Furman students, employees push against Trump administration's DEI challenge to SC higher education

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : In South Carolina, an additional layer of anti-DEI legislation is in the works that would make it illegal for any public entity to engage in DEI activities or do business with any private entities that do the same.
64% : Those students, and faculty who are foreign nationals or who have spouses with overseas passports, worry about having social media accounts monitored and getting blocked from reentering the U.S. if they say anything critical of the administration, Anderson and Nguyen said.
62% : The Furman rally was the biggest of its kind on a South Carolina campus since Donald Trump became president.
62% : Colleges and universities have argued anti-DEI orders and funding cuts are unconstitutional under the First and Fifth Amendments.
61% : "That made me frustrated and angry, and now we are at a point where it seems to be federal policy that people who don't fit a very narrow definition of 'American' do not belong in this country.
58% : This week on the other side of the Palmetto State, faculty at College of Charleston issued their own written protest to anti-DEI moves by administrators and overseers there, and a group of professors will gather at Coastal Carolina next week to workshop how to reach out to lawmakers about academic freedom and campus diversity.
56% : "The administration is very keen on making sure that they comply with the law because, you know, we are dependent, obviously, on state funding," Lewis said.
51% : About 100 people who study and work at Furman University gathered April 10, on a plaza at the center of campus that honors the school's first Black student, to rally against what they described as the Trump administration's infringements on academic freedom, diversity, freedom of speech, due process for immigrants, scientific research and public health, international order and the economy.
44% : The push to ban DEI initiatives has public colleges and universities very worried, said Simon Lewis, an English professor at College of Charleston.
42% : Nevertheless, many there worry about the long-term impact of anti-diversity policies and regulations hostile to international students and faculty.
41% : Chilling effect College of Charleston administrators are not alone in capitulating to pressure from state and federal leaders.
40% : GREENVILLE -- As college and university administrators across the country capitulate to government demands -- even as some legal experts say those demands are unconstitutional -- students and faculty on a handful of South Carolina campuses are digging in.
39% : "There just seems to be an all out attack on the part of the administration on the values that many of us hold dear," Anderson said. Funding cuts and silence Higher education and K-12 schools have endured the loss of millions of dollars in grant funding at the hands of the Department of Government Efficiency and in the name of rooting out DEI since Trump took office in January.

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