On Friday, the university announced that employees and faculty involved in the Office of Inclusion and Diversity will be merged and transferred into working directly with the USC Culture Team, a part of the Office of Culture, Ethics and Compliance.
“For several years, the Office of Inclusion and Diversity and the Culture Team have supported this sense of community, each developing programming and initiatives that embrace mutual respect and opportunity for all. Moving forward, this important work will continue through the merging of the full Office of Inclusion and Diversity Team with our Culture Team,” said Andrew Guzman, provost and senior vice president of student affairs, and Stacy Giwa, senior vice president of human resources, in a letter to the university.
The Office of Inclusion and Diversity website has been completely wiped, as employee pages and previous links directing students to university resources have been replaced with the message, “We’ve joined forces with the Culture Team.”
Announcements from 2021 detailing the roles of Karrie Kingsley and Maria Romero-Morales, previously associate chief Inclusion and Diversity officers, were also deleted prior to website scrubbing. According to the letter, the Office of Inclusion and Diversity staff positions and work will merge under the USC Culture Team.
On February 14, the U.S. Department of Education issued guidance prohibiting colleges from considering race in any decision-making process or promoting diversity initiatives on campus. These decisions specifically pertain to admissions, financial aid and hiring training.
The letter directly states that higher education institutions have discriminated against “students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students.”
The Education Department gave colleges until Friday to comply, warning that failure to do so will result in the loss of federal funding.
Some colleges have already announced their plans to eliminate DEI offices and programming effective by Friday. Ohio State University is one of these colleges that intends on discontinuing services at its Center for Belonging and Social Change, and closing their Office of Diversity and Inclusion.
University of Cincinnati President Nevill Pinto announced in a community letter his reasoning for complying with President Trump’s executive order, “It is untenable to operate as if noncompliance with these directives is an effective option.”
Other colleges are discreetly removing DEI from their programs by scrubbing references to DEI from their websites, such as the University of Alaska and the University of Pennsylvania.
“We look forward to the integrated Culture Team continuing to engage with students, faculty, and staff in fostering a sense of community where we all contribute to our mission,” Guzman and Giwa said in the letter.