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In recent years, many American colleges and universities have curtailed their efforts at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), defunding centers, canceling courses, and ending hiring policies under the DEI umbrella. In 2025, this process accelerated under President Trump’s executive order. Using qualitative, in-depth interviews with students at one campus affected by these changes, this project explores how transgender and non-binary students experienced the closure of these centers. Trans and non-binary students are an important group to study because their identities can be especially at odds with the heterogendered organization of higher education. Our research shows that students experienced their campus’s LGBTQ+ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) center as both a tangible and a symbolic resource. Although respondents noted that student-led efforts to build formal and informal efforts counterspaces facilitated autonomy and leadership development, they argued that formal institutional backing of such spaces is essential for belonging in higher education. Our findings suggest that the closure of DEI centers, while politically attractive to some state and federal officials, may compromise other institutional goals, including those explicitly espoused by many states.
Stuber et al. (Sat,) studied this question.