Penn strips central DEI website, citing a “commitment to equal opportunity.”
Credit: Chenyao LiuPenn has scrubbed the University’s main Diversity and Inclusion website — the latest in a series of moves removing references to equity initiatives, policies, and practices on University sites.
The content of the website — which has been renamed “Belonging at Penn” — was removed in its entirety on Feb. 14, including information about academic inclusion programs, demographic data, and student affinity groups. The updated website contains a brief three-sentence statement about Penn’s “commitment to equal opportunity.”
“We have initiated a review of our programs in this area to ensure that they are both consistent with the new federal government guidance and Executive Orders, federal, state, and local law, and our values,” the website now reads. “We remain committed to providing a respectful and welcoming environment to our faculty, staff, and students.”
A request for comment was left with a University spokesperson.
The page, which previously referred to “a multitude of races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, historical traditions, ages, religions, disabilities, veteran status, interests, perspectives, and socioeconomic backgrounds,” across the entire University no longer contains any content besides the statement.
The position for the vice dean for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — currently held by Brighid Dwyer — has also been renamed to the vice dean for Academic Excellence and Engagement.
The removal of the central DEI page represents the University’s most significant move in responding to 1968 Wharton graduate and President Donald Trump’s executive order mandating the erasure of initiatives that could violate civil rights laws in federally funded universities such as Penn.
The change comes alongside the removal of the diversity, equity, and inclusion webpage for the School of Arts and Sciences, the final undergraduate school to do so in a series of DEI website takedowns across the University. Penn also took down DEI websites for schools and programs including the School of Nursing, Wharton School, the School of Engineering and Applied Science, and Penn Athletics.
Graduate schools and programs, including the Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology and the Wharton Doctoral Program pages about the Diversity in Doctoral Education and Scholarship and Diverse Community followed suit. The Penn School of Dental Medicine webpage was relabeled to emphasize their “commitment to equal opportunity” and stated that the school has “initiated a review” of their efforts.
Penn Diversity also removed the list of Administrative and Co-Curricular Programs related to DEI. Programs including Penn Libraries have completely deactivated their DEI webpages, while others, such as the diversity pages for the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty and Engineering School, have been renamed or redirect to new websites, respectively.
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