DEI Entrenchment: 7 Colleges Suggesting That ‘White Supremacy’ Persists in America

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—A new report exposes seven colleges and universities for featuring statements about “white supremacy” that, the report’s authors say, provide the intellectual framework for racial discrimination in admissions, even after a recent Supreme Court ruling invalidated racial quotas.

“Everything on the campuses is framed through a racial lens,” Bill Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School and founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, told the Daily Signal in an interview Wednesday.

Jacobson founded a website dedicated to exposing critical race theory. CriticalRace.org compiled the list of colleges featuring “white supremacy” statements and exclusively provided it first to the Daily Signal. Jacobson warned that, even though academia is moving away from DEI—short for diversity, equity, and inclusion—many academics remain dedicated to the principles of critical race theory, which his group describes as “a radical ideology that focuses on race as the key to understanding society, and objectifies people based on race.”

“You can close the DEI department, it’s probably going to be called something else,” he said. “At Cornell, DEI is now called ‘Inclusion and Belonging.'” He said the struggle against DEI is a “cultural war as to whether almost the entirety of our education system will be devoted to delegitimizing the United States.”

“Show me a law in the United States that privileges whites over non-whites,” he said. “Bring me a program which, in its eligibility requirements, says only whites can apply. They simply don’t exist.”

He accused critical race theory proponents of treating the country “like it’s still 1956.”

Kemberlee Kaye, managing editor of CriticalRace.org, said that attempting to root out DEI is “almost like a whack-a-mole situation.”

“These institutions have been so deeply captured that it’s not a matter of simply cutting funding to one office and that solves the problem,” she told the Daily Signal. She said colleges and universities are “rebranding things.”

She noted that the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), and President Donald Trump issued executive orders cracking down on DEI.

“They are deliberately doing this to avoid the DEI executive orders,” Jacobson said.

Below is the list of colleges and universities using “white supremacy” rhetoric featured in the CriticalRace.org report. The Daily Signal reached out to each institution for comment, but did not hear back.

1. San Diego State University

San Diego State University’s web page for “diversity” at the College of Arts and Letters states that the college houses many departments that “help provide students with culturally relevant curricula, critical thinking skills, and accurate knowledge to critique white supremacy and promote social justice.”

2. Boston University

Boston University’s School of Social Work: Center for Aging & Disability Education & Research offers a three-step course on “Understanding Structural & Institutional Racism.” The course examines “racial capitalism, white supremacy, and structural and institutional racism” and the influence of “white supremacist ideology” on American society.

3. Loyola University Maryland

Loyola University Maryland’s philosophy department released a “statement of solidarity with BIPOC Community at Loyola and Beyond” in 2020, and the page remained on the philosophy department’s website until this year. The statement pledged to “integrate a diversity of texts and viewpoints into our courses that address the moral problems of discrimination and inequality at all levels.”

The statement pledged not to “‘whitewash’ the history of white supremacy in the philosophical canon.” The department claimed that “the history of the United States is the history of terrorizing and snuffing out Black life through police killings and white supremacist vigilantism.”

4. San Francisco State University

San Francisco State University’s web page on “Diversity and Inclusion” mentions the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion pedagogies for inclusive excellence institute, which “builds a community of JEDI protagonists by developing anti-racist pedagogy and dismantling white supremacy in online teaching.”

5. University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Center for Children’s and Young Adult Literature published a web page titled “Fighting Anti-Black Racism through Story.” This page claims that “the ongoing police brutality against Black men, women, and youth is not a new phenomenon, but instead is a current manifestation of long-histories, state-sanctioned racism, anti-Blackness, and white supremacy in this country.” 

6. Portland State University

Portland State University’s Multicultural Retention Services department released a statement “in solidarity & action for Black Lives Matter.” The statement claims that “Multicultural Retention Services stands in solidarity with the Black community as an extension of the work we do to combat white supremacy, racism, and anti-blackness.”

MRS claims that specific acts of police brutality “have been a product of white supremacy in this country.”

7. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

The Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts’ Wellness Strategic Plan includes an “Anti-Discrimination and Anti-Racist Statement.” The program claims that counseling professionals “recognize the importance of taking a stand and offering support by naming and addressing what causes the illness, wounds, and impairment, i.e. systemic racism and white supremacy.” 

A Hostile Environment

The report also notes that some leftist groups have used the term “white supremacy” to describe conservative political figures—including conservatives on college campuses.

It notes that the Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan organizations into bankruptcy, accused the conservative campus organization Turning Point USA of seeking “to enforce a social order rooted in white supremacy.”

Jacobson told the Daily Signal that, while no evidence shows that the man accused of murdering Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk had been directly influenced by the SPLC, the SPLC’s attack “contributed to the atmosphere” around Kirk’s assassination in September 2025.

“Those sort of accusations are made at Cornell,” he said. “I think the SPLC undoubtedly contributes to the silencing of conservative voices.”

Kaye noted that the SPLC current faces wire fraud and bank fraud charges for allegedly directing donor funds to the very hate groups the SPLC claims it exists to oppose.

“If we’re looking at white supremacy, the only absolute verifiable examples we have of that in modern times would be the vestiges of the KKK, which we now know are bankrolled by the SPLC,” she quipped.