ANALYSIS
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Shae McInnis Contributor
April 27, 202611:47 AM ET
I’m a sophomore at Georgetown and the President of the Georgetown College Republicans. Last Monday, I published an article here in the Daily Caller detailing how Georgetown renamed its DEI office while maintaining a slew of illegal DEI initiatives. The article gained immediate attention; it garnered over 50,000 views on X, was reposted by prominent conservatives, and was even discussed in one of Georgetown’s Race, Power, and Justice classes, where it was referred to as hate speech.
Georgetown’s administrators also took notice. By Friday evening, the website of the Office of Equal Opportunity Compliance, formerly the Office of Institutional Diversity Equity and Affirmative Action, was cleared of any reference to the illegal DEI policies that I highlighted just a few days earlier.
Previously, the website featured a page that boasted of “Diversity Recruitment Sources” and explained that “it is the goal of Georgetown University” to employ “particularly minority persons, women, veterans, and persons with disabilities” in accordance with the “University’s Affirmative Action Plan.” Now, “diversity” has been stripped from the title of the new “Outreach and Recruitment” page. All mentions of prioritizing women and minorities and of the university’s Affirmative Action plan are gone.
I’m a sophomore at Georgetown and the President of the Georgetown College Republicans. Last Monday, I published an article here in the Daily Caller detailing how Georgetown renamed its DEI office while maintaining a slew of illegal DEI initiatives. The article gained immediate attention; it garnered over 50,000 views on X, was reposted by prominent conservatives, and was even discussed in one of Georgetown’s Race, Power, and Justice classes, where it was referred to as hate speech.
Georgetown’s administrators also took notice. By Friday evening, the website of the Office of Equal Opportunity Compliance, formerly the Office of Institutional Diversity Equity and Affirmative Action, was cleared of any reference to the illegal DEI policies that I highlighted just a few days earlier.
Previously, the website featured a page that boasted of “Diversity Recruitment Sources” and explained that “it is the goal of Georgetown University” to employ “particularly minority persons, women, veterans, and persons with disabilities” in accordance with the “University’s Affirmative Action Plan.” Now, “diversity” has been stripped from the title of the new “Outreach and Recruitment” page. All mentions of prioritizing women and minorities and of the university’s Affirmative Action plan are gone.
The webpage titled “Academic Positions,” which encouraged faculty search teams to prioritize diversity when hiring professors, has since been deleted. Originally, this webpage linked to a document with a list of identity-based recruitment sources for professorial searches, like the “International Lesbian and Gay Law Association” and the “National Association of Black Accountants.” It should come as no surprise that this document was deleted as well. Georgetown has offered no public comment surrounding its decision to revamp its DEI center.
No one should mistake these quiet website edits for genuine reform—renaming webpages and deleting documents is damage control, not accountability. Georgetown’s choice to hide its longstanding DEI policies rather than defend them suggests the university’s implicit recognition of their illegality. However, it does not undo the years of potentially systemic discrimination that these documents suggest Georgetown engaged in, flying in the face of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The university’s latest action should even further compel the Department of Education to investigate these policies and ensure Georgetown’s full compliance with settled civil rights law.
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