Following the infamous “Dear Colleague” letter sent out by the Department of Education in February 2025, many colleges and universities rushed to shutter diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices in the hopes of avoiding the fate of so many other institutions—namely, incurring the wrath of the Trump administration that views such programs as giving an unfair advantage to people of color and contributing to “the disenfranchisement of white men.” As of this writing, over 392 colleges and universities across 46 states including the District of Columbia have dismantled their DEI offices. Aggressive far-right government actors and their coordinated attacks on DEI efforts impact this study in a number of ways.
First, last year, many institutions were eager to participate in this study. By contrast, this year was marked by noticeable reticence. Johns Hopkins University opted not to participate in the study. Representatives from Stanford, Northwestern, and Yale did not reply to multiple email inquiries. Second, information about scholars programs, or really anything related to DEI, is harder to come by on many university websites. This trend towards “disappearing” DEI information is most clearly reflected at Northwestern, which scrubbed their university website entirely earlier this year.
Third, even among those institutions that still offer scholars programs for students from historically marginalized backgrounds, there appears to be a subtle shift in language. As last year’s table demonstrates, many programs highlighted that their target student demographic came from first-generation and/or lower socioeconomic backgrounds. This year, that is less obviously the case.
Each year I update this table which surveys scholars programs at the top 10 colleges and unis. Were schools that cared so much about DEI in 2020 still committed 5 years later?
Here's what I found:
