I’m A Georgetown Student. Here’s How My University Hides Its Illegal DEI Agenda

President Donald Trump boasts that his administration “ended DEI in America.” However, on closer inspection, DEI and Affirmative Action policies are alive and well at America’s elite universities. In the face of national pressure and threats of investigation from the Trump administration, our nation’s most prestigious universities have disguised and hidden their DEI initiatives while preserving their corrosive mission.

Georgetown University provides a stark example of a deeply troubling pattern. Weeks ago, the university renamed its Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Affirmative Action to the Office for Equal Opportunity Compliance. This rebranded DEI hub emphasized its role in facilitating “non-discrimination” and “equal opportunity.” This shift also aims to put the office more in line with the language of the well-established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, founded in 1964 to enforce the Civil Rights Act, and away from the charged euphemisms of Critical Race Theory. Georgetown released a lengthy new statement explaining that while it remained committed to DEI, it would no longer “give preferences in admissions or employment in ways that violate the law.” (RELATED: Clock Ticking On Trump’s War Against Liberal Education Behemoths)

However, it didn’t take long to realize that this change in nomenclature and rhetoric was nothing more than a facade intended to divert federal attention. The newly named Office of Equal Opportunity Compliance boasted in emails that “while our name has changed, our work and mission remain the same.” Their pronouncement is audacious yet ominously correct.

Despite ostensibly ensuring “equality” on campus, Georgetown’s OEOC devotes a section of its website to “Diversity Recruitment Sources,” writing that “it is the goal of Georgetown University” to employ “particularly minority persons, women, veterans, and persons with disabilities.” The website further states that “this effort upholds the University’s Affirmative Action Plan,” while listing recruitment sources for professorial searches. These include the “International Lesbian and Gay Law Association,” the “National Hispanic Medical Association,” the “American Business Women’s Association,” and “Blacks in Government.”

Notably, the U.S. Supreme Court on June 29, 2023, effectively ended Affirmative Action in college admissions, yet Georgetown, like other elite institutions, has kept the policy alive. Further, it doesn’t require much reading between the lines to understand that Georgetown is still encouraging its departments to engage in overt and illegal racial discrimination in hiring, openly violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act under the guise of diversity.

This shouldn’t come as a great surprise, considering the fact that Georgetown maintained its same slew of DEI administrators on campus, headed by “Chief Diversity Officer” Rosemary Kilkenny, a long-time DEI activist who once served on the Board of Directors of the American Association of Affirmative Action. Under her watch, her DEI office launched a Gender Equity Committee whose latest publicly available report called for the University to “facilitate the recruitment and onboarding of faculty from underrepresented communities” and “embed Antiracism and DEI as core principles of the school.” (RELATED: Blue States Are Keeping DEI On Life Support)

While these examples of institutionalized affirmative action are the most blatant and legally problematic, they are by no means the only way that Georgetown has entrenched DEI and Critical Race Theory throughout its academic initiatives. Last year, Georgetown introduced a mandatory freshman class called “Race, Power, and Justice.” The listed course goals include understanding “global experiences of settler colonialism” as the class seeks to force students to “study race as a historically, socially, and politically generated ideology” and “analyze how race relates to other structures of power and identity.”

Georgetown can no longer fly under the radar in the face of President Trump’s well-justified crackdown on violations of settled civil rights law. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has already begun launching investigations into institutions of higher education that persist in race-based discrimination. Most comparably, the Department of Education’s investigation into George Mason University centered around a university president renaming a DEI office while pledging to covertly maintain a plethora of illegal DEI projects. (RELATED: University President Complains DEI Is ‘Misunderstood’)

Over 77 million Americans did not cast ballots for Trump in 2024, just to see their tax dollars continue to fund radical, unconstitutional, and illegal DEI initiatives at elite universities. Georgetown’s decision to double down on DEI initiatives and its superficial rebranding of this apparatus flies in the face of the law, the President’s executive actions, and the will of the American people. It is incumbent on Georgetown to change course, and for the Department of Education to investigate.

Shae McInnis is a sophomore at Georgetown University, where he serves as the President of the College Republicans. He has been featured on Fox News and Newsmax and has written for the Daily Caller and the Daily Signal. 

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.