President Trump has prominently criticized many American universities over issues such as antisemitism. His Department of Education has addressed other problems that afflict colleges and universities, such as their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, which affect admissions and hiring practices by discriminating on the basis of identity group(s). In response, many professors, university administrators, and students have assailed Trump’s education policies as affronts to academic freedom and free speech and have urged resistance to them.
To assess the status and influence of one Trump education reform, a study was designed and conducted to assess compliance of university libraries with recent policy directives on DEI in the period from April to October 2025.1 The study finds that there has been little change stemming from recent directives, and changes that did occur appear to primarily reflect reform policies of governors and state legislatures. These findings suggest a need for altered federal policies, more widespread use of state powers, and emulation of successful state policies.
The Study: Why Libraries Matter
This study primarily addressed the DEI adherence of libraries of four-year, not-for-profit U.S. colleges and universities (hereafter “libraries”).2 University librarians collectively, by many accounts, are among the most radicalized of university employees. Indeed, libraries have long been hotbeds of progressive advocacy. Findings that librarians have changed, or not, their attitudes toward DEI therefore provides useful evidence about the effectiveness of Trump’s efforts to reform education. Librarians’ attitudes about DEI matter substantively because libraries are key creators and custodians of the knowledge students and faculty acquire and use through their policies regarding the acquisition and discard of books, journals, and other materials. They conduct educational programs of many sorts, and their personnel management processes often prioritize DEI activist staffers who then influence all library activities. Libraries also influence the offerings and policies of university presses, with which they often have close relationships.3 In these ways, libraries appreciably influence their university communities.4
To establish a baseline state of DEI penetration of American libraries, I initially reviewed the websites of 417 public and private libraries in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the few days immediately surrounding April 1, 2025. These included all sixty schools that the Department of Education said in March 2025 it was investigating for antisemitic activities, which included one community college, the only two-year college in this study.[5] Selected schools included major research universities, liberal arts colleges, religious colleges, including Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish schools, historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), and a wide range of other types of schools. The selections included roughly equal numbers of public and private, large and small schools, and more schools in populous states than in small states.
Of the 417 schools initially surveyed, 157 displayed adherence to DEI in various ways. Thereafter, for six months immediately surrounding the first day of each calendar month, I revisited the 157 libraries’ websites, noting changes in references to DEI and related concepts and recording key references in a spreadsheet. Despite amassing considerable data, the study has important limitations. Despite extensive efforts to identify a representative sample of schools, the sample used could be less than representative in meaningful but unknown ways. The study only assesses the web postings of libraries and, in some cases, other elements of schools. No other data sources are assessed to help determine the accuracy or truthfulness of the websites. I could not, and did not try, to identify or assess the motives behind possible misrepresentations or omissions in libraries’ postings, which may in some cases be non-trivial.
Key Findings
Of the 157 libraries with DEI commitments in April 2025, 31 (19.7 percent) had modestly or significantly reduced, or eliminated, commitments to DEI in October 2025. Three libraries appeared to increase commitments to DEI. The University of Washington’s library, whose DEI page was under review in April, displayed a vigorous defense of DEI when it was repopulated in August. The library pages of Swarthmore College and Lafayette College appear to have increased DEI support incrementally over time. The others displayed little, and often no, change over the six-month study period. All of the 60 schools the Department of Education investigated for antisemitism had affirmative DEI references on their library websites continuously from April to October. The most frequently emphasized aspect of DEI policies was race; less attention was given to ethnic group identities, women, or LGBTQ+ groups, which figure prominently in other varieties of DEI programs.
All eight Ivy League schools’ libraries continued to espouse DEI measures through October 2025 despite the Trump administration’s anti-DEI actions aimed at Columbia and Harvard, especially. But unlike some extreme libraries, Ivy League schools generally display considerable linguistic nuance in their embrace of DEI policies by using code words and generalities that can be interpreted many ways, perhaps to deflect critical attention. The most explicit statement is that of Cornell University:
To carry out our mission, we accept our responsibility to further social justice by providing equitable access to information, facilitating the creation of new knowledge, and preserving our history so that we may continue to learn from it. We are committed to recognizing and addressing the history of systemic bias and inequity in libraries and in librarianship, including our collections, spaces, services, and recruitment practices.6
Among other findings, most of the “elite” liberal arts colleges surveyed support DEI, sometimes strongly. These eighteen colleges include schools such as Beloit, Bowdoin, Bryn Mawr, Reed, Wellesley, and Williams. Most religious institutions’ libraries display appreciable support for DEI. These include most Protestant- and Roman Catholic-run schools surveyed, including those of Jesuit and other orders. Though the degree to which religious authority determines university policies varies considerably among religiously-affiliated colleges, this finding seems consistent with numerous studies that conclude there is a large religious Left in the United States.7 None of the 12 HBCU libraries initially surveyed mentioned DEI. At first glance this may seem strange, but HBCUs by design cater to African Americans, meaning no special additional treatment of them is deemed to be needed. The schools apparently feel no obligation to attract and serve students of other racial and ethnic identity groups. Twenty-three libraries that embrace DEI also post statements acknowledging the unverified claim that their facilities sit on land occupied by groups prior to the arrival of large numbers of Europeans in North America, consistent with the Marxian emphasis on the evils of capitalist-driven “colonialism” and the guilt implied from the concept of land theft espoused by theorists of “settler colonialism.” Several libraries cite names of multiple tribes that are believed to have possessed the land, sometimes in the very distant past. The University of Maryland library also reports that its facilities were built in part by slave labor.
