St. Louis University rebrands DEI office, denies link to Trump crackdown
St. Louis University recently closed its old DEI office on the same day it opened one under a new name.
The school doubled down on its commitment to the office’s work and claimed the decision had nothing to do with the federal government’s recent crackdown on DEI in higher education.
A Missouri university recently rebranded its diversity, equity, and inclusion office while claiming the federal government’s DEI crackdown had nothing to do with it.
St. Louis University, a private Jesuit school, recently closed its Division of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement on the same day it launched the Office of Belonging, according to the student newspaper The University News.
Rochelle Smith, former vice president of DICE and new chief belonging officer, claimed the rebrand is an extension of the school’s previous “Belonging at SLU” initiative and that the university president made the decision independently of the Trump administration’s pressure on schools to discontinue DEI programs.
“We are not walking away from our mission. We are not walking away from the work,” she said. “This is not an answer to the Trump administration.”
Not all students were satisfied with this, however, including liberal ones. Amaia Corta, a member of Occupy SLU, a “decolonial, class-conscious collective,” said that the office’s new name would “embolden the university to become more conservative, and not even politically conservative, just socially conservative in a way that goes against our Jesuit values.”
Corta also complained about certain race-based funding allocations being jeopardized by the shift to the new office, saying, “We’re deeply concerned about the abolition of DICE because the Clock Tower Accords fall under that and certain accords that are very specific could be affected, such as accord one, which has to do with increased funding to the African American Studies department, and accord two, which is increased funding for retention rates for African American students.”
Faculty members also denounced what they view as a scaling back of DEI.
[RELATED: UVA to end DEI practices in agreement reached with Trump administration]
“I want to know what SLU means by belonging. I want a very clear definition. Belonging does not take the place of diversity, equity, [and] inclusion. It can’t, no matter how you define it,” said Dr. Katrina Thompson Moore, associate dean for DICE in the College of Arts and Sciences and African American studies professor.
President Edward Feser pushed back on this belief, saying he believes the new office will allow the school to “achieve maximum effect in scale.”
The office shuffle comes in the wake of a broad crackdown on DEI initiatives in colleges and universities spearheaded by the Trump administration, including an executive order entitled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity” enacted earlier this year.
The order requires schools to enforce anti-discrimination laws, which the administration says DEI programs and policies violate, at risk of losing federal funding.
This is not the first time SLU has defied this executive order, either. Campus Reform previously reported that the school has continued to mandate commitment to its Oath of Inclusion and participation in DEI training, despite both initiatives being banned by the order.
All relevant parties have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
