In its latest attack on higher education, the Trump administration has proposed barring 38 universities from participating in Diplomacy Lab, which pairs academics with state department offices to research foreign policy issues. The reason this time around is that these 38 schools still have a bunch of diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring practices hanging around, stinking up the joint and making white guys sad.
The Guardian obtained an internal memo stating that schools with a “clear DEI hiring policy” should be yanked from the program.
As per usual, there are no real details as to the alleged DEI transgressions here—just that the 38 have a “clear DEI hiring policy.” The administration has declared that DEI is illegal, of course, but it’s just not. First, there’s no such thing as “DEI” to make illegal, as the term is just a conceptual umbrella label for any number of diversity efforts. Second, despite his continued attempts to do so, Trump cannot make something illegal via executive order.
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So who is on the latest hit list? Some familiar names for anyone who has been paying attention over the past 10 months. Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Southern California will be suspended from Diplomacy Lab as of Jan. 1, 2026. American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University, and multiple University of California campuses are also under the microscope.
Back in March, of course, the charge was that many of these schools were alleged hotbeds of antisemitism. American University, Duke, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, USC, Yale, and four University of California campuses were all on that list. Several of those remain under the scrutiny of some pretend task force the administration has going.
Thanks to the GOP’s reliable DEI bogeyman, the State Department is now foregoing partnering with leading academic institutions to tackle foreign policy issues and apparently looking to steer things toward schools like Liberty University. Great.
Well, one silver lining, at least: It’s not like the Trump administration has any coherent foreign policy goals that would benefit from skilled research. You don’t really need a bunch of academic research to brazenly declare that bombing boats is totally legal if you say they’re carrying drugs, or to steadfastly ignore how U.S. cuts to foreign aid efforts will kill millions of people around the world.
There are some notable omissions from the list of 38, and guess what? Turns out if a school was willing to pay millions and basically turn over control to the administration, they are in the clear.
Not on the naughty list? The University of Pennsylvania. It didn’t pay the administration anything, but did agree to the administration’s unhinged transphobic demand to strip Lia Thomas, a transgender swimmer, of all her titles and to apologize to other athletes who were made sad by Thomas’ participation.
Also not on the latest hit list? The University of Virginia, which got out from under multiple investigations. It didn’t have to tithe millions to Trump, but did agree to certify its compliance on a quarterly basis. The government gets to review that, and if it decides UVA isn’t in compliance, it can just restart all the harassing investigations.
Compliance with what, you might ask? Well, killing DEI initiatives and screwing over trans students, of course.
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University of Texas-Austin seems to be safe as well, most likely because it seems to be contemplating signing Trump’s ridiculous compact with higher education. The compact is basically one long whine about how schools don’t coddle conservatives enough, so they need to hire and admit more of them. So, DEI—but for conservatives only.
Finally, Columbia University seems to be in the clear for now. It should be, having given the administration $200 million earlier this year and agreed to turn Trumpy when it comes to admissions, hiring, and curriculum, all subject to an outside resolution monitor that Columbia gets to pay for.
The administration is never going to stop attacking institutions that don’t agree to turn themselves into Hillsdale College and exist only to coddle conservatives. Trump will just keep inventing vague new offenses and declaring that schools have run afoul of them.
Well, at least we’ll get to see how long Columbia and other schools can stay out of the crosshairs. How much peace of mind does $200 million buy, do you think?
