The report by Defending Education claimed these universities have since rebranded these funds in an effort to distance themselves from DEI in violation of President Donald Trump’s executive order prohibiting federal funding to entities that push the framework.
The Washington Examiner reported last week on the organization’s findings that more than 350 universities and colleges have made strides to rebrand their DEI offices in an effort to evade consequences from the Trump administration. For example, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln renamed its “Office of Diversity and Inclusion Fund” to the “Community and Belonging Support Fund.”
In the most recent report, Defending Education found that between 2016 and 2021, the University of Michigan raised over $98,665,269 for “wide range of DEI initiatives and funds,” such as the creation of a “George Floyd Memorial Scholarship,” referencing the black man who was killed in police custody in 2020.
Other schools, including the University of Connecticut, were also subjects of the report, with Defending Education finding that the university’s UConn Foundation donated $23 million toward DEI.
Other universities are also creating donation funds to funnel money toward DEI scholarships and programs, Defending Education noted. These include Harvard’s “Racial Equity and Anti-Racism Fund” and a “National DEI Defense Fund” at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center.
Kendall Tietz, an investigative reporter for Defending Education, said the “effort to rebrand identity-based scholarships and funding, allowing universities to smuggle in DEI efforts, is a blatant attempt to circumvent executive orders from the Trump administration.”
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“On top of that, race-based funding is obviously illegal,” she added. “The elimination of certain language like ‘diversity and inclusion’ and replacing it with ‘community and belonging’ does not mean it changes the mission of the program.”
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is in the process of pulling funding from the University of Maine for failing to comply with its Title IX directives. California and Minnesota have also been warned by Attorney General Pam Bondi that they could be next.
