The state department is proposing to suspend 38 universities including Harvard and Yale from a federal research partnership program because they engage in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) hiring practices, according to an internal memo and spreadsheet obtained by the Guardian.
The memo, dated 17 November, recommends excluding institutions from the Diplomacy Lab – a program that pairs university researchers with state department policy offices – if they “openly engage in DEI hiring practices” or set DEI objectives for candidate pools.
Elite institutions including Stanford University, Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University and the University of Southern California are among those marked for suspension, effective 1 January 2026. Other targeted schools include American University, George Washington University, Syracuse University and several University of California campuses.
The Diplomacy Lab, authorized in 2013, connects state department offices with academic researchers to conduct semester-long projects on foreign policy challenges, according to an archived version of the website. The program provides universities with real-world research opportunities while offering the department access to academic expertise and potential recruits.
Should the suggestions go through, the shift would remake the academic partnership network, replacing suspended institutions with new partners including Liberty University, Brigham Young University, and several schools in Missouri and Texas.
An accompanying spreadsheet, reviewed by the Guardian, uses a color-coded system to evaluate 75 universities on a four-point scale, with institutions showing “clear DEI hiring policy” marked in red for suspension and those with “merit-based hiring with no evidence of DEI” marked in green to maintain partnerships. Under that same review, 10 new schools were approved to join the program.
The suspensions follow Trump’s near year-long campaign against DEI in higher education. In January, he declared diversity programs “illegal” and ordered agencies to force universities receiving federal grants to certify compliance or lose funding, with a 21 April deadline. In April, he moved to terminate accreditors that require DEI practices, threatening universities’ ability to access federal student aid.
Among the universities recommended to remain in the program are Columbia University, MIT, the University of Michigan, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin.
Notably, several of those universities moved to comply with the administration’s demands earlier this year: Columbia University agreed in July to pay more than $200m to the federal government and pledged not to use “race, color, sex or national origin” in hiring decisions across all departments, while the University of Virginia’s president, James Ryan, resigned in June after the justice department demanded he step down over the school’s diversity practices.
The memo adds that an office within the state department’s bureau of public affairs will update suitability criteria to “only include institutions with merit-based hiring practices” and exclude those with DEI hiring policies, whether implemented openly or discreetly. It also notes that letters notifying institutions of discontinued participation will be sent pending approval.
The state department did not deny the memo and proposal, and instead pointed to Trump’s agenda on diversity, equity and inclusion.
“The Trump Administration is very clear about its stance on DEI,” a state department spokesperson said in a statement. “The State Department is reviewing all programs to ensure that they are in line with the President’s agenda.”
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