Two weeks after the Department of Education’s deadline to end race-based initiatives at federally-funded institutions, Lafayette College appears to have remained steadfast in its programs.
The college’s young Division of Inclusion remains intact, and no edits have been made to Lafayette’s primary diversity webpage. Multiple student leaders in race-based organizations told The Lafayette they had not heard from the administration about any changes.
“The College will always be a welcoming place where everyone is treated with dignity and respect while complying with all applicable laws and regulations,” college spokesman Scott Morse wrote in an email. Morse declined to answer any specific questions.
Lafayette’s general counsel, Tim Cedrone, declined to comment, deferring to Morse.
A Feb. 14 letter from the Department of Education outlined a broader interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action, warning schools to cut race-based initiatives from all “aspects of student, academic, and campus life” or risk losing federal funding. Across the nation, higher education institutions have scrubbed diversity webpages and internally reorganized to comply.
But Lafayette is not alone in its apparent inaction.
Representatives from four of Lafayette’s peer schools — Bucknell University, Grinnell College, Hamilton College and Union College — confirmed that no organizational changes have been made as a result of the Department of Education’s letter. The president of Carleton College, another of Lafayette’s peers, called the letter “an effort to intimidate colleges” in a February interview with Minnesota Public Radio.
“I think it’s trying to get colleges to make changes, and I certainly think that if a time comes that we’re legally required to make changes, we will look at it differently,” said Carleton President Alison Byerly, a former Lafayette College president. “But right now, it’s not clear that what’s outlined in the letter has the force of law.”
Carleton’s Division of Communication deferred comment to the interview.
An FAQ released by the Department of Education on Feb. 28 clarified that not all diversity, equity and inclusion programs were necessarily in violation of federal antidiscrimination laws.
“Schools may not operate policies or programs under any name that treat students differently based on race, engage in racial stereotyping, or create hostile environments for students of particular races,” the document reads.
The document also acknowledges that programs focused on particular cultures and heritages “would not in and of themselves violate Title VI, assuming they are open to all students regardless of race,” as well as cultural and historical observances, like Black History Month or International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In the weeks after the letter was released, the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University both quietly deleted diversity-related webpages, and the University of Southern California dissolved its Office of Inclusion and Diversity, integrating it into a broader “Culture Team.” The University of Iowa scrapped its LGBTQ+, Latino and Black-experience living-learning communities.
The changes come amid a higher education crackdown by the Trump administration. The administration recently canceled $400 million in federal funding to Columbia University over what it called “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” It separately warned it and 59 other schools, including Lafayette, that federal funding is “contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal antidiscrimination laws.”
William Neil'72 • Apr 3, 2025 at 10:54 am
I don’t usually find myself in alignment, politically or philosophically, with Larry Summers, the economist, former college president, and in general the enforcer of economic orthodoxy as it has emerged from the Neoliberal and Globalization era – 1980-2025. In fact, just to be more precise, it has been his opposition to substantial domestic measures – for example, a regional aid program (CCC, more doctors & health centers, more investments in alternative ag, enviro. restoration – hey still, 125 years after the fact, coal mines and impaired steams in PA) for rural Trump country that has, in part, allowed the resentments against the affluent coasts to fester – and ultimately elect Trump in 2024.
So here are the closing paragraphs from Summer’s piece in the NY Times today, April 3, 2025 urging colleges to resist the Trump attacks:
“Institutions such as Harvard, the administration’s most recent target, have vast financial resources, great prestige and broad networks of influential alumni. If they do not or cannot resist the arbitrary application of government power, who else can? Without acts of resistance, what protects the rule of law?
I hope and trust, in the time of testing that lies ahead, universities will both reform themselves and stand up to external pressure. Their future and America’s are in the balance.”
Well said.
Daisy L. • Mar 27, 2025 at 2:19 am
This standoff between [College Name] and government officials epitomizes the broader culture war weaponizing education funding. While the article frames the administration’s resistance as principled, it’s worth interrogating whether their stance is truly progressive—or performative. The college’s rhetoric about ‘preserving academic freedom’ rings hollow when their diversity initiatives lack transparent metrics for success.
Meanwhile, the government’s funding threats reveal a cynical ploy: defund first, debate never. Withholding resources from institutions serving marginalized students ultimately harms the very communities politicians claim to protect.
The real tragedy? This politicized tug-of-war drowns out nuanced discussions about how to implement effective DEI—not whether it should exist at all.
Selin Sinan Uz ‘02 • Mar 23, 2025 at 1:37 pm
All the third-world countries are terrified of America. Now, Americans! What is America without its liberties and constitutional rights?
William Neil • Mar 20, 2025 at 1:35 pm
I wanted to clarify and specify a bit more on my recommendation made on March 19th, in light of a column in the NY Times today pointing out the irony that the American Right once was the champion of free speech on campuses when it was greatly outnumbered, and I recall the efforts made at Dartmouth to oppose via its own newspaper and student organizations, the perceived, correctly or not – probably correctly – liberal dominance.
Now the roles have reversed, but the great danger is that the federal government in the hands of someone bent on personal and ideological revenge for speech on campuses it does not like, (and much else: they have a vigorous, ambitious game plan) DEI policies are only part of picture, greatly intensified by the student responses to the Hamas attack on Israel and the resultant intense bombing of Gaza, its militants and civilians alike.
By going after colleges who are not sufficiently in line with the Trumpian world view, and including cutting off important and substantial research money, this is a very different animal than conservative protests in the 1980’s- 2000.
Free speech is very much at stake and I want Lafayette to explore with as many allies as it can find among colleges and universities, a common ground to protect vital democracy in the nation, not just on campuses.
The stakes are higher than just grants and funding. That most expensive per square foot college building in the nation at the time, 1929, erected by the Kirby family, should be a reminder if it stands for more than letting the powerful “do as they will with their own” to paraphrase the words on the pediment…that it is called the Kirby Hall of Civil Rights for a reason, for vigorous free speech on campuses and freedom from ideologically motivated funding cuts.
From an American Studies major…who spent a lot of time studying in that “Hall of Civil Rights.”
William Neil • Mar 19, 2025 at 3:35 pm
Thanks for this. I Emailed the official college alumni office with my concerns about Trump’s attacks on funding and college policies which his administration considers politically offensive. And I asked whether the college was working with other schools to oppose those policies. I received a pretty sanitized answer from Mary Neuenschwander of the Alumni Office to this effect:
“The College is maintaining a firm stance against all forms of illegal discrimination and harassment, including antisemitism. The institution also remains vigilant in protecting the safety and well-being of all its students, faculty, and staff, ensuring an educational and work environment free of discrimination. ”
Actually, Lafayette belongs to the AICUP – Association of Independent Colleges and Universities of Pennsylvania – 85 of them, and joined in sending a letter to the Pennsylvania Congressional Delegation, all 19 of them, protesting the cuts to grants, where Lafayette is one of 35 schools slated for research grant cuts.
Well, that’s a little more specific than the reply I received, after doing some digging including at your newspaper.
I was hoping, and still am, that a greater national college and university effort is needed, not just on the immediate politics around gender and DEI, and financing, but on grounds of Trump’s actual threats to democracy and the rule of law, so glaring that it has prompted a rebuke from the Chief Justice himself.
I am a Class of 1972 graduate, one of the “turbulent” classes and participated in the famous strike against the Vietnam War. I continue to write about economics, ecology and equality.
Barbara Beattie • Mar 19, 2025 at 10:33 am
My great great uncle, James Elliott, graduated from Lafayette in the 1870’s. My family is proud of our connection to the school. It has made the right and courageous choice.