From Inside Higher Education: Trump Is Targeting DEI in Higher Ed. But What Does He Mean?

How does the bureaucracy implement a decision made by the president?

Or any chief executive for that matter. 

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Early this month, the University of North Carolina system told its component institutions that their general education requirements could no longer mandate that students take courses “related to diversity, equity and inclusion.” System officials further said majors couldn’t require DEI-related courses without university chancellors providing “tailored waivers” granting exceptions.

. . . UNC system general counsel Andrew Tripp explicitly told chancellors in a letter that the change was intended to comply with the president’s Jan. 21 executive order that mandated an end to “illegal DEI” and called for restoring “merit-based opportunity.” Tripp said noncompliance threatened the university’s roughly $1.4 billion in annual federal research funding. The White House Office of Management and Budget had already attempted to pause federal funding nationwide, saying in a since-rescinded memo that it wanted to stop bankrolling DEI and other activities that “may be implicated by the executive orders.”

Yet, despite ordering this far-reaching response to Trump’s directives, Tripp also told the UNC system chancellors that he didn’t know what the order really required. Trump’s order didn’t define DEI; at one point it even called for excising from federal grant procedures “DEI and DEIA principles, under whatever name they may appear.” Nor did Tripp’s memo explain to university leaders what DEI means, much less what a course credit “related to” DEI encompasses.

The string of vague and sometimes seemingly contradictory executive actions has left leaders of federally funded colleges and universities and their employees to wonder: Should they wait for clarification—legal or otherwise—before upending their DEI policies and programs? Or respond like the UNC system and start ditching things that might be perceived as DEI activities?