DEI supportive schools unsurprisingly are located primarily in states run by Democrats. The State University of New York system, for example, mandates DEI compliance by its schools. This survey found no state schools in New York without firmly positive DEI policies, some of which are strident. For example, the library of the University of Stony Brook in September 2025 praised revolutionary writer Franz Fanon and displayed a Black Lives Matter emblem on its website. Other states with concentrations of DEI advocates in both public and private college libraries include California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. In contrast, no libraries surveyed in April in some Republican-led states, such as Florida, Idaho, and South Carolina, displayed commitments to any form of DEI.
In general, state-run schools in Democrat-led states exhibit similar commitments to DEI. An exception occurs in Washington state, where the University of Washington, Eastern Washington, and Western Washington firmly back DEI while Washington State University initially showed modest support for DEI but eliminated its postings by July 2025.
DEI support varies appreciably among websites. Some embrace the concept gingerly and use increasingly popular code terms such as “inclusive excellence” and “social justice” to mask details of their DEI programs. Others make their commitments clear, citing historical and allegedly ongoing racial injustices and promising remedial action focusing on their collections, activities, and staff. Some DEI pages contain numerous sub-pages on such topics as the mandates and composition of DEI-focused committees within libraries, lists of references to DEI-related aides such as suggested books on “antiracism,” and testimonials about the importance of DEI.
Reasons Libraries Embrace DEI
Libraries commit to DEI for a wide range of reasons, which their websites often pointedly identify. Some libraries say they follow the policies of university administrators or state policies in the case of public colleges and universities. In other cases, motives are internal. Many individual librarians believe DEI policies are good, consistent with their enduring collective reputations for being politically liberal.8 Some library deans include personal DEI-related commitments in their “welcome to the library” messages, which are common. For example, in October 2025 Pennsylvania State University library dean Faye A. Chadwell posted:
I believe that we enact our values through the decisions we make and the actions we take. The value of access, especially access to higher education and access to a public research library’s resources, motivates and energizes me as a librarian and as a library leader. I’m also committed to working toward creating the most inclusive and diverse community possible, especially to bolster open and equitable access to library resources and spaces.9
Chadwell’s message immediately precedes this library policy statement:
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility, and Belonging (DEIAB)
The University Libraries is committed to disrupting racism, hate, and bias whenever and wherever we encounter it and to creating the most inclusive and diverse community that we possibly can. We reject the actions and messages of racism and embrace the message of antiracism.
While we are a place for everyone, we will not allow acts of intolerance and hate to diminish the rights and safety of others who visit our spaces and use our resources and services. It is time for us to do more in support of diversity, equity, and inclusion.10
Other library commitments to DEI resemble the lengthier and explicit narrative of the Library, Information, and Technology Services (LITS) staff of Mount Holyoke College:
LITS staff believe in the power, potential, and value of diversity, equity and inclusion. Antiracism is not an intellectual exercise, but essential work necessary to address the toll structural racism inflicts on communities and people of color, and therefore all of us, every day. We affirm our individual and group responsibility to identify and eliminate the structural barriers that limit the engagement, contributions, and success of individuals and groups based on identity. As a learning community committed to purposeful engagement in the world, we commit to continual examination and confrontation of our own individual biases and historic and continued systemic racism within our professions and institution. We commit to effecting meaningful change that addresses racism through frequent, consistent, equitable choices and actions.11
Some libraries seemingly proudly comply with the DEI policies of professional library associations, especially the American Library Association (ALA), which in October 2025 had about 64,600 members. Commitment to ALA’s strong embrace of DEI is cited on many libraries’ webpages. ALA asserts that:
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion are fundamental values of the association and its members, and diversity is listed as one of ALA’s Key Action Areas. The Office for Diversity, Literacy and Outreach Services uses a social justice framework to ensure the inclusion of diverse perspectives within our profession and association to best position ALA as a trusted, leading advocate for equitable access to library services for all.12
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL), representing nearly 8,500 individuals and libraries, is the largest sub-unit of the ALA and has its own DEI support program:
ACRL is dedicated to creating diverse and inclusive communities in the Association and in academic and research libraries. This core commitment permeates the work of the Association, cutting across all ACRL sections, committees, interest and discussion groups, and communities of practice. The Association will acknowledge and address historical racial inequities; challenge oppressive systems within academic libraries; value different ways of knowing; and identify and work to eliminate barriers to equitable services, spaces, resources, and scholarship.13
Librarians also are influenced by labor unions to which they belong. These include the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, which claims to represent more than 35,000 librarians.14 An undisclosed number of university librarians also are members of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the most radical American unions. In addition, many organizations offer training courses on DEI, and there is a substantial academic literature extolling the virtues of DEI. Hence, librarians often have comprehensive support structures within their libraries and externally that make commitment to DEI easy, reform harder, and opposition to DEI policies bureaucratically dangerous.
