Takeaway: We are holding an emergency town hall on Wednesday, February 25 at 4pm to discuss DEI censorship at Rutgers. Click here to register. Additionally, if you are aware of any instances of DEI censorship, please complete this form.
Dear colleague,
We are writing out of deep concern and growing alarm. Reports are mounting that the Rutgers University administration is pressuring departments, centers, institutes, and libraries to erase or dilute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) language and initiatives that reflect decades of collective work in service to the diverse state of New Jersey and our student body.
This is not minor “rebranding.” We have seen the elimination of the University Equity and Inclusion (UEI) office, formerly led by Anna Branch, along with the removal of its digital footprint. At the time of the office’s dissolution, we hoped this marked an effort to reconceive equity and inclusion work under a new University Administration. Instead, we have heard the opposite. For instance, the Faculty Diversity Collaborative and all its programs, including the Program for Early Career Excellence (PECE) and Early Career and Racial Equity (ECARE), among others, were ended in January 2026.
We are also now hearing calls to dissolve DEI committees in several schools and directives requiring departments to scrub public commitments to equity and inclusion from their websites and materials. We also have reports that colleagues are being asked to dismantle archives and remove records documenting this work. That is not routine administrative adjustment; it is an assault on the institutional memory and diverse community that define Rutgers. While the Tate administration is under an obligation to comply with lawful antidiscrimination mandates, the initiatives and programs that are being rolled back do not discriminate. It is our position that they lawfully promote core principles of equity and inclusion.
President Tate’s earlier remarks before the University Senate about Rutgers being “out of compliance” before he took over leadership, coupled with comments implying that academic freedom is conditional upon staying in one’s “lane,” signaled a troubling direction. Taken together with reports of these recent actions, and concerns raised about his prior record at Louisiana State University, it appears that this is not an accidental drift but a deliberate effort to undo the deeply inclusive character of the State University of New Jersey, Rutgers.
We are a public university with responsibilities to our students, our communities, and to knowledge itself. We have First Amendment rights and we owe it to the people of New Jersey to exercise them to oppose the attack on diversity and inclusion by the Trump Administration and to send a clear message to the University Administration that lawful diversity initiatives and programs require their support. For the student activists, elders, and ancestors who have challenged Rutgers to fulfill its democratic promise, build an inclusive community, and on whose great shoulders we stand, diversity, equity, and inclusion are not slogans or corporate monikers. They are embedded in our scholarship, hiring practices, curricula, and archives. Attempting to erase that history and work does not protect Rutgers; it diminishes us.
If diversity and equity initiatives are being upended in the name of compliance with legal mandates, we deserve to know compliance with what mandates, and at what cost. If archives are being targeted, we must ask: who benefits from forgetting?
We are holding a town hall on Wednesday, February 25 at 4pm to discuss DEI censorship at Rutgers. Click here to register. Faculty, staff, and students deserve to hear directly what is being required, how these decisions are being made, and how far they are intended to go. Silence and compliance are not acceptable substitutes for shared governance.
We encourage all members who are aware of changes to their school, department, program, or committee to report them by completing this form.
This is a moment to decide what kind of university we are. We can quietly erase ourselves in anticipation of pressure, or we can stand together to defend the values that have defined this institution for decades.
In solidarity,
Carlos, Keith and Hank
Carlos Ulises Decena, Vice President, Rutgers AAUP-AFT
Keith Green, Rutgers AAUP-AFT appointed co-chair University Committee on Diversity (UCD)
Hank Kalet, Vice President, Academic Freedom Co-Chair, Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union