DEI Is Rebranding as ‘Targeted Universalism’ to Circumvent Trump’s Executive Order
How activist scholars are attempting to rebrand DEI to evade both public backlash and federal mandates.
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About the Author
Dr. Colin Wright is the CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality’s Last Stand, an evolutionary biology PhD, and Manhattan Institute Fellow. His writing has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Times, the New York Post, Newsweek, City Journal, Quillette, Queer Majority, and other major news outlets and peer-reviewed journals.
On January 20, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs And Preferencing,” which banned DEI and racial discrimination in hiring under the guise of “equity.” It included specific instructions prohibiting rebranding efforts, stating that any attempt to preserve DEI programs under new titles would constitute a violation of federal law:
(ii) provide the Director of the OMB with a list of all:
(A) agency or department DEI, DEIA, or “environmental justice” positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures in existence on November 4, 2024, and an assessment of whether these positions, committees, programs, services, activities, budgets, and expenditures have been misleadingly relabeled in an attempt to preserve their pre-November 4, 2024 function;
Despite these warnings, many institutions have attempted to preserve DEI initiatives by simply rebranding them while maintaining their core functions. Investigative journalists have documented numerous cases of such tactics. For instance, in February 2025, Washington Free Beacon reporter Aaron Sibarium revealed that the University of Michigan School of Nursing had renamed its DEI office the “Office of Community Culture,” and that Caltech had rebranded its top DEI official as the “Associate Vice President for Campus Climate”—all while retaining the original structure and mission.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) faced consequences for similar behavior. In April 2025, JPL parted ways with its chief inclusion officer, Neela Rajendra, after Sibarium reported that her title was changed to Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success to comply with Trump’s executive order. Despite the rebranding, Rajendra continued managing racial affinity groups and promoting DEI initiatives. After these activities were publicly exposed, JPL’s director announced her departure, highlighting the risks of attempting to circumvent federal mandates.
But instead of backing away, some academics are openly acknowledging the need to rebrand.
An article published last month in the journal Social Issues and Policy Review is a clear example. Titled “Black Student Belonging in K-12 Schools: Implications for Policy and Practice Amid Attacks on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” the paper pushes for a rebranded version of DEI called “targeted universalism.” The authors justify this approach by citing “the current political climate in the U.S., where Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts are increasingly contested,” as the reason for offering “a strategic pathway for advancing equity.”
The term “targeted universalism” is suspicious on its face—the two words are, after all, essentially opposites. But while the terminology is new, the underlying ideology is not. DEI, at its core, assumes that disparities in group outcomes count as proof of systemic racism. It then uses those disparities to justify discrimination against individuals based on race, in pursuit of group-level parity. This is, by any fair standard, racism.
Group disparities can arise for many reasons, including biological, cultural, and socioeconomic factors, and do not automatically indicate systemic injustice. The fair and just solution is to treat individuals as individuals and provide assistance based on actual need. If members of some groups happen to be more in need, they will, under a need-based system, receive more help—without requiring explicitly race-based discrimination.
Proponents of DEI, however, reject this individual-centered framework. Instead, they advocate treating people as representatives of racial groups—an approach that fundamentally contradicts the principles enshrined in the Civil Rights Act of the 1960s.
The authors of the targeted universalism paper define their framework as “setting universal goals that uplift all students while also recognizing that marginalized groups, such as Black students, require tailored interventions to reach those goals.” They further suggest that opposition to DEI stems from white supremacy and outline a rhetorical strategy for rebranding:
[I]n a climate where DEI work is increasingly politicized and deliberately distorted by narratives of white supremacy (Johnson, 2024), our goal is to offer school leaders a strategic pathway for advancing equity. By framing belonging as a universal goal that inherently centers on Black students, even in conservative districts and contexts, this approach provides a viable way to push for meaningful change while navigating the resistance likely to arise.
This is not a departure from DEI. It is a continuation with a more tactical presentation.
The article justifies its framework by asserting that “K-12 schools in the United States are sites where anti-Blackness is pervasive and entrenched,” and that this “anti-Blackness” reflects “an ongoing legacy of racial slavery,” rendering Black people “socially dead” and “subhuman.”
To support this, the authors cite racial disparities in school discipline:
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), Black preschool children represented 17% of enrollment in 2020–2021 but accounted for 31% of out-of-school suspensions. Black boys, in particular, are disproportionately subjected to exclusionary practices and often receive harsher punishments than their White peers for comparable behaviors.