Reform Models and Needs
The primary factor associated with the small number of diminished DEI commitments appears to be significant legal and policy changes made at the state level, not in Washington, where reforms can be enacted more comprehensively through command emphasis by governors, legislatively mandated policies for specific schools, and budget allocations. Ohio is prominent in this respect. Governor Mike DeWine signed legislation that bans DEI in state schools in March 2025 and another, stronger bill in June 2025.[15] As a result, state school libraries that eliminated commitments to DEI include: Kent State (in June), Bowling Green State (in July), Cincinnati (in July), Toledo (in July), and Cleveland State (in August). In Tennessee, state policies also appear to have encouraged several schools to deemphasize DEI, including the flagship University of Tennessee, Knoxville, although UT Chattanooga library still demonstrates commitment to DEI.
Several Republican-led states’ universities display strong adherence to DEI despite Republicans’ general aversion to DEI policies, suggesting weaker state control of university administrations than in Ohio. These commitments are unsurprising given that librarians, like other employees of universities, generally are considerably more politically liberal, even radical, than the communities they serve or Republican politicians. Among Republican-run states, the following have one or more libraries at state institutions that significantly embrace DEI:
- Alabama. Frequently used DEI-related code words are in Auburn University’s 2019-2024 strategic library plan, which has not been updated.
- Indiana. Indiana State still has a strong DEI statement even though Indiana University and Ball State reduced emphasis late in the study period.
- Mississippi. Ole Miss and the University of Southern Mississippi libraries have DEI statements.
- Montana. Three major universities—Montana, Montana State, and Montana State Billings—display appreciable commitments to DEI.
- North Dakota. North Dakota State University’s library as well as other university websites, such as that of the English Department, have significant DEI statements.
- West Virginia. The state’s flagship university, West Virginia University, maintained an appreciable commitment to DEI throughout the study period.
Virginia is an interesting intermediate case. Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin has sought to deemphasize DEI at state schools, but the Democrat-controlled legislature has refused to confirm some of his nominees to the universities’ boards of regents, which oversee the administrations directly, limiting his ability to influence state schools. Under pressure from Youngkin, James Madison University (JMU) on April 11, 2025 announced elimination of its overt DEI policies and a grand total of four DEI-focused positions—two of which were then unfilled while explicitly reaffirming commitment to its “values.”16 In essence, JMU administrators publicly said they would continue their DEI programs under other labels—a challenge that Youngkin seems not to have addressed. A JMU employee said in October 2025 that, indeed, little had changed concerning DEI.17 The University of Virginia agreed in October to abandon its DEI-like hiring and admissions preferences under an agreement with the Trump administration; President James E. Ryan resigned under federal pressure in June 2025.18 George Mason University retains some DEI policies even though the Department of Education and GMU trustees challenged President Gregory Washington on his strong DEI policies in August 2025.19 The Virginia Commonwealth University library’s once-strident DEI statement and related pages were removed in August 2025, replaced with the message: “These pages are being reviewed and will be reposted as soon as possible.”
Implications and Recommendations
This study points to several conclusions that have policy implications. The first and most important is that universities’ libraries have largely ignored Trump administration efforts to reform DEI policies of higher education. A focus on antisemitism, free speech, and even overt DEI policies have not overcome widespread university intent, as James Madison University made clear, to ignore, avoid, or subvert DEI policies they do not like. It will not be possible to expunge DEI from educational institutions without fundamentally reforming the organizational cultures and even the structures of the schools—a difficult challenge that Ohio seems to have successfully begun to address. But the Trump administration has not (yet) tried to address organizational cultural issues in meaningful ways other than its reinterpretation of Title IX rules concerning transgender athletes.20 Some private universities have retrenched on DEI modestly, possibly due to concern about recriminations, but these are few in number and may be more intended to disguise noncompliance with Department of Education policies than to reflect actual policy changes. The states have greater, more comprehensive financial, political, and legal clout over state-run schools than the Department of Education, making their pressures to reform potentially more effective.
