Americans have split views on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on college campuses, with some approving of the controversial efforts and some opposing them, according to a poll released Thursday.
About 3 in 10 respondents said they opposed DEI efforts in colleges and universities alongside roughly 3 in 10 voters who said they were neutral, according to a poll conducted in May by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Still, the AP-NORC poll found that 4 in 10 respondents said they “strongly” or “somewhat” favored the DEI initiatives.
The poll also found that the majority of Republicans said they did not favor DEI efforts at colleges and universities, while the majority of Democrats said they favored such initiatives.
About 6 in 10 Republicans said they broadly opposed DEI programs at colleges and universities, according to the poll. Meanwhile, the majority of Democrats, 7 in 10, said they favored DEI programs on college campuses.
“I’m dead set against DEI,” Robert Ayala, a poll respondent and 81-year-old registered independent who leans Republican, said, the AP reported.
The AP-NORC poll follows several recent surveys showing a plurality of voters favoring ending DEI programs. A January poll from The Economist/YouGov found that the majority of voters, 45%, support ending DEI programs in schools and the government. Of those surveyed, just 40% said they did not support dismantling the diversity programs.
President Donald Trump has been driving a massive effort to purge DEI programs during his second term, including on college campuses, in K-12 education, in the private sector and in the federal government. In April, the president signed an executive order to “overhaul the higher education accreditation system,” stating that he believes that accreditors in higher education have “abused their authority” by imposing “discriminatory” DEI-based standards.
While many U.S. companies have begun backpedaling on their DEI policies this year, some experts have warned that some businesses may be quietly rebranding their diversity initiatives instead of fully getting rid of them, despite the Trump administration’s efforts to crack down on DEI.
The AP-NORC poll of 1,175 adults was conducted May 1 to 5, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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