Trump wants to change colleges nationwide. GOP-led states like Idaho offer a preview

Idaho Education News

Heather Hollingsworth and Jocelyn Gecker of The Associated Press, Williesha Morris of AL.com, and Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News

01/09/2025

This story was produced by a collaboration of reporters from around the country. Heather Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri; Jocelyn Gecker from San Francisco; Williesha Morris from Tuscaloosa, Alabama; and Kevin Richert from Boise, Idaho. 

Nearly a decade ago, intense protests over racial injustice rocked the University of Missouri’s flagship campus, leading to the resignation of two top administrators. The university then hired its first-ever vice chancellor for inclusion, diversity and equity. Tensions were so high that football players were threatening a boycott and a graduate student went on hunger strike.

Today, the entire diversity office is gone, an example of changes sweeping universities in states led by conservatives, and a possible harbinger of things to come nationwide.

“I feel like that is the future, especially for the next four years of Trump’s presidency,” said Kenny Douglas, a history and Black studies major on the campus in Columbia, Missouri.

As President-elect Donald Trump prepares to take office, both conservative and liberal politicians say higher education changes in red parts of America could be a road map for the rest of the country.

Dozens of diversity, equity and inclusion programs have already closed in states including Idaho, Alabama, Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. In some cases, lessons about racial and gender identity have been phased out. Supports and resources for underrepresented students have disappeared. Some students say changes in campus climate have led them to consider dropping out.

During his campaign, Trump vowed to end “wokeness” and “leftist indoctrination” in education. He pledged to dismantle diversity programs that he says amount to discrimination, and to impose fines on colleges “up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

Many conservatives have taken a similar view. Erec Smith, a research fellow at the free-market Cato Institute whose scholarship examines anti-racist activism and Black conservatism, said DEI sends the message that “whiteness is oppression.” Diversity efforts are “thoroughly robbing Black people and other minorities of a sense of agency,” he said.

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