Updates: April 25, 2025
Federal
The NIH issued a notice that they will issue no new, renewal or continuation awards to entities (e.g. universities) that "operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws" or "engage in a discriminatory prohibited boycott," in which "discriminatory prohibited boycott" means a boycott of Israeli companies.
The NSF has frozen all new awards and is cancelling awards related to DEI and research on mis/disinformation. Revised guidance on the NSF priority #7 (broadening impact, by increasing participation of women and minorities in STEM) has been revised to state this is not a priority relative to #1-6, and proposed activities for #7 can only be included if there are no preferences or exclusions related to those groups. Related NSF award terminations were issued today.
The Department of Justice has canceled grants on violence prevention, opioid deaths, and anti-Arab, anti-Jewish, and anti-Asian hate crimes. These grants were primarily to community organizations and local governments, but also included subawards to researchers.
The administration will discontinue DOJ regulations on disparate-impact liability, which has historically been used to target discriminatory policies, programs and behaviors, by demonstrating disparate impact on marginalized groups. For example, if a plaintiff wanted to demonstrate how some practices, e.g. faculty promotion, produce racial discrimination, without explicitly stated racial discrimination, they could demonstrate disparate impact by illustrating statistically different outcomes by race and ethnicity.
The administration issued an Executive Order that the Secretary of Education will monitor, suspend or terminate higher education accreditation agencies that conduct discrimination, through DEI. The order specifically names accreditation for law and medical schools and training programs. It also establishes new principles including that accreditors require institutions to measure student outcomes without reference to "race, ethnicity or sex."
Harvard is resisting federal government actions taken against it, arguing that the administration's requests threaten First Amendment rights, academic freedom, and Title VI authority. These include: instituting "merit-based" admissions and faculty hiring; auditing of faculty, students, staff and courses for "viewpoint diversity," reforms of student discipline policy, audit and reform specific schools for past anti-semitism, in addition to ending all DEI programs. This suggests the administration's stance that it would prefer for other universities.
