The Department of Education on Friday canceled $15 million in federal grants that were used to fund diversity programs at three universities, according to information provided by a department official, the latest move in the Trump administration’s efforts to defund DEI.
The universities—California State University, Los Angeles; Virginia Commonwealth University; and the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota—had received a series of grants for their education schools under the Biden administration. Ostensibly meant for teacher training and development, the grants were in fact used to support courses and workshops on DEI concepts—including “white privilege,” “systemic racism,” and “linguistic supremacy”—as well as the establishment of a “social justice” center.
The awards were part of the over $1 billion that the Biden Education Department spent on diversity programs in American schools, nearly half of which went to grants for race-based hiring.
At the University of St. Thomas, a “cultural assessment” quiz asked teachers whether they “understand how white privilege and racism affect me and others,” according to grant applications reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. At Virginia Commonwealth University, the education school hosted workshops on “decolonizing the curriculum” and “becoming an antiracist educator.” And at California State University, the grants were used to fund the development of an “Equity and Social Justice Center” along with more general efforts to boost “educator diversity.” It is not clear exactly how much money went to each school.
The terminations come as the Trump administration is canceling scores of contracts related to DEI as part of the government-wide audit conducted by the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), Elon Musk’s task force on federal waste. DOGE said last Friday that it had canceled $1 billion in DEI contracts across 25 federal agencies. Additional contracts were canceled this week, including one for a “Gender X initiative marker” at the Social Security Administration.
The cancellations are in line with President Donald Trump’s day-one executive order on DEI, which requires federal agencies to terminate all “‘equity-related’ grants or contracts.”
While DOGE’s other cuts have been more controversial—especially its gutting of USAID—the team’s assault on DEI has ruffled relatively few feathers. Some on the Left have cheered the rollback, arguing it is a chance to get rid of the rhetoric that has alienated moderate and working-class voters from the Democratic Party.
“I am definitely happy this stuff is buried for now,” Bhaskar Sunkara, the founding editor of the socialist magazine Jacobin, told the New York Times in an interview. “I hope it doesn’t come back.”
Trump has promised to put universities front and center of his DEI crackdown, encouraging federal agencies to investigate schools with endowments over $1 billion. The grant cancellations are a sign that the reckoning will reach beyond the Ivy League and change the culture even of less elite schools, nearly all of which receive federal aid.
“Institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,'” one of Trump’s first executive orders reads. “Hardworking Americans who deserve a shot at the American Dream should not be stigmatized, demeaned, or shut out of opportunities because of their race or sex.”
The three universities did not respond to requests for comment.
