Throughout the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the federal government has threatened to cut funding for universities if its objectives toward diversity, equity and inclusion programs aren’t adhered to. This has left universities with the decision to comply with federal orders or abandon their current programs. The Nexus compared diversity, equity and inclusion statements on UC Santa Barbara department websites before Trump’s inauguration with their current versions to see whether any changes were made, and found that while most have remained the same, some departments have altered their statements. 

On President Trump’s inauguration day, he signed roughly 200 executive actions. Among these was an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” which aimed to remove diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs from the federal government, and marked the beginning of the federal administration’s commitment to cutting back on DEI initiatives. Roughly a month later, a bill was introduced to the House of Representatives to prohibit federal funding for institutions of higher education that had DEI initiatives. The bill was referred to the House Committee on Education and Workforce and has not progressed since. 

The University of California is no exception to feeling the loss of federal funds, with the promise of regaining them by following federal orders against DEI initiatives. This has been most publicly shown through the federal administration’s proposed settlement with UC Los Angeles. 

The Trump administration offered UCLA a settlement in response to its revocation of 800 research grants, which federal courts have since reinstated. The settlement included a $1.2 billion fine and several demands, with one of them being that UCLA would “maintain” a senior administrative role that would review “policies and programs related to those discrimination policies often identified as diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

UCSB has a DEI program, although its website has been under construction since May, according to the Wayback Machine, a tool created by the Internet Archive that contains both manually-archived and automatically-crawled webpages from specific moments. The website redirected users to the main UCSB website for several weeks before that. 

Per the Nexus’s comparison of 71 department, program and service websites before and after the date of the 2025 presidential inauguration using the Wayback Machine, around half of the websites analyzed did not appear to display a diversity statement either before or after the inauguration. In almost 75% of the websites that had a diversity statement on their page either before or after the inauguration, the statements have not changed since their corresponding archive dates, meaning they displayed the same diversity statement before and after the inauguration.

Some departments and programs that did not appear to have a diversity statement on their websites before or after the inauguration, however, have many resources, programs, events, initiatives and other content promoting diversity, equity and inclusion – for example, the websites for Asian American studies, Black studies, Chicana and Chicano studies, Feminist studies and the Educational Opportunity Program, among others.

The full spreadsheet analysis can be found below. For consistency, a diversity statement was included in the before-and-after comparison if the statement was explicitly headed by a title including the term “diversity.” Other content — including department mission statements, diversity committee recruitment pages, resource guides and history of department pages — was not considered for this comparison. If there was no diversity statement found, the home page for the department was used. In some cases, the diversity statement for a department was listed on its homepage.

The Wayback Machine was used to retrieve older versions of department, graduate program and service websites. Each archived page has a date and time stamp, indicating when its contents were archived.

The archive date is the most recent date prior to the 2025 presidential inauguration when the page was archived on the Wayback Machine. An entry of “N/A” in the “Change to statement?” column indicates that there was no statement seen before or after the 2025 presidential inauguration, or there was no page available on the Wayback Machine before the 2025 inauguration. A change to a statement does not necessarily indicate that the statement was removed (Krithi Saravanan & Siddharth Chattoraj / Daily Nexus).

Roughly nine departments altered their DEI web pages, whether it was to build on existing information or to remove statements from their home page. The Nexus was unable to confirm the reasoning behind most of these changes. Specific departments are not named within the article to avoid further targeting of DEI committees and initiatives. 

One department’s website saw several changes to its diversity page. The sentence “We recognize this position of power and privilege and seek to use this responsibly to help upend systemic racism” was removed from its diversity statement. Aside from the diversity statement, the word “privilege” was removed from the sentence “Be aware of the dynamics of power and privilege, and whether you may be taking advantage of it” listed under their community values, and a statement regarding its investment in training “on anti-racism, inclusive classrooms, and supporting LGBTQIA+ students and colleagues” was changed to “on mutual respect, inclusive classrooms, and supporting students and colleagues with different backgrounds and experiences.”

This department’s diversity page also used to include a commitment to “increasing recruitment of under-represented identities in STEM,” and the sentence “Recruitment and support of diverse faculty has begun to produce more gender balance in our faculty, and we must find ways to also recruit and support more faculty who identify as Black, indigenous, and people of color” was removed. Other language changes were made, as well as the removal of information about its DEI committee. 

The websites for two academic departments used to include links to faculty within their respective DEI committees, but the information has since been removed. Four departments either removed their DEI statements from their home page, or the link to the webpage can no longer be found. 

One department removed a statement that said it led the push for campus guidelines regarding faculty candidates preparing diversity statements. Although unconfirmed, a possible reason for the change may be that the UC stopped requiring faculty applicants to submit statements on how they have or would contribute to campus diversity last March.

Another department added a “History and Guidelines” portion to its diversity page alongside a new mission statement and action plan. 

Although not directly under DEI, the Career Services website no longer has information for LGBTQIA+, students of color, undocumented and womxn students under its “Communities” section. Information for students with disabilities and international, transfer, formerly incarcerated and military students remains, with a tab for out-of-state students being added. According to media spokesperson Kiki Reyes, the changes were because of “ongoing maintenance of the website” due to recent staff turnover. 

“Access to career advising by these communities is a top priority of the Career Services staff, Student Affairs, and the campus,” a statement from Student Affairs read. “While the reposting of this content has been delayed, we anticipate these webpages will be updated by the end of the quarter. Again, please rest assured that this marks no change in Career Services’ dedication to the career development and success of our students and the department’s preparation and dedication in serving all students, inclusive of their identities, backgrounds, and experiences.” 

The Nexus did not receive a response regarding other department website changes at the time of this article’s publication. 

A version of this article appeared on p. 4 of the Nov. 6 print edition of the Daily Nexus.