On Jan. 20, President Trump signed the executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” which ordered the termination of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) related “preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities” on both a federal level and in the private sector. A related letter from the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights on Feb. 14 warned colleges that they risk losing federal funding if they continue to take race into account for scholarships, financial aid and “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.” According to the order, colleges have 14 days to comply with the instructions.
The executive order also directed the Attorney General to “identify nine potential civic compliance investigations” of different organizations, including colleges with endowments over 1 billion. Only about 131 colleges have endowments of that size, and at $1.2 billion, Carleton is on the list of possible targets.
The effects of these directives on Carleton could be far-reaching, but so far, no changes to DEI policies or programs have been made.
“I think that their hope is that some schools will — and I believe some may — be preemptively starting to remove DEI-related initiatives from their websites, or take other actions so that if they are one of the schools that are chosen, they’ll be in a better position,” said President Alison Byerly, “That is not what Carleton is choosing to do. We certainly hope that we’re not one of the nine schools that are targeted, but if we are, our history is our history, and our commitments are our commitments. Until we are legally required to make some changes, we don’t intend to make changes preemptively.”
At Carleton, DEI is most clearly expressed through the Division for Inclusion, Equity and Community (IEC), which is led by Dina Zavala, Vice President for Inclusion, Equity and Community at Carleton. Zavala describes her role as “strategic leadership in shaping policies and programs that foster a more inclusive, equitable and connected campus community.”
According to Zavala, the implementation of the Community Plan for Inclusion, Diversity and Equity(IDE) “is designed to improve the institutional experience for all community members and ensure Carleton fulfills its aspirations to be an inclusive and equitable institution,” over a 10-year plan that was finalized in spring 2022.
The IDE plan includes goals of increasing representation from underrepresented groups within students, faculty and staff, creating resources for an equitable environment (such as the newly constructed Multicultural Center) and engagement through various talks and conversations.
“The IEC office exists not to impose a singular agenda, but to facilitate dialogue, provide resources and build capacity across the institution to ensure that Carleton remains a place of academic and social flourishing for all,” Zavala said. “Carleton’s commitment to fostering a diverse and inclusive learning environment is deeply embedded in its institutional values and strategic priorities. At this time, nothing has changed in our approach or our programming.”
Other possibly impacted departments at Carleton reiterated Zavala’s sentiment, expressing that changes had not been made.
“We are closely following the developments and have been working to understand the implications of these orders. We have made no financial adjustments or changes so far,” said Eric Runestad, Vice President and Treasurer of Carleton.
“My work has not yet changed, but between the executive order and then the letter… from the Department of Education last Friday, there’s just no clarity around exactly what we as an institution would need to do,” said director of the Grants Office Christopher Tasssava.
Tassava’s role as related to DEI is to “raise funds where they’re available to pursue DEI-related activities,” such as a faculty research project on inclusion in science education, or scholarships for “a particular class of students.”
Rev. Schuyler Vogel, the college chaplain, said that “no changes have been made, and none are planned.” The Office of the Chaplain currently operates within the Division for Inclusion, Equity and Community (IEC) and benefits from funding from the IEC.
“The chapel has been doing DEI work since before the acronym existed,” said Vogel. “At its simplest, DEI is about caring for the people in our community. At the Chapel today, that means working to combat food insecurity on campus; it means co-hosting a Trans Day of Visibility program; it means buying Bibles for our Christian students and building a Beit Midrash for our Jewish students; it means advocating for accommodation programs for those with differing needs. This work is DEI, but at the chapel, it is more fundamentally religious work. It is simply the work of caring for the Carleton community, which is what the chapel does.”
Under the letter sent by the Department of Education, many of these activities, particularly programs that mention race, are considered illegal discrimination. The letter, written by the Department’s assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor, rests much of its direction on a broadened interpretation of the Supreme Court 2023 decision that ruled race-conscious admissions — commonly known as affirmative action — unlawful. Trainor expands the Supreme Court’s holding by providing a test: “if an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” said Trainor. Following this test, Trainor prohibits the consideration of race in “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing [and] graduation ceremonies.”
“Both documents make certain kinds of claims about what’s now illegal, but it’s not clear whether it’s actually illegal, right? So everybody’s operating in a gray area, and until I hear from college leadership that I should do one thing or another, I’m just going to pursue grants that are available,” Tassava said.
Tassava noted, however, that while operations within the college had not changed, the grants he has been applying to have been drastically altered since even before Trump’s inauguration. “We saw a National Endowment for the Humanities grant program to celebrate the 160th anniversary of Juneteenth, and we were planning to possibly apply to it. It just went away entirely,” he said.
“I think it’s important not to see [the IEC] office as the only point of vulnerability, or as standing alone in this,” Byerly said. “If the work of the individuals in that office was structured in a different way, or was absorbed at different parts of the college, that wouldn’t be our preferred outcome, but the individuals in the work would still continue.”
For some, Carleton’s response to these orders represents a broader ideological battle.
“We don’t intend to let it paralyze us as an institution, because that, frankly, is part of the goal, to the degree that this is not just about DEI, but about undermining higher education and confidence in higher education,” Byerly said.
