In February 2025, the Department of Education sent a letter to federally funded colleges and universities. In the letter, often called the “Dear Colleague” letter, Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, threatened to revoke funding if the institutions didn’t get rid of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, suggesting that such initiatives actually increased discrimination.
Some institutions were quick to comply. That same month, the Ohio State University stated it was eliminating its DEI offices. A month later, the University of Michigan announced it was closing its DEI office and removing a financial aid award for Black, Latino/a, and Native American students. Other institutions responded by rebranding their DEI programs. The University of Southern California, for instance, got rid of its DEI website, renamed faculty positions, and took down several online statements it had made about inclusion.
Even prior to the current administration’s efforts to eliminate DEI, some programs, especially in conservative states, were already feeling pressured. And while the struggle over DEI is transpiring on a legal stage, with federal judges blocking some anti-DEI executive orders, it is rooted in fundamental debates over personal identity and the role of education.
In the Department of Education letter, Trainor invoked the Civil Rights Act and its interpretation in the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, which prohibits private universities that receive federal funding from considering race in their admissions decisions.
The Rev. Earle J. Fisher, in an article for MSNBC, called it “blasphemy” to reference the Civil Rights Act as a reason to shut down DEI. “Make no mistake. This is not about fairness; it’s about erasure. It’s about rolling back decades of progress and silencing the very institutions that have fought to level the playing field,” he wrote.
For the 230 Catholic institutions of higher education in the United States, this debate has additional theological significance, relating to the nature of the person and the purpose of education. Catholic responses in the current climate vary across a spectrum of views and strategies, with divisions that reflect the broader dispute in the secular arena.
Differing approaches to DEI in Catholic schools
Differing interpretations of Catholic social teaching collide when it comes to understanding DEI in Catholic education. Proponents of DEI programs argue they uphold Catholic social teaching, which calls for solidarity, respect for the dignity of the human person, and the preferential option for the vulnerable. Many universities ground DEI programs in the tradition of their founders or religious orders. For these Catholics, a commitment to DEI is intertwined with Catholic identity.
Seeking alignment with the Catholic value of dialogue as articulated by Pope Francis, DePaul University started a Bridgebuilding Fellowship focused on deepening students’ ability to engage across differences through an Interfaith America grant.
Meanwhile Kevin Nadolski, the vice president for mission and an education professor at DeSales University, says that Catholic values necessitate inclusion. For example, DeSales provided funds and space for the Muslim Student Union to host the first Iftar dinner during Ramadan. The founder, now an alum, referred to the dinners as a “DeSales tradition.”
Other Catholics have differing opinions. Paul Runko, a spokesperson for Defending Education—an organization that views itself as a watchdog looking out for “harmful agendas” in universities—and a Catholic, said in an interview with Catholic News Agency that DEI goes against the Catholic faith.
In an “investigation . . . intended to track the current state of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) offices,” Defending Education called out 20 Catholic universities that have DEI offices. “Catholics deserve to know whether the colleges they support and entrust with their children’s formation are upholding authentic Catholic values—or embracing divisive DEI initiatives that may violate federal civil rights laws,” Runko told Catholic News Agency.
Other Catholics fear DEI might dilute Catholic identity by prioritizing secular ideologies. Some argue that DEI initiatives are divisive or even a violation of human dignity. Matthew Petreusk, a Word on Fire Institute ethics professor, prefers the words dignity, equality, and solidarity. He views DEI as assigning benefits based on group identity and argues that this is morally wrong. In an article for Word on Fire’s website, Petreusk writes that Catholic social teaching requires looking at human beings as “ensouled individuals, not representatives of any biological or, even less, sociological category.”
The broader DEI fallout
In a collective response to the Department of Education’s letter, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities (AJCU) and the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities (ACCU) cosigned a letter along with 68 other organizations led by the American Council on Education, asking the government to rescind its request and arguing that DEI programs are not illegal or discriminatory. Yet, following through on its word, in March, the Department of Education opened investigations into 45 universities, including Georgetown University and the University of Notre Dame.
“It is important to note that the ‘Dear Colleague’ letter has no independent legal force and many legal experts view it as overreaching,” Eduardo M. Peñalver, the president of Seattle University, reassured his community in a letter posted on the university’s website. “It merely communicates the Trump administration’s intention to use the legal tools at its disposal to enforce its preferred expansive interpretation of the [2023 Supreme Court] decision.”
The backlash comes after a surge in support for DEI. Many universities pledged to address current and historic racism after the murder of George Floyd. According to LinkedIn, between 2019 and 2022, chief diversity officer hires in many sectors grew by 168.9 percent.
The recoil has been equally swift. Opponents claimed critical race theory was being taught in K–12 classrooms, saying that teaching Black history made white students feel guilty. Conservatives lobbed words like woke and social justice as an insult. Others, including the president of the United States, use DEI like a slur, shorthand for preferential treatment on the basis of race—for example, when the president blamed so-called “DEI hiring” for the deadly January plane crash in Washington, D.C., where a passenger plane collided mid-air with a military helicopter.
