Trump’s Anti-DEI Blitz Exposes Corruption at America’s Top Universities

By Paul Bond, Investigative Reporter, The Kennedy Beacon

As President Donald Trump unleashes an assault on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) at universities, freezing taxpayer-funded federal grants, he and DOGE are also exposing the subtle ways universities are rebranding and masking their entrenched DEI practices.

Earlier this week, Harvard University officially rejected a proposal from the Trump administration asking that the school abandon its DEI-based governance, admissions, and hiring practices. That decision will cost Harvard roughly $2.2 billion in annual federal research funding. And now America’s most famous university, with an endowment of $53.2 billion, may face an endowment tax increase while Trump has directed the IRS to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status.

Photo by Chris Dunnam, The Independent Florida Alligator

The acrimony, on both sides, is rising.

“No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue," said Harvard President Alan Garber in rejecting Trump’s offer.

.Trump responded with a post on his Truth Social network calling Harvard a “JOKE” that “teaches Hate and Stupidity, and should no longer receive Federal Funds.” He accused the university of hiring “woke, Radical Left, idiots and 'birdbrains'" and teaching "FAILURE to students” under the guise of diversity..

For Trump’s base, it’s personal. Supporters of the president are concerned about teenagers grinding for a college spot, only to be edged out by what they see as a DEI-favored candidate. That’s the spark that ignited this fire. To these supporters, universities that were once bastions of reason have morphed into progressive strongholds that prioritize identity over merit.

More than 50 universities, including California heavyweights Stanford, UC Berkeley, and UCLA, are now in the crosshairs, accused of defying a 2023 Supreme Court ban on race-based admissions.

On April 9, the Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in federal funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University, as both face civil rights probes for alleged antisemitism and race-based violations.

It’s a gut punch to Big Academia, signaling Trump’s war is no bluff. He has continuously slammed DEI as a rigged game, robbing hardworking Americans — especially white and Asian students — of fair shots, all in the name of identity handouts.

Taking their cue from Trump, states like Ohio and Kentucky are charging in, gutting university DEI offices and slashing tenure.

But even universities that seem to be folding oftentimes are not, instead dodging with slick rebrands. Trump’s response? A barrage of investigations and more funding threats.

For MAGA and MAHA enthusiasts anxious to see results when their money is doled out to elite colleges, it’s a battle to cheer as campuses desperately try to shield their progressive fiefdoms that are partially subsidized by taxpayers.

An organization called Open the Books tried to quantify how much universities were awarded to keep their DEI machines running during President Joe Biden’s administration. While only a handful of them complied with requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, the resulting report was a sobering look at the DEI racket.

In 2023, Ohio State University spent $13.3 million in salaries to 201 employees with DEI-related roles, two of whom rake in about $300,000 annually, according to the Open the Books report.

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 73 DEI-related employees earned $5.2 million, with $308,824 going to its chief diversity officer in 2023. The 16 campuses that make up the University of North Carolina pay 686 DEI staffers $90 million per year, and the list goes on.

The report also includes DEI grants to universities, such as one from HHS (now run by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) to UT Austin for $792,443 to study how “cisheteronormativity leads to cisheterosexism.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham summed up the controversy during a recent segment. Noting that Cornell University is sitting on a $10.7 billion endowment, she asked Cornell law professor William Jacobson, “Why should federal money be going to these uber-wealthy schools” that teach anti-Americanism?

“You’re subsidizing campuses who have really lost touch with the population,” Jacobson said, adding that polls indicate trust in higher education is at all-time lows, in part due to anti-Israel, pro-Hamas protests.

Trump’s goal is surgical: obliterate DEI, and his Justice Department is on board to wield the hammer: “Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the color of their skin,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in March.

Later that month, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and UC Irvine faced Justice Department heat, with admissions allegedly flouting the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against race-conscious admissions policies. “President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” Bondi said.

Most universities and their leftist allies deem the attack on DEI as an assault on hard-fought progress for racial and gender minorities, and their resistance is palpable. Elite universities in California, for instance, may have officially scrapped diversity statements, yet sources say that faculty still weave it into performance reviews, and the President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship program subtly prioritizes diverse hires — a clever workaround.

Universities nationwide are accused of simply rebranding “DEI” as “inclusion” or some other innocent (and legal) phrase, and Stanford and others insist their policies comply with the law, even if the Justice Department remains skeptical.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in February, USC merged its Office of Inclusion and Diversity with a vaguely named “Culture Team,” erasing DEI terms from its websites and reworking job titles—like swapping “diversity, equity, inclusion and access” for “community and culture.”

The university claims this aligns with new federal guidance, but critics aren’t convinced it’s more than a superficial sidestep.

While Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders and a February 14 Education Department warning against race-based practices in schools are not technically laws, these executive actions and agency directives threaten federal funding cuts for non-compliance, carrying the weight of enforcement through the Office for Civil Rights.

USC’s diversity webpage now simply reads, “We’ve joined forces with the Culture Team.”

According to NPR, Cornell and Northwestern lost $1 billion and $790 million in funding, respectively.

“The Department of Justice will put an end to a shameful system in which someone’s race matters more than their ability,” Justice Department Chief of Staff and Acting Associate Attorney General, Chad Mizelle, told reporters in March.

Columbia learned that lesson the hard way, defying Trump’s push against antisemitism and forfeiting $400 million in grants as a result.

Bondi’s office later issued a press release proclaiming that “every college and university should know that illegal discrimination in admissions will be investigated and eliminated.”

DEI is teetering, and the Trump-DOGE team have the muscle to topple it, even if universities rebrand to mask their entrenched, woke policies.

Paul Bond has been a journalist for three decades. He was the Chief Culture Correspondent for Newsweek and has written for USA Today, Reuters, The Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. He began his career as a crime reporter before spending two decades at The Hollywood Reporter. Follow him on X at @WriterPaulBond.