During the last academic year, The Hoot covered Interim President Arthur Levine as he led Brandeis through a transitional period marked by shifting national politics and rising tensions around higher education’s role in advancing diversity. At several campus events, Levine repeated a phrase that came to define his public messaging: “Brandeis was DEI before DEI was DEI.”
The line referenced Brandeis University’s founding in 1948, when the institution emerged as a response to the exclusionary admissions policies that barred Jewish and other marginalized students from elite colleges. The statement reflected a belief that diversity, equity and inclusion were not recent bureaucratic additions but rather embedded in Brandeis’s very DNA. At the beginning of this academic year, the university disbanded its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) with little public explanation—an action that went largely unnoticed outside internal circles. The move comes as DEI programs across the country face mounting political and financial pressure, particularly following former President Donald Trump’s return to office. Since resuming power, the Trump administration has advanced a series of executive actions aimed at dismantling institutional DEI initiatives. One of its earliest efforts included threatening to withhold federal funding from universities that continue to support diversity programming, a move that has forced many institutions to reconsider their commitments. Supporters of these measures, including prominent members of the MAGA-aligned wing of the Republican Party, claim that DEI practices amount to “reverse discrimination” and undermine the principle of meritocracy in higher education.
The administration’s approach has extended beyond academia. Law firms representing political opponents or progressive causes have faced explicit or implicit retaliation through targeted executive orders that restrict government clearance and bar them from government contracts. Even firms not directly named in these actions have promised hundreds of millions of free legal work to support Trump’s interests, and reportedly backed away from politically sensitive cases amid fears of federal scrutiny. Despite most of these executive orders being successfully challenged in court, the symbolic effect has been chilling. That tension has reached some of the country’s most prominent institutions. Firms such as Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss, and universities including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia and Brown, have all faced difficult decisions about how to navigate federal hostility toward DEI-related initiatives. For many, the outcome has been a quiet retreat.
At Brandeis, the decision to dissolve the DEI office contrasts sharply with last year’s public posture. President Levine had previously pledged to continue resisting federal attempts to curtail university autonomy, especially in matters of diversity and inclusion. Last February, The Hoot reported that Brandeis joined several universities in filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration, seeking to block the White House from withholding medical research funding. That legal challenge was seen as both a symbolic and substantive defense of higher education’s independence from political influence. Now, with the DEI office shuttered and little transparency surrounding the decision, students and faculty are left questioning what remains of the university’s long-professed commitment to diversity.
