By Viviana Gardner, Stentorian Staff Writer
On January 20th, 2025, the day of his inauguration, President Donald Trump enacted an executive order that sought to end “radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.”
DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) programs and policies have existed in many different forms since the mid-1960s when an executive order outlined that government employees were to be hired without bias toward gender, race, or religion. Since then, there have been larger strides to counterbalance the systematic discrimination that exists within our society, such as Executive Order 13985 enacted by President Joe Biden where he claimed in Ex that, “the Federal Government should pursue a comprehensive approach to advancing equity for all, including people of color and others who have been historically underserved, marginalized, and adversely affected by persistent poverty and inequality.”
On the other hand, the January 20 Executive Order, criticizes DEI programs by claiming that the programs themselves are discriminatory, as the order operates off the idea that DEI’s goal of advancing racial and gender equity was only favoring certain groups of people – ignoring the centuries of oppression and biases that still remain within societal structures and government organizations.
In implementing this order, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Attorney General, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have been tasked with ensuring the end of DEI programs within federal agencies while also reviewing their financial impact. This has affected countless programs and people across the nation—even in our own school, where our DEI-ties program ended and our Student Climate Opportunities, Outreach, and Programming (SCOOP) program began.
Recently, there has been an uptake in content condemning DEI and celebrating what seems to be the “end” of these programs, with many claiming them to be part of the same “woke liberal agenda” of other policies concerning ethical issues, such as those created by the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG).
Overall, the January 20 Executive Order has sparked debate around the existence of the policies and programs that served to make federal agencies more inclusive. In dismantling DEI programs that have allowed for a more equitable environment and that have addressed the deeply ingrained systemic inequalities, this executive order poses the risk of undoing decades of progress. As the federal government moves forward with these changes, the harm that these changes will and have caused will become a prominent topic and issue within minoritized and disadvantaged communities across the country.
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