Institutions of higher education across the country are still offering hundreds of scholarships tied to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, despite the fact that the federal government has made it clear that race and gender preferences will no longer be tolerated.
A new report from Defending Education (DE), reviewed by The Federalist, shows numerous scholarships aimed at giving “queer identifying” students or those who “identify as POC [People of Color]” special treatment because of their race or incoherent claim about sexual identity.
“It’s hard to believe that so many colleges and universities decided that being on the right side of history meant discriminating based on race and sex when awarding scholarships to students,” Erika Sanzi, DE director of outreach, told The Federalist. “It’s even harder to believe that their lawyers let them do it since it is such an egregious violation of federal law.”
The report serves both as an archive of past DEI-related scholarships and those currently available, and it identifies 596 scholarships from 123 colleges or universities across 48 states.
As the Trump administration has been trying to get schools to stop their programs that are violative of civil rights, some institutions have attempted to hide, rebrand, or clandestinely continue their operation, while others have brazenly maintained theirs in the open to challenge the crackdown.
“While President Trump’s Executive Orders have incentivized universities to take down webpages and cease their DEI based scholarships and programs, this does not mean that these institutions are ending these practices permanently — or even ending them at all,” the report notes.
At the University of California, Berkeley, the Student Environmental Resource Center has two “sister scholarships” focused on environmental justice through either a lens of race or gender identity and sexual orientation.
The $10,000 “Rooted in Joy” scholarship aims to “help bridge institutional gaps in support of environmentalists working at the intersection of communities of color and the environmental field.”
The school also has a $10,000 “SERQueer” scholarship, named after an alumni group described as “a community space for queer students working on environmental sustainability & justice.” The scholarship is meant to honor a deceased alumnus and his “commitment to building radically inclusive social and environmental justice spaces on the Berkeley campus.”
Another goal is to “financially support queer-identifying students and allies and/or students working at the intersection of LGBTQIA+ and the environment and are passionate about the environmental field at UC Berkeley.”
Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, has a “Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Scholarship” and a “Psychedelic Studies BIPOC [black, indigenous, and people of color] Scholarship.”
“We recognize that systemic inequalities and barriers often hinder access to higher education for many talented students,” the first scholarship fund says. “By supporting this scholarship fund, we are dismantling those barriers and empowering deserving students from underrepresented communities to pursue their academic dreams.”
The psychedelic scholarship says that “preference is given to those qualified enrolled professionals who are members of historically underrepresented groups, as well as trainees who serve these communities.”
Indiana University’s School of Education also has a scholarship that, until recently, described explicit racial preferences for awardees.
Only weeks ago, the scholarship’s website said, “Special consideration will be given to underrepresented populations, including but not limited to financially challenged students, and/or students with diverse cultural experiences. Preference will be given to African American students who intend to teach in traditional public schools,” but that language has been removed from the website, perhaps due to media scrutiny or a bill in Indiana that would block DEI.
It is unclear if the school really ended its racial preferences or if it simply removed the language from the website in order to hide it. The university did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.
Aside from the Trump administration going after DEI at universities directly, earlier this week, Trump signed another executive order going after university accreditors for requiring DEI from schools as well.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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