As previously mentioned, the Trump Administration has been relentlessly pushing new executive orders targeting various policies from the previous presidential administration. Much of the focus in the publishing industry so far has been on the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut various government programs and grants in its unending search for a balanced budget (a search so heavy-handed that it would make even Herman Melville roll his eyes). However, the administration’s dismantling of DEI practices has been equally impactful on publishing with ramifications already being seen across multiple academic societies.
It was reported in February of 2025, that the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) was scrubbing pending manuscripts and reports of certain words and phrases that might conflict with the Trump administration’s executive order “ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing.” These words and phrases include “health equity,” “marginalized populations,” and “restorative justice.” The decision to scrub pending works has angered many academy members with 100 members signing a recent petition to protest the action. For many members, it feels like a particular dagger in the back due to the Academy’s past role in heavily promoting equity measures in scientific research and publishing.
In 2002, NASEM published a landmark special report that was one of the most searing indictments of racism and inequality in the medical field, whether that be in research or in general care. Their report stated in no uncertain terms that “Racial and ethnic minorities experience a lower quality of health services and are less likely to receive even routine medical procedures than are white Americans.” The report was one of the first to highlight the disparities in medicine while making an impassioned plea for what would eventually become the backbone of DEI policies. Scholars called the report “a wake-up call for every healthcare professional” back then, which is likely why many feel betrayed by the actions of NASEM in 2025.
NASEM is not the only institution that is bowing to the pressures of the executive order. The American Society of Microbiologists (ASM) is facing a similar backlash to NASEM after quietly scrubbing their society of many DEI initiatives. This included removing pages on the society website that highlighted Black, female, and LGBTQ+ scientists. The pages have been replaced with notices stating that the previous content is under review as “we evaluate the new Executive Orders.” Many scholars and society members are calling for boycotts with Mark Peiffer, a biology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill stating, “To see one of the largest scientific societies in the nation, and one that publishes the leading journals in the field do this, it’s stunning to me. Why are they capitulating in advance?”
Colleges and universities are not immune to the same DEI scrubbing. Mark Peiffer’s own university and all other public colleges in North Carolina can no longer require that students complete general education courses related to diversity, equity, and inclusion in order to graduate according to a recent memo from the UNC system. The directive included in the memo was a response to Trump’s executive order with the university systems stating that they were complying in order to protect the university’s federal research funding. “The risk of jeopardizing over $1.4 [billion] in critical federal research funding is simply too great to defer action,” UNC System General Counsel Andrew Tripp said in the memo.
The actions by these societies have led some scholars to fear for an impending post-DEI society. Scholarly Kitchen writer and co-founder of Kudos, Charlie Rapple asks the question: “What happens to research in a society where issues of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusivity are no longer being tackled with fervor, not because they’ve been solved, but because not enough people care to solve them and indeed several powerful people don’t want to solve them because they’d lose power?” The argument is of course that removing DEI programming and scrubbing published content of what the administration sees as unnecessary DEI language doesn’t change the need for the programming. Rapple latches onto this point, stating: “Deleting all mention of DEI from research data is like deleting age data from studies of diseases; it doesn’t stop age- or DEI-related distinctions from existing, it just makes us ignorant of them, and less able to fix them.”
The response from scholars has been a bit split. In higher education, some professors who taught classes on DEI and critical race theory have chosen to remove this from their university website and stated they will be changing their course offerings in future semesters. “Seeing how ambiguous it is with respect to how they are defining diversity, equity and inclusion, and understanding that the ambiguity is purposeful, I decided to take off from my [university website] bio my own specialty in critical race theory, so that I would not be a target either of the [Trump] administration or of the people that they are empowering to harass,” said an anonymous professor. Yet, other professors like Jonathan Feingold states that anticipatory obedience is not the answer. He goes on to argue that “voluntary compliance is a foolish strategy, given that Trump has telegraphed that he views an independent, autonomous higher education as an enemy. And so I think it’s foolish to think that scrubbing some words on a website is going to satiate what appears to be a desire to suppress any sort of dissenting speech.” Many other higher education professors (and researchers) with tenure vow to fight saying that with regards to their tenured position, it’s time to “take it out and use it.”
The fight over DEI programming and language is just beginning and it remains to be seen how vicious it gets. How is your publishing society or institution responding to the recent executive orders? Do you agree with their policies? Please let us know in the comments below.
By Chris Moffitt
Chris is a Managing Editor at Technica Editorial
