The University of Arizona was the first four-year public university in the state of Arizona to be federally recognized as a Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI).
In a campus wide email, University of Arizona President Suresh Garimella said the University is currently taking inventory of all programs, jobs and activities related to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and how they affect students as anti-DEI legislation continues at the state and local levels.
The University of Arizona has yet to name specific programs, practices and policies that may be at risk, and Garimella’s statement emphasized uncertainty.
“The implementation of the recent federal directives is a complex process, especially given potential legal challenges, variance in agency interpretations, and varying timelines, and it will take time to understand their full impact,” the statement said.
The announcement comes shortly after a Feb. 14 memo from the US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights that gave universities a two-week deadline to comply with Trump’s executive order to eliminate DEI programs or face federal funding cuts.
On Wednesday, Arizona Senate Republicans passed another bill through the Education Committee that would continue a similar crackdown on DEI practices in academia if passed into law.
The bill would cut state funding from universities or community colleges that teach any courses touching on a wide array of topics under the DEI umbrella; including systemic racism, gender identity, race-based privilege and social justice.
“The purpose of higher education is to promote critical thinking and merit-based opportunities, not pushing radical political agendas. Arizona students deserve better than to be subjected to divisive anti-American rhetoric disguised as education,” the bill’s sponsor Sen. David Farnsworth wrote in a press release.
Garimella said as a public institution the UA must comply with laws at all levels of government, but that coming changes “do not change our commitment to our land-grant mission as one of America’s leading research institutions.”
When it comes to research funding, Arizona was one of 22 states that sued the Trump Administration to block federal cuts to grants from the National Institutes of Health. A judge granted those states a restraining order, and the Senior Vice President for Research and Innovation Tomás Díaz de la Rubia has since told researchers to continue budgeting NIH grants, for now.
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