at the first sign of pressure—these patterns made the work far more vulnerable than it needed to be.

The lesson is not about blame. It’s about architecture: Institutions that build fairness into their governance, budgets and accountability structures are far better positioned to withstand external pressure than those that treat it as a program that can be added or removed.

The Demographic Reality the Anti-DEI Movement Cannot Undo

Here is what the anti-DEI movement has gotten fundamentally wrong: The demographic shift it sought to prevent has already occurred. The pipeline tells the story plainly: Students of color have comprised the majority of public school enrollment since 2014. The workforce American businesses need to compete globally is the diverse workforce that inclusive hiring practices were designed to cultivate.

Stomping on the grave of DEI is not a victory dance. It is a miscalculation —and the data makes that plain.

A 2023 Best Colleges survey found that more than half of students—55 percent—said they would consider transferring if their institution abolished DEI initiatives.

Reporting has shown that Black and Hispanic student enrollment dropped at many of the nation’s most selective institutions following the Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions ruling.

And perhaps most telling, a study analyzed by The Hechinger Report found that among 71 private, highly selective colleges, the end of race-conscious admissions produced a net gain of just 72 white male students in 2024. The enrollment disruption was real and measurable. The promised beneficiaries barely materialized.

Reducing investments in areas that support the full spectrum of communities carries predictable long-term costs: reputational harm, talent loss and decreased enrollment.

A newly released guide from the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education makes this case with precision. This resource, titled “Rooted in Mission and Values: A Guide for Advancing Access, Opportunities and Outcomes in Higher Education,” does not ask institutions to engage because it is morally fashionable. It asks them to engage because institutional survival depends on it.

Former University of Virginia president Jim Ryan, who courageously resigned from his post last summer in the face of federal and state pressure to dismantle DEI initiatives, understood something too few of his peers were willing to act on: that fairness and inclusion are not addenda to the work of a great university. They are intrinsic to it. “Rooted in Mission and Values” calls for aligning leadership, policy, budget, people and culture around a shared mission. It calls for accountability embedded in governance, not just aspiration. Intentional budgeting that treats access as a strategic investment. Data systems that measure outcomes, not just activities.

The failures of DEI were not in the vision. In many cases, they were in the structural commitment—and that is a correctable problem, even now.

A Word to the Critics, and a Call to Action

Critique of this work is legitimate. There were and are poorly designed programs and initiatives that substituted visibility for structural change. The field has an obligation to engage those criticisms honestly.

But if you believe in level playing fields, say so with your policies. If you believe every person deserves a genuine chance to thrive, reflect that belief in your budgets. Do not use broad condemnation of a field as a substitute for a precise critique of its failures. Do not mistake the elimination of the acronym for progress on the underlying challenges the acronym was meant to address.

This work was never about political ideology. It was always about making institutions function as they claim to: as places where talent is recognized and opportunity is real, regardless of who you are or where you started.

For university leadership, “Rooted in Mission and Values” offers a concrete road map for navigating this moment without abandoning the mission. The guide is explicit that legal compliance is not optional and that the path forward must be built on legally sound, mission-aligned strategies—not symbolic gestures that create exposure. Within those parameters, the structural work remains both possible and necessary: Conduct regular governance reviews to identify and dismantle systemic barriers. Protect funding for student success infrastructure, understanding that disinvestment carries its own institutional risk. Build data systems that measure what actually happens to people. Invest in faculty development and inclusive curriculum as academic quality imperatives. Design admissions strategies that are legally sound and genuinely committed to recognizing potential wherever it exists. None of this requires ignoring the political environment. It requires refusing to let that environment become the institution’s only frame of reference.

The mantra of diversity officers since the role came into existence has been this: Fairness and inclusion must be integral to all institutional systems—not because it is politically required, but because it is how institutions thrive. The language through which we pursue these goals may need to adapt to legal and political realities. The underlying commitment cannot.

When elected officials cheer to celebrate the end of diversity, equity and inclusion, higher education leaders face a genuine dilemma. Speaking out carries real risk. Staying silent carries a different kind of risk—to institutional integrity, to the trust of students and faculty who are watching, and to the long-term credibility of the mission. There is no cost-free path. But there is a principled one: Ground every decision in evidence, anchor every communication in mission and make clear—in whatever language the moment requires—that your institution believes in fairness, opportunity and the potential of every person it serves.

The work is not dead. It was never about a label. It was always about whether we meant what we said. Let’s prove that we did.