Trump DEI purge threatens women’s and gender studies programs

Colleges are closing women’s and gender studies programs at a faster pace as the Trump administration purges diversity, equity and inclusion lessons.

Wichita State University, the University of Iowa and the University of California, Santa Cruz ended their women’s studies programs last year. That came after the Education Department threatened to end federal funding for schools offering race-based and transgender lessons.

Last month, Texas A&M University announced plans to phase out its program, citing government policies and student disinterest.

This fall, Maryland’s Towson University will downgrade gender studies from a department to an interdisciplinary degree due to declining enrollment.

“Some programs are clearly being reduced, rebranded or shut down in certain states and systems because of political pressure tied to ‘anti-DEI’ and ‘anti-gender ideology’ moves,” said Jessica Doyle-Mekkes, a feminist writer and musical theater professor at East Carolina University, which offers an interdisciplinary gender studies minor.

Campus insiders say President Trump’s policies have bolstered restrictions that conservative states such as Texas, Florida, Kansas, Iowa and North Carolina enacted in recent years to curb a surge in gender identity courses.

Multiple institutions, including New College of Florida and the University of Toledo, have cut gender and women’s studies since 2023. Dozens more have reconfigured course offerings or scrubbed transgender content to avoid political reprisals.

“In many places, it looks less like a full rollback and more like a ‘wait-and-see’ posture and a shift to less visible or differently labeled programming,” said Marc Defant, a University of South Florida professor and critic of feminism.

Patricia White, the coordinator of gender and sexuality studies at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, said the Trump administration has made life harder for transgender students.

“The need for co-curricular programs like Gender and Sexuality Centers is acute because of student anxiety, especially for trans and gender-nonconforming students,” Ms. White said.

In liberal California and Maryland, universities have cited waning interest as their key reason for curbing gender studies.

For example, Towson counted a record-low 11 students majoring in the subject last fall, down from a record-high 38 in 2018.

Nora Demleitner, the immediate past president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, said undergraduates concerned about finding good-paying jobs increasingly favor certificates and cross-listed courses over full gender studies majors and minors.

“Women’s and gender studies doesn’t sound like it can be turned readily into employment, which explains at least partially the downturn,” Ms. Demleitner said.

According to the Department of Education, the number of students majoring in the field has declined steadily for over a decade.

That includes a 22% drop in women’s studies graduates, from 2,131 bachelor’s degrees conferred during the 2014-15 academic year to 1,665 in the 2022-23 term.

At the same time, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences estimates that over 74,000 students took women’s studies classes in 2023.

“In my observations, the declining market is leading to an increased number of colleges eliminating these majors,” said Gary Stocker, a former university administrator who founded College Viability to evaluate campuses’ financial stability.

In a statement Tuesday to The Washington Times, the White House touted efforts to stop colleges from spending taxpayer dollars on politicized courses.  

“The Trump Administration is committed to restoring financial responsibility and eliminating radical DEI policies at America’s higher education institutions,” said Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman.

Feminist origins

Gender and women’s studies programs at U.S. colleges date back to the women’s liberation movement.

Elite campuses first offered accredited courses for the subject in 1969, leading San Diego University to establish the first women’s studies department a year later. As of 2023, 276 colleges had such departments.

“The problem with a major in women’s and gender studies is that it has neither an economic nor an intellectual value proposition,” said Neeraja Deshpande, a policy analyst at the conservative advocacy group Independent Women. “It would be one thing if women’s and gender studies were a real humanities field like English or history that honestly engaged with women’s issues, but it’s not that either.”

In recent decades, women’s studies have expanded beyond advocating for gender equality. Most now include LGBTQ lessons teaching “gender fluidity” and the idea that people can change their birth sex.

Leah Jacobson, who oversees a master’s degree program in Catholic Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, said such lessons have alienated traditional feminists interested in research rather than politics.

“One of the ongoing tensions in the field is whether Women’s and Gender Studies functions primarily as scholarship or as advocacy,” Ms. Jacobson said in an email.

But Tim Cain, a professor of higher education at the University of Georgia, said the Trump administration and GOP state lawmakers are at fault for politicizing gender studies.

“In the current policy environment, I expect these efforts to continue, especially in states in which conservatives control the government,” Mr. Cain said.

In a statement last month, the National Women’s Studies Association insisted the field was booming along those lines, despite the Trump administration’s crackdown.

“We may be understandably saddened, frightened, and enraged about the current state of the field,” the association said. “Yet, we must not despair. We must resist.”

 

Future uncertainties

Higher education insiders offer differing forecasts on the future of gender and women’s studies after the Trump administration.

“Many hope that a post-Trump presidency will mean things will go back to how they were before,” said Tyrone Howard, a UCLA education professor specializing in racial equity. “However, if a Republican candidate replaces Trump in the White House, we will see the normalizing of these cuts and demonizing of DEI-related programs.”

Others say that low enrollments, collapsing university budgets and projected drops in college applications make it unlikely any mothballed programs will return.

“Many DEI programs, particularly race-related, will come roaring back if the next administration is Democrat, but I don’t think gender studies will enjoy a resurgence,” said William A. Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and critic of DEI lessons. “Regardless of Trump, gender studies is a field whose time has come and gone.”

Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, speculates that gender and women’s studies programs will become more concentrated in liberal enclaves.

“In blue states, we can expect gender studies programs to continue with only minor hiccups,” Mr. Wood said. “In other parts of the country, gender studies programs will dwindle and soon disappear.”