Executive orders issued by President Trump in his first days in office are sending a chill through the nation’s colleges, universities, and academic medical centers because they appear to be part of a plan to leverage billions of dollars in National Institutes of Health and other research grants — their fiscal lifeblood — to pressure them to dismantle programs and activities dealing with diversity, equity, and inclusion and to bring to heel campuses that have been outspoken in their commitment to those issues.
One order, issued January 21, states that DEI efforts are now illegal, and discriminatory themselves, under the new administration’s interpretation of federal anti-discrimination laws. It also directs government agencies to install new requirements that any institutions receiving federal grants attest that they are in compliance with this interpretation or risk losing funding or face legal action.
Entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” the order also instructs each agency of the federal government to identify “up to nine potential civic compliance investigations,” which could involve publicly traded corporations, nonprofits and large foundations, and universities whose endowments exceed $1 billion — a list of about 80 that includes at the top Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, but also Texas A&M and the University of Virginia.
“This is particularly focused on the places that have been the center of resistance to Trump and what Trump stands for in the past, particularly large research institutions in blue states,” said Samuel Bagenstos, a professor at the University of Michigan law school who, until a few weeks ago, was general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services. Likening the targeted universities to “an enemies list,“ he added, “The point is to get these institutions to back down, back off, be quiet.”
Major universities have mostly been quiet about their concerns so far, because so much is in flux and the order’s language is vague, leaving unclear exactly what activities it’s meant to ban. The struggle to interpret the administration’s anti-DEI stance grew on Wednesday when the White House budget office abruptly rescinded a Monday memo ordering government agencies to pause grants and loans for a host of programs implicated by Trump’s recent orders, including ones focused on DEI.
The memo had sparked immediate concern about the fate of federally funded research and the funding freeze was quickly blocked by a federal judge after a lawsuit was filed by a group of nonprofit and small business organizations. A group of state attorneys general had also filed a suit against the funding freeze. Still, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on X that changes to funding called for in executive orders remained in effect and “will be rigorously implemented.”
Legal experts told STAT that the Jan. 21 DEI order likely exceeds Trump’s authority as president and is expected to face challenges in court. Many experts said it was not legal for the administration to only fund research that matches its political leanings. “This kind of ideological purification is not consistent with [the First Amendment],” Genevieve Lakier, a free speech expert and professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, posted on BlueSky.
A separate executive order, issued on Inauguration Day, directed federal agencies to terminate their own DEI programs. Both orders go far beyond executive orders Trump issued in 2020 which outlawed the use of federal funds to pay for training that included “divisive concepts” including critical race theory or white privilege. Those orders were largely ignored by health equity researchers, many of whom do not use those phrases, or even the term DEI, in their work.
The new orders are “way more pervasive and powerful,” said Andrew Twinamatsiko, associate director of the health policy law center at Georgetown University, who co-authored a recent brief in Health Affairs looking at the 2020 orders. “These orders highlight how they are promoting the myth of meritocracy and colorblindness in a way that is weaponized and more emphatic. They’re setting a new norm.”
That new norm, said legal and education policy experts, has the potential to quell research that is vital for human health and could also exacerbate the country’s longstanding racial health disparities. Many said the orders, called an attack on DEI, were actually an attack on civil rights. Others saw them as an opening salvo in a broader war on academia, which many in the Trump administration see as far too liberal.
“From the Trump administration’s point of view, the point is to make these broad statements with vague threats in order to cow people into submission,” said Oren Sellstrom, litigation director with the Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights. “What the Trump administration wants to happen is for people to start conforming their behavior based on what they fear will happen.”
To some, it’s no surprise that Trump would use federal funding as a cudgel against universities that defy his ideology. “They want to make an example of the Harvards and the Stanfords — the institutions that have been saddled with the label of liberal, ivory tower, elite,” said Chris Marsicano, a public policy researcher at Davidson College who studies the politics of education.
It’s a double-edged strategy; those types of institutions tend to exert outsized influence on how other universities model their own policies and programs, “so if you can effectively change the behavior of the places at the top, you can theoretically change the behavior of them all,” Marsicano said. The problem with that strategy, he added, is they tend to have access to some of the best lawyers in the world and historically have been pretty willing to put up a fight when pushed.
ReNika Moore, who directs the racial justice program at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the nation’s antidiscrimination laws still stand, and that much of the work targeted in the orders is “fair, legal, and necessary.”