However, as Heather Mac Donald points out in her 2018 City Journal article, these claims ignore the most crucial factor: student behavior. Most studies on disciplinary disparities fail to control for behavior, family structure, or prior infractions. Mac Donald notes that black students, on average, commit more behavioral violations in school, a fact that explains higher rates of disciplinary action. She writes, “The GAO report ignores the critical question regarding disciplinary disparities: do black students in fact misbehave more than white students?” She adds, “The GAO, like the civil rights offices of the Obama Education and Justice Departments, ignored these data...instead adopting the assumption of equivalent behavior.”
The authors of the targeted universalism paper also cite “psychological violence” in the form of “racial microaggressions,” an activist concept that recasts ambiguous social slights as racism to inflate the perceived pervasiveness of racism. The narrative claims that racism is just as prevalent as ever, but has become covert, which is a very convenient and unfalsifiable claim.
The paper proceeds to analyze black student belonging through three lenses: interpersonal, instructional, and institutional. It gives examples of disparities in peer relationships, teacher expectations, and access to extracurriculars. For instance, it claims black students are alienated by Eurocentric curricula, disproportionately targeted for discipline, and marginalized through grooming policies that restrict hairstyles. These examples are interpreted through the lens of “anti-Blackness,” which begs the question as it assumes its preferred conclusion in its premise.
The authors critique so-called “universal” policies for failing to account for group disparities and claim that “targeted” policies have been unfairly maligned:
Universal policies–those that treat all individuals the same–often fall short because they ignore deeply entrenched systemic inequities that produce vastly unequal starting points. On the other hand, targeted policies that are designed to address the specific needs of marginalized groups are frequently mischaracterized as preferential or unfair.
This critique misses the mark entirely. People like Coleman Hughes, Wilfred Reilly, Glenn Loury, John McWhorter, and many others—including myself—do not advocate for simplistic policies that treat everyone identically. This is a straw man. Yes, people should be treated equally under the law and in terms of individual rights, but assistance programs—whether financial, educational, or otherwise—should be based on individual need.
It should go without saying that financial aid for students, for example, shouldn’t offer the same amount to rich and poor students alike. Poor students receive more assistance not because of their race, but because they need it. Problems arise only when race is used as a proxy for need, rather than assessing need directly.
The authors claim that “targeted” policies aimed at marginalized groups are “frequently mischaracterized as preferential or unfair.” But in many cases, they are unfair—precisely because they substitute group identity for individual circumstance. Groups don’t have needs; individuals do. And these group-level approaches are exactly what critics of DEI seek to dismantle.
The “targeted universalism” model is no different from traditional DEI—it simply repackages the same logic, using race as a stand-in for individual need.
Targeted universalism addresses these tensions by establishing a shared, universal goal for all–such as belonging–and then employing targeted strategies that are responsive to the particular barriers faced by different groups in achieving that goal. Such an appoach is especially important in the current poltiical climate, where DEI initiatives have come under attack and targeted policies aimed at marginalized groups are often misrepresented as “taking away” from majority or privileged groups. These politicized narratives frame equity efforts as zero-sum, fueling resentment and resistance.
But when targeted universalism relies on group-specific strategies, it treats groups as homogenous and disregards individual need. In doing so, it inevitably redistributes finite resources and opportunities based on group identity. That is, by definition, a zero-sum game. The critical error is viewing the world as a binary of “marginalized” versus “privileged” groups. That’s not how society actually works—and in this framework, the individual gets erased.
The authors continue:
Importantly, targeted universalism calls for tailored strategies for every group, not just those that have been historically excluded. While some groups may require more intensive support due to systemic barriers, all groups are part of the framework and have their own paths toward the shared outcome.
Here again we see the same flawed group-based analysis, now cloaked in the language of fairness. But groups don’t need support—individuals do.
The policy recommendations at the end of the paper reinforce this collective approach. Educators are told to examine their biases, revise grooming and disciplinary policies to reflect black cultural norms, and modify curriculum and pedagogy around Afrocentric perspectives. These are not universal solutions; they are targeted racial prescriptions.
The paper concludes with an optimistic call to transform schools into inclusive spaces where all students feel they belong. But the actual strategy involves advancing race-based policies under a new label to sidestep legal and political opposition. The framework is a semantic workaround—an attempt to repackage DEI for a less receptive political environment.
Targeted universalism is not a new idea. It is the same divisive ideology, softened in language but unchanged in substance, trying to survive a shifting political landscape. It must be recognized for what it is: an effort to re-entrench race-based policymaking by obscuring its true intentions behind semantic sleight of hand.
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Just say NO to this 'rebranding' crap.
Love Heather Mac Donald!