On February 15, the Department of Education sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to public institutions that threatened massive cuts in funding if institutions did not terminate programs designed to combat racist discrimination – programs that promote affirmative action-inspired admissions initiatives such as those run by diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) offices, and programs that talk explicitly about the history of racism in the US. To the new Department of Education, combating racism against Black, Chicano, Latino, Asian and Native students is equivalent to “reverse racism”, and they use this logic to declare that the time for anti-racist policies in higher education has come to an end.

SDS wholeheartedly condemns the issuing of this letter. We reject the idea that education has an equal playing field and that we should pretend that racist discrimination and real inequality are not ongoing issues. We condemn Trump’s attempts to freeze federal funding for grants and loans, especially of institutions that offer cultural programs and centers, ethnic studies, affirmative action measures, language classes, women and gender’s studies, and more. This executive order came part and parcel with his attempts to freeze necessary social services such as welfare programs, Medicaid, Social Security, and unemployment benefits, as well as to destroy financial support for scientific research.

Under the guise of ending “wokeness” and diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and with the real intent to privatize public services such as education and the postal service, he also fired all federal workers as soon as he took office. We view these as attacks of the highest order on education. We also see them as attacks on science, public services, public sector workers, campus unions, and federal support for initiatives that condemn racism and celebrate cultures of all kinds.

All of these attacks and more were promised by his election campaign. His vision of “America First” seeks to advance the agenda of billionaires but to scapegoat immigrants, trans people, and communities of Black, Latino, Chicano, Asian and Native who have suffered hundreds of years of racism. His policies aim to erase racism, sexism and homophobia from the history books or, worse, to characterize the centuries-long fights for equality as the real problem. In addition to poisoning our schools, he and his supporters, like vultures, would dismantle them and replace them with expensive, exclusive institutions only meant for the children of the wealthy, white elite – their children.

It is clear to us that these measures are vastly unpopular. Even federal judges have ruled against these orders multiple times. On February 25, a federal judge blocked a freeze to financial assistance programs and particular nonprofits for an “indefinite” amount of time. In spite of the judges’ rulings, some universities have already begun to announce that they will comply with Trump’s threats and demands. The University of Minnesota has preemptively announced the end of all DEI programs as well as their compliance with any incoming ICE raids, as have several schools across the state of Florida. SDS considers these universities’ administrators cowardly, as we do of any university that will not stand up against these policies.

We can’t wait for these administrators to do nothing, or worse, roll out the red carpet for Trump and get the attacks started early. We in SDS are determined to fight back and demand that our universities safeguard cultural programs, ethnic studies, women’s and gender studies, and anti-racist enrollment practices. Ultimately, those who support these racist, bigoted policies is a very small group of people. If we can reach out to the many students, faculty, workers, unions, and staff who could lose their jobs and their majors, and if we organize them to attend protests and say no to these policies, we can win.

We call on all our chapters to come to the defense of any ethnic studies, cultural majors or organizations, and any other programs that would come under the axe. We will do what we can to end Trump’s whitewashing of our schools, rollbacks of hard-won gains of our social movements, and the poisoning our curriculum. We need to pressure our campuses to put up a real fight against the Department of Education’s plans.

With a united campus movement, we can and will smash Trump’s racist, reactionary agenda and put his movement back where it belongs – the distant past.