NPR’s chief diversity officer is stepping down as the network stares down a federal investigation that aims to pull its funding, according to a report.
On Wednesday, Keith Woods, 66, said he was retiring after 15 years at the public broadcaster – even as President Trump targets diversity programs and urges companies to reverse the controversial policies.
Woods presented the decision as his own, according to NPR. He said he started preparing for his retirement in 2023, but pushed it back after Hurricane Helene last year destroyed his Tampa, Fla. home.
“After more than four decades in journalism, I’m happy to finally be able to say the words, ‘I’m retiring,’” he said in a statement released by the network. “Though the attacks on the work of diversity, equity and inclusion have taken some of the joy out of this moment.”
Woods took pains at a staff meeting on Wednesday to assure colleagues that his departure was not connected to the swirling anti-DEI environment, NPR said.
“I might be doing virtual cartwheels right now,” Woods said, citing “a withering assault on the values of diversity, equity, inclusion; corporate capitulation all around us; and the treatment of diversity, equity and inclusion as a virus whose carriers must be eradicated. It makes this look like something it is not.”
NPR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Major companies have speedily retracted their diversity policies in the weeks before and since Trump took office and signed an executive order banning the inclusion programs across the federal level.
Trump also penned an order requiring federal contractors to prove they don’t promote DEI measures.
Public broadcaster PBS last month shuttered its diversity office and fired two staffers, citing a need to comply with Trump’s order since the network relies on federal funding.
Meanwhile, NPR is at risk of losing its federal funding as Elon Musk, chief of the government’s cost-cutting task force, has threatened to “defund” the public station.
“It should survive on its own,” he wrote earlier this month in a post on X, his social media platform.
In January, FCC Chair Brendan Carr launched a probe into NPR and PBS over their alleged use of “prohibited commercial advertisements,” which he argued could be reason enough to yank their federal funding.
NPR said it receives about 1% of its funds from federal sources annually, and about 3% indirectly from stations. It said PBS receives 16% of its funding from the federal government.
Katherine Maher, NPR’s chief executive, said Woods’ retirement did not mean the network would abandon its diversity goals.
“NPR remains committed to supporting a diverse workforce, a welcoming workplace, and journalism that serves an audience that is representative of the American public,” Maher wrote in a statement.
Woods joined NPR in 2010 to lead the network’s corporate diversity strategy.
He trained staffers at more than 30 public affiliate stations, spanning from New York to Alaska.
NPR’s former chief executive, John Lansing, who died last year, was a strong proponent of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in the workplace.
But the network’s former senior business editor Uri Berliner, who resigned last year, slammed the network’s overly progressive atmosphere in a scathing article for The Free Press.
“It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding,” Berliner wrote in his article last year.
“In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the US population,” he argued.
