Philly elected officials say Penn’s removal of DEI websites ceded ground to Trump

A group of state and local elected officials on Tuesday slammed the University of Pennsylvania for its response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on diversity initiatives in recent weeks, saying the state’s only Ivy League school is preemptively ceding ground to an administration intent on denigrating people of color and their contributions to higher education.

The university has pulled down DEI websites at several colleges and plans to dissolve DEI committees at its medical school, amid threats from the U.S. Department of Education to pull federal funding from schools that use race as a factor in admissions, hiring, and other areas.

The Department of Education has said that its directives stem from its view that students should be “assessed according to merit, accomplishment, and character — not prejudged by the color of their skin” and that schools’ DEI initiatives institute a “repressive viewpoint monoculture.” Critics have countered that these DEI initiatives help level the playing field for students and staff who have historically been denied opportunities at universities.

In a universitywide email Monday, J. Larry Jameson, Penn’s interim president, said that the school must “embrace diversity in all its forms” while following the law. But elected officials said those statements are empty in light of the university’s recent actions.

“I don’t really think that we want to hear words about how we protect our values. We want to see action so that students here can feel safe,” said State Sen. Anthony H. Williams, who spoke at a news conference with other Democratic elected officials — all of whom are people of color — before meeting privately with Jameson Tuesday. He said he was prepared to withdraw support for Penn’s expansion plans and state grant funding in protest.

After the meeting, Williams and others said their time with Jameson and other Penn administrators had been tense, and while they were grateful to have met with the president, they were not convinced that administrators agreed with their concerns.

“At the end of the meeting, there was a commitment to keep working on this, which is good, but I don’t quite know that the university understands the impact of their actions,” said Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who represents the West Philadelphia neighborhood that includes Penn and attended Tuesday’s meeting.

“There was an assertion that the university has the same level of commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion that they have always had, but I don’t think they understand the gigantic signal that they’ve sent to students, to faculty, to the community, to the entire country about whether Black and brown students and historically underrepresented populations are going to be protected on this campus.”

Two of the elected officials left the meeting after they said another Penn official said the word “diversity” had become “a lightning rod.”

“Some of us took umbrage with the fact that someone would actually say that in front of a room of people of color,” said Williams. “Then the question was, “Lightning rod to whom?’ The response was, ‘Well, of course, we’re talking about the bullying from the presidential administration.’ Our view is that the majority of Americans are OK with diversity.”

State Rep. Napoleon Nelson (D., Montgomery) said he left the meeting at that point. “There becomes a point where you understand the change makers that we perhaps need aren’t in the room. I fear that in some in positions of authority and leadership believe [diversity] is a liability,” he said. “I worry about the direction this university is going and is willing to go.”

A Penn spokesperson, in a statement Tuesday, did not respond to questions about the “lightning rod” statement but pointed to Jameson’s universitywide email, in which he said the school embraces diversity and has appointed a working group to rapidly respond to changing federal initiatives. Before the meeting, the spokesperson wrote in an email that the university “appreciates the concerns expressed by local elected officials.”

“The University of Pennsylvania is committed to nondiscrimination in all of our operations and policies,” the spokesperson added.

The local Democrats who gathered Tuesday pointed out that Penn has responded to other federal threats to universities with stronger pushback, joining other schools in a lawsuit to block cuts to funding from the National Institutes of Health. Jameson said in his email that funding cuts targeting financial aid, research, and proposed increases on endowment taxes represent “an existential threat” to Penn and American higher education.

Nationally, some other colleges have pulled diversity efforts in the wake of Trump’s executive orders. But, elected officials in Philadelphia noted, several other local schools have not taken such drastic steps as Penn.

Several local schools have said they are reviewing policies and programs after a recent letter from the Department of Education threatened to pull funding from universities that use racial preferences as a factor in admissions, hiring, and other areas.

Among local colleges, Penn stands to lose the most in NIH funding — about $250 million ― under another Trump directive that seeks to cap reimbursements to universities and medical institutions for overhead costs associated with research.

The American Council on Education, a higher education advocacy group, has expressed doubts on the legality of the letter, adding that universities already in compliance with a 2023 Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action should not have to alter their policies further.

Other Philadelphia-area universities, including Temple, Rutgers, Pennsylvania State, and Rowan Universities and Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, told The Inquirer last week that they had not removed diversity references or programming.

“Penn has made a cowardly move, rushing to heed dog-whistle demands from a feckless federal leadership and dismantle the programs that welcome students and workers from an expansive range of backgrounds, and they are alone in this shameful stance,” said State Sen. Nikil Saval (D., Philadelphia), who attended Tuesday’s meeting.

Marshall Mitchell, a Penn trustee who also attended the meeting and spoke at the news conference beforehand, said trustees have not been involved “at a broad scale” in conversations about Penn’s stance on DEI initiatives. He said the university has an opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to diversity in the days ahead. The Penn board of trustees is scheduled to meet later this week.

“This should be a full-throated conversation, some of which will happen in public, some of which will happen in private,” Mitchell said. “I think this ultimately comes down to a unique balancing act between federal resources and institutional values. The university, the trustees, and the community has to figure out what we believe in, and what compromises and even, sometimes, sacrifices that we’re willing to make to be in the right place.”

Staff writer Susan Snyder contributed to this article.