State Dept. Threatens Elite University Research Ties

More than three dozen leading U.S. academic institutions, including prestigious names like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and Duke, are facing potential exclusion from a key federal research collaboration. The State Department has proposed suspending these universities from the Diplomacy Lab program due to their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, placing a significant federal partnership in jeopardy.

Last week, an internal memo and accompanying spreadsheet, obtained by The Guardian, revealed the State Department’s intention to remove 38 universities from the Diplomacy Lab initiative. This program critically links university scholars with State Department policy offices, facilitating joint projects on pressing foreign policy matters. The proposed suspensions are slated to become effective on January 1, though the affected institutions have yet to receive formal notification, as the list is still undergoing finalization.

Reshaping Academic-Government Collaboration

Should these suspensions proceed, the landscape of academic-government collaboration would undergo a substantial reconfiguration. The network would see 38 institutions removed, while 10 new schools are simultaneously slated for approval to join the program. This move signals a significant shift in how the federal government intends to partner with higher education.

Among the universities targeted for suspension are several of the nation’s most prominent, such as Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, and the University of Southern California. Other well-known institutions on the list include American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University, and multiple campuses within the University of California system.

Conversely, a select group of universities has been recommended to maintain their participation. These include Columbia University, MIT, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia, and the University of Texas at Austin. Several of these institutions have taken steps earlier this year to align with the administration’s broader anti-DEI directives.

Compliance and Consequences

For instance, Columbia University reached an agreement in July to pay over $200 million to the federal government. As part of this settlement, the university committed to refraining from using “race, color, sex or national origin” in its hiring decisions. Similarly, the University of Virginia’s president resigned in June, a direct consequence of demands from the Justice Department regarding the school’s diversity practices.

The proposed suspensions highlight a growing tension between federal policy and university autonomy, particularly concerning DEI initiatives. While the State Department has not publicly commented on the specific reasons for targeting these institutions, the internal memo clearly links the decision to DEI hiring practices.

Peter Trumbore, who chairs the political science department and serves as the Diplomacy Lab campus coordinator at Oakland University—an institution facing suspension—stated that his university has not yet received any official communication regarding the change. “We receive no funding from the state department for the projects that we do as Diplom,” Trumbore noted, underscoring the lack of direct financial support for their participation in the program.

This development underscores the increasing scrutiny on DEI programs across various sectors, with federal partnerships now becoming a battleground in the ongoing debate over diversity initiatives in higher education.

Source: The Guardian