With president-elect Donald Trump’s victoryradical and discriminatory programs for diversity, equality and inclusion could — finally — be on the way out.

DEI has captured almost every level of education and government.

Our CriticalRace.org The project has documented how deeply DEI permeates higher education, medical schools, and even elite private boarding schools.

The Biden-Harris team itself was born out of DEI, after then-candidate Joe Biden fell short intense pressure to choose a “colored woman” as his candidate.

His choice, Kamala Harris, fully embraced DEI in its 2024 campaign even created Zoom appeals for various racial, ethnic, and gender-based interest groups: “White Women for Harris,” “White Dudes,” “Black Women,” and so on.

Turns out voters weren’t buying Harris or the DEI she was selling

Trump’s win, driven by a broad multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious coalitionputs DEI on life support.

It’s time to pull the plug and let DEI die.

In a July 2023 video published as part of his Agenda 47 policy series, Trump focused heavily on his promise “to fire the radical leftist accreditors who have allowed our colleges to be dominated by Marxist lunatics and lunatics.”

Elon Musk, Trump’s new adviser on government efficiency, recirculated the video this week, indicating its importance in the president-elect’s agenda.

Focusing on accreditors will make a real difference in the long term.

The U.S. Department of Education has oversight authority over higher education accrediting agencies — and groups like the American Bar Association, for example, use legislative near-monopoly status as a way to push DEI into universities and graduate schools.

Trump has also vowed that his Justice Department will “pursue federal civil rights laws against schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination,” despite the Supreme Court’s landmark 2023 decision banning affirmative action in admissions.

We’re all for it, but to increase the pressure, Trump should also allow private parties to pursue these actions.

Our Equal Protection Project has filed more than 40 civil rights complaints with the Department of Education, leading half of the schools involved to change or drop discriminatory criteria after negative publicity and public shaming.

But don’t leave it to slow-moving government agencies to do this work alone: ​​Trump can also work with Congress to empower groups like ours, giving us the ability to sue in our own names under civil rights and government regulations.

Individual victims of DEI often fear punishment and will not sue in their own name, so their complaints go unanswered.

If interest groups have standing in court, we can pursue their case while protecting the safety of victims.

All of the above are systemic changes that will have a lasting effect.

But the quickest solution should be Trump’s top priority: Cutting off the supply of money that feeds the DEI industrial complex on campus and elsewhere.

People are entitled to their opinions, but they are not eligible for federal money to promote discriminatory behaviour.

The federal government must eliminate funding for any program, anywhere in the federal government, that includes race- or ethnicity-based eligibility or preferences—including the use of DEI statements for admission, employment, or promotion.

Indeed, it is also time to cut federal funding completely for any institution, public or private, educational or otherwise, that uses such discriminatory DEI criteria.

It’s a much-needed hammer over the heads of institutions that play the mole, repeatedly instituting discriminatory programs and releasing them only after public complaints.

Only the credible threat of losing federal funding will rouse the wokesters.

The Trump administration should also initiate the revocation of federal nonprofit status for foundations that fund overtly discriminatory grant programs, such as those of the Rhode Island Foundation, which recently came under fire for a student loan forgiveness program that only benefited non-white teachers.

According to clear case law, e.g private discriminatory grant giving is illegal, and that too must stop.

Cutting off funding for non-compliance with anti-discrimination laws could begin as soon as Trump takes office. Combined with long-term systemic changes, such measures would help restore equality as our guiding principle.

We have an opportunity to destroy divisive DEI once and for all and to enable Americans of all races and ethnicities to come back together.

Let’s not lose the chance.

William A. Jacobson is a clinical professor of law at Cornell University and founder of Equal protection project and CriticalRace.orgwhere Kemberlee Kaye is operations and editorial manager.