On April 3, The Daily Northwestern published an op-ed written by Kevin Waldman titled, “Why the NU faculty quietly celebrating the end of DEI should not have to hide.” Waldman criticized what he described as the “loudest voices in academia,” who are supposedly in “full-blown panic mode” over the Trump Administration’s encroaching policies in higher education, including threats to dismantle DEI and the loss of federal funding.
If the events of this past week indicate anything, it’s that their “panic-mode” is wholly justified. The federal government is currently waging war on NU and other leading universities, attacking our federal funding and, in doing so, stymying graduate research. This week, the government froze $790 million in funding for NU and issued over 100 stop-work orders. The Daily also reported on the federal government revoking visas from a “limited number” of international students.
If there was any time to panic, it would be now.
Today, Harvard University’s president announced that the Ivy League school would not comply with Trump’s demands, calling the administration’s ultimatums unlawful. NU should follow suit.
On Jan. 20, President Trump attempted to ban DEI programs at the federal level through an executive order, calling the practice “radical and wasteful” in its title. The Department of Education Office for Civil Rights quickly adopted the president’s strict order, calling on universities to halt considering race in hiring, scholarships or among “all other aspects of student, academic and campus life.”
Celebrating this ultimatum means capitulating to the demands of the Trump Administration. If we give into their policies, we sacrifice our shared values as an institution. Diversity and inclusion have long been central to those values, despite cowardly efforts to wipe away our DEI programming from online databases.
We should not be “celebrating the end of DEI,” which Waldman encourages professors to feel comfortable doing. We should be gravely concerned about the federal government’s overreach into our University’s culture.
The Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion has been operating at NU since 2015. As NU’s acceptance rate has shrunk to 7%, the undergraduate admissions office has been able to successfully recruit a growing number of Black, Latine, Indigenous and International students, despite nationwide efforts to crack down on affirmative action and DEI. Without DEI programming, our efforts to recruit a diverse student body might suffer.
Waldman suggests that funding DEI comes at the expense of research at schools like the University of Michigan. He cites the fact that Michigan employs over 100 DEI-related personnel, which outnumbers its history department. Without any supporting evidence, he condemns these employees, suggesting they don’t “conduct research” or “advance scholarship” but rather enforce “ideological compliance.”
After reading his op-ed, I did some research of my own, uncovering that the University of Michigan has spent $250 million on DEI-related initiatives since 2016, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The number is a seemingly hefty expenditure; however, this investment only amounts to roughly 1% of the university’s general-fund budget on an annual basis.
Waldman does offer sparse evidence, calling upon three professors in academia who harbored critical views on DEI and faced retaliation from their respective universities. This retaliation was definitely objectionable; however, removing DEI completely has far worse implications.
In a time when elected officials are attacking our most vulnerable citizens, gutting protections for immigrants and threatening to cancel visas for international student protestors, leading universities need to champion equity and inclusion now more than ever. Elite institutions like NU, who boast endowments in the multi-billions, have a responsibility to give back to underrepresented communities.
Gabe Hawkins is a Medill freshman. He can be contacted at GabeHawkins2028@u.northwestern.edu. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to opinion@dailynorthwestern.com. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