“There are still obligations to serve everyone,” she said. “There are still antidiscrimination laws to protect everyone still in place.”
Moore said the orders don’t offer a detailed definition of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility, or DEIA. “People don’t understand what the administration is talking about,” she said. This is making it even more difficult for universities to respond and advise their faculty what exactly was allowable.
Stanford President Jonathan Levin touched on the executive orders during a meeting of the university’s faculty senate on Jan. 23, acknowledging that they will probably impact the research powerhouse’s operations.
“We’re going to need to review programs on campus that fall under the DEI heading, and it’s likely that some will need to be modified or sunsetted,” said Levin, according to Stanford Report, the university’s official communications channel.
Parag Mallick, a systems biologist at Stanford, told STAT it’s no surprise the university would take a cautious approach and avoid outright conflict with Trump on DEI.
“We understand that the university itself probably can’t come out in direct opposition, because there is this pretty substantial fear of retribution,” said Mallick, adding that he was only speaking on behalf of himself and not other faculty or the company he co-founded, Nautilus Biotechnology.
He said the executive orders have prompted speculation that future federal grant funding may be contingent on researchers signing paperwork stating that they and their institution do not engage in DEI-promoting practices. More than three-quarters of the university’s externally funded research projects are supported by the federal government.
Despite the swirling uncertainty, the Stanford scientist doesn’t intend to abandon efforts to make science more inclusive. Mallick noted that the new policies won’t deter him from giving high school and college students of diverse backgrounds the opportunity to work and learn in his lab.
“I generally try to be a pretty under-the-radar person,” he said. “But on the other hand, this feels like a moment … to say, ‘Well, isn’t the foundation of being American actually creating opportunities?’”
The legal threats within the Jan. 21 order, and potential expense of losing lawsuits, are creating an atmosphere of apprehension on campuses, many of which may not have an appetite for expensive legal battles, especially when many already face a funding crunch from lower enrollments.
“If you’re a big institution, you don’t want to be in the crosshairs of the Trump administration threatening to take away your federal funds,” said Bagenstos.
He was particularly concerned about the order’s instruction to ask federal enforcement agents to come up with lists of institutions violating the order. “This is bigger than targeting a pillar of civil rights law. This is about targeting particular institutions,” Bagenstos said.
He said the order opens universities to costly civil lawsuits brought by outside litigants under the False Claims Act, which triples damages in successful suits. “It’s a very clear roadmap to go after institutions or people that are speaking out in ways that the administration doesn’t like.”
Despite the high stakes, universities have so far remained largely quiet. None of the 10 research universities that receive the most NIH funding offered specific responses to questions sent by STAT for this article. Researchers at many universities told STAT they were hearing nothing from their leaders or were frustrated that memos being sent were vague and unhelpful. “I can’t do my job right now,” said one person who works at an academic institution that has long supported DEI efforts and asked not to be named for fear her institution would face retribution. “It’s scary because no one is sure what is going on.”
A researcher at a different institution said they had been warning administrators about the goals of Project 2025, a detailed Heritage Foundation playbook of proposed actions for the second Trump administration, and that attacks on universities were imminent, but said few leaders at their institution seemed worried. “We weren’t ready,” the person said.
Some argued that universities should better support employees who do DEI work and are frightened about what the future holds. “We need to hold academic institutions accountable as entities that can provide safety and support,” said Rachel Hardeman, the founding director of the Center for Antiracism Research for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota. She said such support could be as simple as sending out an email that says, “This feels crappy and scary and uncertain for all of us and here are ways we are standing by our values.”
Many said they also wanted to see university leaders fighting back against what they saw as an unprecedented attack on their work and freedom. That fight may be coming.
“I’m sure you will hear from them, because I’ve talked to several people at academic health centers and their research programs are up for grabs, their hiring of staff, their buying of reagents, things like that. Anything that’s grant-funded was impacted by this,” said Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, when asked Tuesday why universities had not joined the lawsuit over the OMB freeze his organization had joined. “So they’re there. They’re concerned.”
Daniel Kaufman and Kirk Pelikan, lawyers at the national law firm Michael Best & Friedrich told STAT their firm had received many calls from university clients seeking to understand the implications of the orders, and others said university leaders were hard at work on forging a response, which was taking some time. “You don’t ride into battle without a battle plan. The universities and colleges of this country,” said Davidson’s Marsicano, “are building that battle plan now.”
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