The origins of DEI
The road to today’s hostilities includes several legal throughlines as well as student activism and educational pursuit of diversity as a value. Black Americans led the civil rights movement, which called for legal protections for marginalized groups. They achieved their goal in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlawed racial segregation in schools (Title IV) and prohibited discrimination in federally funded programs, like education (Title VI)—in addition to requiring equality in employment and voting rights.
Later, lawmakers passed the Education Amendments of 1972—best known for Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools. This became relevant for religious institutions, especially those that only admitted men to seminaries. Thus, the law allowed religious exemptions if institutions could explain how complying would conflict with their mission. Many Catholic institutions requested the exemption, including Loyola Marymount and Notre Dame.
Meanwhile, students used tactics like sit-ins and strikes to demand a more inclusive curriculum that took into account the diversity of U.S. students. This helped bring about the first Black Studies departments, including at Fordham University in 1969. As content diversified, universities began admitting and expanding opportunities for students of color and women, and some began implementing affirmative action policies.
Over time, as top university officers saw diversity as a marker of a quality education, they also grappled with retention of marginalized students and began adding programs to attract them and help them gain a sense of belonging. Often, the programs were in different offices—such as admissions departments, student affairs, and student services. Human resources also began considering related issues in hiring practices.
DEI and an evolving mission
“In the late ’90s and early 2000s, positions began to evolve that were centrally located to bring greater coordination but also coherence and build greater accountability to ensure that the investment in the systems were yielding the outcomes that universities wanted,” says Paulette Granberry Russell, president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Education (NADOE).
These are the offices most visible today. Not every college or university went this route to organize its programs, but many have. Among Catholic universities, offices of mission or ministry occasionally oversee DEI offices, but many set up separate departments.
Over time, the language has shifted, too. Early on, “affirmative action” described programs to help recruit and retain marginalized students; then some universities rallied around “multiculturalism” as a preferred framework. Others viewed this as insufficient, as it diminished the power dynamics affecting marginalized people.
Thus, the word diversity became widely accepted because of the breadth of programs as well as the many identities it could include. Further, “equity” initiatives aimed to address past injustices.
“[DEI] honors the fact that there is no one monolithic way of people’s lived experiences,” says Russell. “In order to be regarded as a supportive environment, you have to acknowledge that. If you’re going to do justice to who we serve in higher education, it is almost malpractice to not understand that no one size fits all.” She points out that DEI encompasses broad ranges of identities: nontraditional students, veterans, immigrants, international students, low-income students, students with different dietary needs, and even those with varying access to technology.
For many Catholic universities, addressing diverse needs has become more professionalized. In 2019, DePaul University collaborated with the University of Notre Dame to launch the Consortium of Diversity Officers in Catholic Higher Education. In March 2023, the Consortium became an official chapter of NADOE, the organization Russell heads.
The policy pendulum
The last decade reads like a roller coaster ride of policy changes and heated discussions about racism, with new tensions around gender and sexuality.
In the mid-2010s, President Barack Obama’s administration interpreted sex discrimination in Title IX to include assigned sex, gender identity, and transgender status, opening the question of whether colleges or universities should accommodate transgender students by allowing them to live in dorms consistent with their genders.
Many evangelical universities and a small number of Catholic universities began filing religious exemptions—especially after a Supreme Court ruling that a transgender public school student in California must be allowed to use restrooms and locker rooms correlating with his gender identity. Franciscan University of Steubenville said that being transgender violated its religious beliefs “by attempting to identify as the sex or gender opposite to one’s God-given sex/gender.” University of Dallas, St. Gregory’s University, and Belmont Abbey College also filed exceptions.
In a 2021 case in Oregon, LGBTQ+ students claimed they experienced unsafe and abusive conditions at Christian schools. Seeing this as a religious liberty case, a number of Catholic and other faith-based groups supported the evangelical organization Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), which defended the case. In 2024, the CCCU won: The religious exemptions held up in court.
Staying on mission
Massimo Faggioli, a religious studies professor at Trinity College Dublin (who formerly taught at Villanova University), wrote in Commonweal of the Trump administration’s impact on the widening divide among Catholics. Acknowledging that DEI programs have mostly developed apart from theology, he wondered how Catholics might adhere to their identity now in defending it.
He called for building better-integrated theologies for social and political change. “If your theology which is committed to social justice and racial justice becomes the same or not very different from what other universities are doing in sociology or political science, the problem is how can you really justify that DEI is part of your Catholic mission or Catholic identity?” he asked. “If your political theology or social justice Catholicism becomes undistinguished from [others] . . . you become disarmed intellectually.”
When I talked to him, he told me that he thinks theologians, like himself, must do the work that they are called to do, but he also feels that Catholic social scientists are uniquely positioned to integrate theology in their fields.
For Nadolski, now is the time to recall the gospel and tradition of Catholic teaching when some in the public discussion have “politicized and weaponized” DEI.
In a 2023 article for the Journal of Catholic Higher Education, Nadolski argued that Pope Francis can be a model for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. In an email conversation with me, he quotes Francis’ 2024 address to universities: “A Catholic university must make choices, choices that reflect the Gospel. It must take a stand and clearly show it in its actions, ‘getting its hands dirty’ in the spirit of the Gospel, for the transformation of the world and in service to the human person.”
