President Trump’s Department of Education (ED) has targeted colleges and universities that fail to protect Jewish students’ civil rights and others that embrace “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) policies. Some universities have bowed to at least some of his concerns, others have vowed to fight him, and still others are trying to look compliant while covertly maintaining DEI policies. Not least because large amounts of federal money may be at stake, it is important to know what schools are actually doing. Toward this end, I have begun a study of the extent to which college and university libraries that now have DEI policies keep or change them over time. After establishing a baseline, the study will follow selected schools for a minimum of six months to document changes in public adherence to DEI policies.
It is also important to understand whether university libraries retain DEI policies because libraries are quiet DEI indoctrinators in several ways that are consistent with institution-wide policies. They do not free-lance. Libraries often use an ideological lens to select staffers, who in turn use DEI-informed standards to choose materials to add to university holdings, use similar standards to delete ideologically offensive materials—i.e., conservative material—from holdings, and conduct DEI-focused programs and general activities. An undoubtedly small measure of the problem is that after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told the military academies in late March to remove DEI-focused material from their libraries—the Naval Academy library removed 381 books from its shelves, including Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist.
My study started by identifying at least one public and one private four-year college or university in each state. Flagship state and prominent private research universities, including all Ivy League schools and the 60 colleges and universities that the ED has targeted for civil rights violations of Jewish students, were selected. Some less prominent state schools, small private liberal arts colleges, and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) were also selected. Community colleges and for-profit schools were excluded, however.
I initially evaluated 416 library websites in the few days just before and just after April 1, 2025—over two months after President Trump issued his initial DEI-related executive orders and well after the ED made clear that it was removing DEI from America’s educational institutions. Of these, 155 professed explicit or strongly implicit commitments to DEI. I recorded specific language and URLs of the websites that support DEI policies. Often, I also copied “land acknowledgement statements” that note Indian tribes that once occupied the land on which schools’ physical libraries are built.
I expect the study to last at least six months. Beginning May 1, 2025, I will revisit the 155 libraries immediately before and after the first day of each calendar month, noting changes in language. At the end of the collection of empirical data, I plan to analyze the data and report findings in an article submitted to an academic journal. I will also submit summary findings to Minding the Campus.
Some initial findings are noteworthy.
Perhaps most importantly, DEI statements are concentrated in flagship state and prominent private research university libraries, including seven of the eight Ivy League schools. These have large student bodies and influential faculties, and they are big recipients of federal funds. Most elite liberal arts colleges also have strong DEI policies. Unsurprisingly, DEI-embracing libraries are common in blue states such as New York and California, but flagship state university libraries in red states such as Indiana, Kansas, Montana, Tennessee, and Texas also tout commitments to DEI. (Texas has been the subject of much reporting, as Minding the Campus and the National Association of Scholars have found that its public colleges and universities are spending millions on DEI despite state laws banning it.)
Some Catholic schools embrace DEI policies, while others do not, and schools with Protestant orientations overwhelmingly do not. None of the nine HBCU libraries investigated has a DEI policy for reasons that are not articulated but seem obvious. HBCUs are about advancing the education and interests of blacks, the primary beneficiaries of majority-white universities’ DEI policies; no other demographic interest groups are supported. (Minding the Campus has reported that some universities deliberately recruit so-called “Latinx” students to inflate minority enrollment and qualify for federal grants, while Jared Gould has found that administrators have used the banner of DEI to shield students known to be living in the U.S. illegally.) In general, statements of commitment to DEI vary considerably in specific language. Some use overtly Marxian language and cite extensive institutional structures that support DEI policies, while others are much more constrained.
My study of the 155 DEI-supporting libraries has specific characteristics and, thereby, some limitations.
It primarily examines large research universities and small private liberal arts colleges because these are the hotbeds of DEI in American higher education. It assesses verbiage on the websites of university libraries, not other university websites and formal announcements or other information sources. Instead, it will use the libraries’ own words as primary sources. The study, thereby, is susceptible to the obfuscation that has been widely noted. While only a few of the 416 libraries seem unclear about their DEI commitments, others may be more effectively deceptive, thereby avoiding inclusion in my sample of 155. Therefore, while this a fairly large study, my sample may have missed interesting institutions.
The study should be useful in several ways.
It will identify schools that bow to and those that resist both federal and state mandates to end DEI, noting trends in policy changes and their linguistic presentations. It likely will identify some ways in which university administrators obfuscate their commitments to DEI. It should also help reformers identify recalcitrant universities for special investigative emphasis, which could thereby help inform federal funding decisions.
My data is available to responsible researchers upon request.
Image: “Interior of University of Texas at Arlington Library” by University of Texas at Arlington Photograph Collection on Wikimedia Commons