Many consistently strong backers of DEI are major research universities, meaning the federal government has financial leverage to encourage some schools to purge DEI policies if the levers are well designed and targeted. To date, however, many schools effectively have pushed back, claiming infringement on their academic freedoms. Federal financial pressure might better be employed through Congressional budgetary processes that embed requirements and sanctions in law, thereby reducing judges’ ability to thwart Trump’s reform efforts by exploiting his propensity to use executive orders to withhold appropriated funds from recipient organizations and purposes he does not like.
The Department of Education has begun to address the role of accrediting agencies as implementers of discriminatory policies and impediments to change, which is good. This effort should be expanded to include standards of professional associations such as the American Library Association, which significantly influence their members’ policies and activities.
Ohio’s success in reducing DEI at state schools and the continuing presence of DEI policies at public universities of other Republican-led states suggest that legislatures and governors in these states and elsewhere should pay considerably more attention to the institutional implementation of DEI and related policies at their state-run colleges and universities. States have power to change laws and appropriate funds to colleges and universities, but they also need sophistication in designing reform programs and excellent supervision of the implementation of reforms that affect the day-to-day operations of institutions whose employees generally dislike anti-DEI policies and have been adept at avoiding and subverting them, as JMU has demonstrated. Ohio offers lessons. DEI is also firmly established in the curricula of many schools, meaning these too should be addressed.
More generally, consistent with impressionist evidence of other sorts, DEI library statements seem to be concentrated at more selective colleges and universities. This makes the continuing presence of DEI and related policies throughout American education still worse than it appears to be. “Better” students are getting strong doses of DEI and other forms of Marxian indoctrination, boding poorly for the judgment of future leaders of the country. To reiterate an important point, because DEI and related policies and supportive attitudes are deeply entrenched in the organizational cultures and structures of many American institutions of higher education, comprehensive reforms that address many political/cultural aspects of educational institutions are essential.
John A. Gentry is adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics and the School of Defense and Strategic Studies, Missouri State University. He is author of Diversity Dysfunction: The DEI Threat to National Security Intelligence (Academica, 2025); email: jgentry@iwp.edu.
1 The dataset for this study is available to responsible researchers upon request.
2 This exception is Rockland Community College of Suffern, New York.
3 John A. Gentry, “University Presses Bind Leftist Bias into Nearly Every Book They Print,” Minding the Campus, May 7, 2025.
4 John A. Gentry, “Libraries: The Quiet DEI Indoctrinators,” Minding the Campus, January 31, 2025.
5 Joey Rather, “Here are the 60 institutions that the Department of Education says it’s investigating for antisemitism,” Associated Press, March 10, 2025.
6 Cornell University library, https://mann.library.cornell.edu/equity-diversity-inclusion.
7 For example, Paul Hollander, Anti-Americanism: Critiques at Home and Abroad, 1965-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 81-145.
8 Kaetrena Davis Kendrick, Ione Damasco, “A Phenomenological Study of Conservative Academic Librarians,” University of Dayton, Roesch Library, August 2015, https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1039&context=roesch_fac.
9 Penn State library website, https://libraries.psu.edu/about/diversity-equity-inclusion-accessibility-and-belonging.
10 Ibid.
11 Mount Holyoke library website, https://lits.mtholyoke.edu/about-lits/strategic-plan.
12 American Library Association, “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion” policy statement, https://www.ala.org/advocacy/diversity.
13 ACRL website, https://www.ala.org/acrl/equity-diversity-and-inclusion.
14 AFSCME website, https://www.afscme.org/about/jobs-we-do/library-workers.
15 Julie Carr Smith, “Governor signs ban on DEI in public Ohio colleges despite opposition by students and teachers,” Associated Press, March 28, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/higher-education-ohio-dei-restrictions-faculty-strikes-8b0ab7db08eb712e3350bb241b610f70.
16 James Madison University, “University leadership affirms values amid organizational changes,” April 11, 2025, https://www.jmu.edu/news/2025/04/11-presidential-update.shtml.
17 Personal communication.
18 Katherine Long, “UVA president resigns amid pressure from Trump administration,” Politico, June 27, 2025, https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/27/university-of-virginia-president-trump-00429669.
19 Josh Moody, “GMU President Rejects OCR Findings,” Inside Higher Ed, August 25, 2025, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2025/08/25/gmu-president-refuses-apologize-rejects-ocr-findings.
20 Brian McGill and Sara Randazzo, “What Trump Wants from Targeted Colleges,” Wall Street Journal, October 8, 2025, A5.
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