Left-leaning education orgs urge schools to ‘vigorously’ disobey Trump admin’s DEI directive

Several education associations have vowed not to comply with the Trump administration’s orders to halt diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in K-12 and higher education.

In response to a Feb. 14 memo issued by the Department of Education demanding schools halt race-based decisions and other DEI initiatives or risk losing federal funding, the School Superintendents Association (AASA), which “serves as the national voice for public education” and is made up of school administrators from across the nation, advised school districts to ignore the guidance. Higher education groups, such as the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) as well as policy-advising organizations like the American Council on Education (ACE) and EdTrust, told institutions to “vigorously oppose the assault on our education” and disobey the department’s rule.

“To be abundantly clear, Dear Colleague letters are not law,” Ted Mitchell, president of ACE, said at a policy briefing Tuesday, according to Inside Higher Ed. “They are simply statements of intent by executive agencies about how they intend to interpret the law. And so over-compliance, anticipatory compliance, pre-emptive compliance, is not a strategy. The strategy needs to be much more considered, much more nuanced.”

The Education Department’s “Dear Colleague” letter warned schools that any policy using “race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination” violates the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act and gave them two weeks to correct any programs.

The AAUP stated the order meant the administration “has declared war on American civil rights in education” and said schools must “stand up and defend what higher education is and does” calling for mass noncompliance with the rule.

“Trump and his cronies, through threats and intimidation, are dead set on returning to a world where they enjoyed unfettered preferential treatment,” AAUP wrote. “They are commandeering Congress’s power of the purse to harden and preserve their own inequitable advantages. We must refuse.”

“In the face of these assaults on education and civil rights, students and faculty nationwide are organizing in their communities,” AAUP continued. “Join us. The way to confront those intent on dismantling our democracy is to join together in mass action.”

AASA advised schools that the process for the education department to revoke funding for incompliance with civil rights laws is lengthy, therefore schools should risk defying the administration.

“It is also important for districts to remember that there is a long-drawn-out process for rescinding funding for failure to comply with civil rights laws,” AASA wrote. “OCR must first initiate a compliance review or other investigation, actually investigate the complaint, including allowing the educational institution to submit data and a legal response to the allegations, and make a finding that the institution or agency has violated the law.”

EdTrust referred to the department’s letter as a “perversion of the Civil Rights Act” and similarly advised schools to “be steadfast in their commitment to programs and strategies that support Black students and must not be deterred by inflammatory language and threats to funding in the litany of executive orders and Dear Colleague Letters from the new administration.”

President Donald Trump has made several efforts to root out DEI from schools, issuing a Jan. 29 order demanding schools stop teaching radical gender ideology and Critical Race Theory (CRT) or risk losing federal funding. The Department of Education has already begun dismantling DEI within its walls, scrubbing hundreds of documents from its website outlining DEI practices, dissolving DEI teams, halting DEI training, and placing several staff on administrative leave.

AASA, AAUP, ACE, EdTrust, and the Department of Education did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

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