The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office is no more following a lengthy assessment, the news coming as President Donald Trump’s administration works to combat such practices.
MIT President Sally Kornbluth has shut down the Community and Equity Office and one of its leading staffers will also be eliminated, the New York Post reported on Wednesday.
In her statement regarding the matter, Kornbluth said, “MIT is in the talent business. Our success depends on attracting exceptionally talented people of every background, from across the country and around the world, and making sure everyone at MIT feels welcome and supported so they can do their best work and thrive.”
Earlier this year, the Trump administration was investigating the school over alleged racial discrimination, and “That deepened a Title VI investigation of reported antisemitic harassment and sex discrimination on campus, according to Education Secretary Linda McMahon,” the Post article said.
McMahon made it clear that students must be assessed not by their skin color but by their merit and achievements.
MIT’s DEI office has been shut down after a nearly 18-month long assessment, a university spokesperson explained to Fox News.
In May 2024, MIT said faculty candidates would no longer be asked to provide diversity statements when they applied. They had reportedly previously been asked how they would go about enhancing the school’s commitment to diversity, Breitbart News reported.
Trump signed an executive order in January that ceased DEI in the federal workforce, contracting, and spending, per the outlet.
“The White House states that ‘radical DEI’ has reversed ‘progress made in the decades since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 toward a colorblind and competence-based workplace’ and that DEI encourages authoritarianism,” the article read.
The recent change at MIT comes as Trump battles with the elite Harvard University after it refused to scrap DEI programs and lost a significant amount of federal funding.
“Trump earlier this year signed executive orders ending federal support for DEI programs and his administration has made the issue a red line in the legal fight with Harvard over funding cuts,” the Post report said.
Kornbluth was among two other university presidents in 2023 who refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violates their schools’ code of conduct, per Breitbart News.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) confronted Harvard president Claudine Gay, Penn president Liz Magill, and Kornbluth by asking them, “Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate [your school’s] code of conduct?”
Watch Kornbluth’s response here:
Magill and Gay later stepped down from their roles.
“Unlike the other presidents, Ms. Kornbluth has managed to avoid taking the fall for a campus environment that has allowed anti-Israel protests and pro-Hamas sentiment to flourish,” the Washington Times reported on January 8, 2024.
