After a decade, the “great awokening" may be ending with a crash in higher ed. Following President Trump’s executive orders on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) after taking office for a second, nonconsecutive term, higher ed funding is in a state of chaos—and many academics are legitimately fearful of their research collapsing and careers being halted.

The executive orders, issued last month, have apparently halted federal funding for research from NSF and NIH as it relates to DEI, environmental justice, “gender ideology,” and clean energy. The order on DEI also (rightly) effectively banned the use of political litmus tests in federal hiring and research.

Now, the CDC is ordering mass retraction and withdrawal of any research papers submitted to academic journals by its scientists that contain a list of supposed “DEI words” including, “LGBT,” “transgender,” and even simply "gender."

Many right-of-center might argue that the academic left “deserves” this given a decade-long campaign to center academia around DEI—everything from institutional missions and research publishing, to academic societies and faculty hiring. In one sense they are right. For years, DEI has dominated, building up an entire industry around it, while showing comparatively little impact on institutions despite the billions spent.

For as long as DEI has dominated higher ed, there’s also been an anti-DEI campaign citing very real threats to viewpoint diversity and open inquiry, especially in STEM disciplines. The effects of the DEI campaign have cost academics jobs, stressed out new PhDs who don’t check enough of the diversity boxes to be considered for a faculty role, and caused retractions of research that didn’t come to the “right” conclusion.

These are all real, concrete impacts of political litmus tests – discussed at length at the recent HxA sponsored “Censorship in the Sciences” conference hosted last month at the University of Southern California. So, unsurprisingly, there are many who are celebrating the swift demise of DEI with the change in administration.

I’ll be the first to agree that political litmus tests are a non-starter for higher education, as many HxA members feel similarly. Political litmus tests for hiring or research stifle open inquiry and viewpoint diversity—bedrocks of academic freedom. Ridding research and hiring from DEI mandates in the form of political litmus tests is a good thing.

My concern with all the recent executive (and many state level) actions is the whole rest of it. The wins are wrapped in highly explosive packages that risk great damage to the core telos of our institutions of higher learning.

But the solution to an ideological campaign is not another. As your mother hopefully told you: two wrongs don't make a right.

What we’re seeing from now at both the federal and state level is a valid backlash, but one that is underpinned by another ideology defined explicitly by what it is against: anti-DEI, anti-academic freedom.

The recent political actions show two things—both equally true. First, the actions show just how deeply and how widely DEI roots have penetrated our institutions, including our colleges, universities, and federal research agencies. Second, the actions show just how fragile academic freedom is. Getting rid of what the Trump administration defines as DEI at all costs could certainly come with the not insignificant collateral damage of destabilizing academia as an entire system, including academic research, federal granting and research, and college teaching.

Academic freedom may be the baby we’re throwing out with the DEI political litmus tests.

In my view, both sides are to blame here as both sides have taken an overly parochial view of DEI. On the progressive left, DEI was everything. You were immoral if you disagreed, and you could be effectively culled if you dissented. On the right, a by-all-means-necessary conservative legislative approach is now using a ram to knock down the door of academic freedom, stripping self-governance and closing the Overton window in the classroom from the other side.

Neither side seems to have thought through the long-term collateral damage to our institutions of higher learning while enacting their approaches. Where we’ve experienced a stifling of viewpoint diversity at the hands of the left, especially in the social sciences, for the last 10 years (partly motivating the founding of HxA itself), we’re now experiencing a diminishing of open inquiry at the hands of the right. And both problems are caused by the same parochial obsession with DEI. As a result of both, academic freedom is under serious threat: 91% of professors agree as much.

What’s frustrating and conflicting about all of this is that both sides have some valid gripes. Both sides are campaigning for their vision of higher education and the academic profession. Both sides are fighting against their perceived enemy of what is “true” and “correct.”

But when principles prevail over politics, things become clearer. DEI mandates were a threat. And so are DEI bans. Telling researchers what is valid to study or professors what is correct to teach does no one any favors, least of all our students who come to our institutions to learn and the people who depend on our research to live and live better.

We must remain steadfast in our principles and leave political interference at the gates of our campuses. Our universities should be special places to learn, discover truth, disagree, change our minds, and create new knowledge. Not places of predetermined answers and ideological campaigns for control.