As soon as President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025, he signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” This order called for the termination of all diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility – DEIA – mandates, policies and programs in the federal government.
These included “equity-related” grants or contracts, such as programs supporting underrepresented people in STEM, and all DEI or DEIA performance requirements for grant recipients – for example, requiring that grant recipients have a plan to address underrepresentation in their area of study.
Agencies were given 60 days to implement the order.
The following day, the president signed another executive order named “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.” This executive order expanded the language of the first to federal subcontrators and encouraged the private sector to follow suit.
To comply with these two executive orders, federal agencies took immediate action. References to DEI disappeared from web pages, and major federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation sent out press releases about the order.
Federally funded scientists received correspondence from funding agencies explaining that diversity components would no longer be required nor used as a metric in proposal evaluations. Some agencies suspended DEI-specific programs or terminated DEI-specific grants. All of this happened within days.
The stream of communications and agency actions in response to these orders has many scientists at universities worried, some of my colleagues included. As a scientist myself, I’ve experienced this confusion firsthand.
What do Trump’s orders mean for science?
Even if the abrupt timeline may come as a surprise, the executive orders themselves do not. Conservatives have long been vocally against DEI measures, with a report last year calling for a ban on federal funding that supports such measures. Within academia, some scientists have questioned certain DEI initiatives. Unpopular DEI measures to some university professors are the creation of diversity offices at various levels of universities, diversity training and requiring DEI statements in hiring and review processes, created with the goal of engaging the academic community with the issues surrounding underrepresention and providing an open learning environment for all at universities.
In the days since the orders were signed, scientists have expressed grave concern about these developments. This state of affairs has left many early career folks confused and scared, particularly with respect to their job security and their work environment, a fear that is more pronounced for those in minority communities. These communities face a strong DEI stigma, the belief that they got where they got due to DEI preference rather than their own merit.
The implementation…
