Universities are hiding DEI efforts from federal scrutiny by the Trump administration

As universities across the country have been accused of trying to hide their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts to avoid federal oversight, Fox News Digital spoke to a prominent parents’ rights activist about the severity of the problem and what can be done about it.

“I look at…the responses to the Trump administration and the executive orders fall into three categories,” Nicole Neily, founder and president of the nonpartisan grassroots organization Defending Education, told Fox News Digital about the DEI’s continued activity despite the Trump administration’s efforts to eliminate it.

Neily explained, “The first group is the proud resisters. I put Princeton, Harvard, schools like that in that category, where they just go, you know, ‘resist with a hashtag’ and do their thing. The second group is, I think it’s the largest category, and I think they’re the ones trying to put lipstick on a pig. They’re renaming the departments. The DEI department is now the ‘home department.’ The coordinator, the dean of DEI, is now dean of compliance or something like that But these people are doing the same thing and just trying to wait out the Trump administration.”

Fox News Digital has extensively covered schools in the first two categories as defined by Neily, including Washington University in St. Louis, where one of the nation’s top medical schools has been accused of moving of the DEI office on a restricted floor rather than closing it.

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Addressing DEI at all levels of education will require a “whole of government” approach, Nicole Neily told Fox News Digital. (Getty Images)

Earlier this month, Princeton University was hit by a scathing federal complaint about a DEI program that allegedly involved female students sharing “gender-neutral” restrooms with empty stall spaces, as well as segregated graduations by gender identity.

At University of Utah And University of VirginiaFox News Digital reported that staffers were filmed on a hidden camera explaining their efforts to continue the DEI’s efforts by renaming or simply renaming them.

“The third category is schools that actually want to comply in good faith,” Neily told Fox News Digital. “I think a lot of schools, a lot of administrators, have been pretty frustrated by the excesses of the DEI movement, and they’re secretly relieved that now they have a little bit of air cover to push back these programs. And they might wring their hands and do a little performative ‘it’s the orange man’s fault,’ but at the end of the day, I think they’re really relieved.”

Neily told Fox News Digital that the “second bucket” is “the biggest and most difficult category.” She said she recently attended a university board conference where speakers on a DEI panel openly called for continued “inclusion work” because the Trump administration “only cares about” Ivy League schools and “they can’t sue all of us.”

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While many universities are resisting the Trump administration’s crackdown on DEI programs, others are complying in good faith. (iStock)

“For me, this demonstrates a reality male reasonwhich is Latin for a guilty mind,” Neily said. “I think it shows that these people are the real evildoers and these are the ones, I think, obviously, the Trump administration has spent a lot of time over the last few months going after Harvard, going after Columbia, like the really bad actors that are trying to do this, you know, this clearly needs to be cleaned up. But I think there is a much larger, long-term effort to uproot and eradicate DEI that is simply trying to hide in plain sight. And I think that’s a really, really important mission.”

Defending Education recently sent a letter, first reported by Fox News Digital, to elected officials in all 50 states, calling for a top-to-bottom audit of state laws at the K-12 level to ensure no loopholes are exploited, allowing schools to continue their DEI efforts.

Addressing DEI at all levels of education will require a “whole of government” approach, Neily told Fox News Digital, adding that it will be important to not let administrators “whitewash their records” or place blame on someone else for policies they have supported.

Additionally, Neily expressed optimism that the tide is turning against DEI in terms of popularity.

“I think we’re at a moment where there’s sort of a perfect storm unfolding in academia. This year, this freshman class is the largest freshman class that American universities will ever have… Obviously, we’ve seen polls over the last couple of years demonstrate a massive loss of public confidence in institutions of higher education at a time when costs are skyrocketing, the return on investment for sending your kid to some of these schools is horrible. So I think a lot of people are really rethinking, Is this the right path for me, period?” » Neily said.

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“We also have fewer international students coming in, thanks to the efforts of the Trump administration, and so I think what we’re going to see over the next few years is a number of universities starting to close their doors. And how are these schools differentiating themselves in the marketplace?”

Neily said he has seen students “vote with their feet” and choose to attend schools that do not promote “woke” ideologies, particularly in the South, where students are looking for a “real college experience.”

Earlier this year, Fox News Digital reported that several Southern states banded together to create their own higher education accrediting bodies to “overthrow the monopoly of the woke accrediting cartels.”

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“They don’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of Victorian scolds who are going to berate them for using the wrong pronouns and for not wearing masks in the middle of winter, and so we’re watching people and some of these public schools in the South now, realizing that, okay, we can attract more out-of-state students, by paying higher out-of-state tuition,” Neily said.

“But it’s also changing and altering our campus life, and so we too, the voters of the South, are now pushing for their national universities to put caps on the number of out-of-state students. And so, it’s really kind of an evolving landscape, but I think there’s a lot more change coming in higher education. And for those higher education administrators who haven’t really started to look in the mirror and think, what do we want to be when we grow up standing ?I think they’re going to face a world of hurt soon.”