Staying on mission is hard when university leaders risk job security or reputation or loss of funding for supporting DEI initiatives. Many are staying quiet and attempting to remain under the radar. This raises questions about how moral leaders should respond in times of crisis.
In an article for The Conversation, Annmarie Caño, a Gonzaga University psychology professor and former dean focused on equitable educational access, urged U.S. university leaders to follow the example of El Salvador’s university leaders in the 1970s and ’80s, when the oppressive U.S.-backed regime cracked down on any institutions that sided with the poor and marginalized—including universities.
Citing Gustavo Gutiérrez, a Peruvian priest and Dominican theologian who contributed to the founding of liberation theology, Caño wrote, “God does not remain neutral when people are oppressed, so neither should human leaders.”
Catholic universities respond to the DEI debate
After the Department of Education letter and the subsequent crackdown on DEI, Catholic universities reacted in various ways, some more public than others.
In March, Georgetown Law School Dean William Treanor defended its programming to a federal prosecutor who said he wouldn’t hire the school’s graduates if it didn’t eliminate its DEI initiatives. In a letter, Treanor started with a statement of the school’s guiding mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution and then pointed out the school’s free speech rights.
Fordham University president Tania Tetlow addressed the faculty this spring in a closed session. At Villanova University, Augustinian Father Peter M. Donohue’s email to the community stated that the school will “make some changes to comply with these orders” while also reiterating the school’s commitment to its Augustinian roots, reported the student newspaper. Interviewed students fretted over what that meant.
Caño says that responses matter for those that feel vulnerable. “Catholic universities, many of which are predominantly white institutions, can also support, with words and deeds, BIPOC and other leaders from marginalized communities who are targeted because they are perceived as threats to the status quo or ‘DEI hires.’ Our shared missions demand that we act when directives or policy dehumanizes others,” she says.
In a written statement, Peñalver encouraged the Seattle University community to stick to its values. “When faced with a bully, some people are tempted to quietly submit while others feel compelled to punch back,” he wrote. “But it is important to remember that we always retain the power to control how we respond, both emotionally and practically, to provocation. In moments of uncertainty and fear, it becomes even more important to hew closely to first principles and deeply held values.”
He reminded them of St. Ignatius’ principle of openness to circumstances in order to “avoid knee-jerk responses.”
While he said that the school would make no changes at this time, he prepared the community for the possibility of new practices or even pursuing legal options.
Others are open to dialogue about the right language to use to express universities’ theological values and actions. “On the one hand, I welcome the stepping back from DEI [language] because it’s allowing us to move forward more substantially with the gospel,” says Nadolski, who wants to deepen the conversation.
Nadolski sees gentleness as the response to anything that is weaponized. Gentleness is one of five core values of the school’s namesake, St. Francis of DeSales, who oriented his ministry around Jesus’ words in Matthew 11:29: “Learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart.”
Russell does not like using an acronym that has been demonized. Additionally, opponents use it as shorthand to lead people to think that DEI is only about race. “The quality of the programs isn’t dependent on what you call them,” she says.
Faggioli worries that the shaky situation might lead to less commitment not only from faculty who were “less on board” in the first place but also from those who support DEI. Merely calling into question the stability of DEI programs undermines how much time or confidence employees will put into those programs going forward.
Faggioli also wonders: Will Catholic universities consider invoking a religious freedom legal strategy to uphold their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion? “What many Catholic faculty and administrators wonder is what kind of ‘threshold’ of Catholic activity or identity they need in order to be able to invoke religious exemptions (with the support, perhaps, of U.S. bishops),” he wrote in his Commonweal essay.
Faggioli says that universities with clergy as presidents at least symbolically hold respect from political authorities that might deter strong action, even though legally he feels religious universities can definitely make a case.
Fostering dialogue
“The questions for the leaders are never simple; they always involve nuance—significant nuance; consequently, decisions cannot be reflexive.
Furthermore, fear of the pain, optics, or fallout of the misperceptions does not seem to have a place in the leadership that Pope Francis is modeling,” Nadolski wrote in his article about Francis’ example.
Notably, Francis’ continuation of the Second Vatican Council’s emphasis on dialogue as a way of life is a basis for the kind of community culture that Catholic universities can foster, Nadolski says. Particularly important in polarized issues, dialogue requires a pursuit of understanding as the highest goal rather than agreement. This means people grow in acceptance and communities become more peaceful, but the differences remain—which means dialogue must remain the norm.
“Pope Leo had a wonderful line,” says Nadolski. “He said, ‘Let us be a church that listens before it speaks, accompanies before it judges, and loves without condition.’ He’s echoing Pope Francis in a substantial way. . . . If someone comes to me, before I judge that person I have to walk with that person; I have to dialogue with them before I judge.”
Perhaps this understanding of listening and dialogue could be a guiding light as Catholic institutions grapple not only with the weaponization of DEI, but also with how best to interpret fundamental precepts of Catholic social teaching—including the recognition that education is essential to human flourishing.
This article also appears in the September 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 9, pages 20-25). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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