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In September of 2024, Donald Trump’s campaign introduced the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) that aimed to eliminate government waste fraud and abuse. One area that DOGE targeted was D.E.I. delivering on a promise Trump made before he arrived to the oval office.
At the start of Trump’s second presidential term, he issued a series of executive orders that have, among other things, eliminated transgender athletes in women’s sports and instituted a government policy that only recognizes two genders. He called the widespread D.E.I. initiatives in government and in higher education “absolute nonsense” in the World Economic Forum speech on Jan. 23 2025. This rapid barrage of executive orders has left many researchers and professors in higher education scrambling, worried about the future of what is being taught and what may be erased.
Dr. Danielle Borgia, a professor and member of the Women Gender Studies at Loyola Marymount University focuses her class lectures and readings on the concepts of racialization and hegemonic masculinity. In one of her classes, she uses Andrea Smith’s famous essay, ‘Three Pillars of White Supremacy’ to emphasize the foundation of marginalized and oppressed groups. On LMU’s campus, she’s one of the people whose thought about the role of D.E.I. the most.
The Lion sat down with Dr. Borgia to discuss the dynamic change within her classroom this semester, as students arrive to class with questions and concerns following the Trump Administration’s initiatives.
Some questions have been edited or condensed for clarity.
Q: You have a doctorate in feminist studies. Is that correct?
A: Yes it’s Comparative Literature and Feminist Studies.
Q: And you have spent years researching, teaching and helping young minds understand feminist theory and to the importance of sharing the stories of unrepresented voices. How do you as an educator keep students motivated about these issues that seem to be getting wiped away?
A: Well, I actually don’t have to motivate them. The students that I have right now are extremely motivated to find out what’s going on. And so they’ve sought our classes and are actually asking me for more material than what I’m assigning them, trying to find out ways to get independent media, trying to learn about different events than things that people are communities or organizing here in Los Angeles. There’s really like a hunger to understand what can really happen of all these things that we’re hearing as threads. How is this really going to change my everyday life? How is this really going to change daily life for the people that I know around me? What is my world going to look like?
Q: When it comes to the issue of transgender athletes in sports, how do you keep your confidence that you should still be teaching these subjects?
A: Well, I don’t teach a position on transgender people in general in sports. We have talked about some of the controversies, right now I’m not giving material on it. Students have asked certain things about it. One of my my students asked if we could work on it in class. We actually haven’t decided whether we’re going to, whether we’re going to do that. It’s a very small class and I’m having them like choose their material. She brought up and we discussed this issue that happened in at San Jose State. Because this particular student is a division one athlete and really concerned and interested. I talked about a few different things that a few different positions and things that I had known that had been going on in the field. I talked about the fact that my only opinion that I offered was that it seemed like the people and the organizations that are in charge of regulating sports, from the NCAA and to the Olympics should be the ones to decide what rules and what parameters they’re going to set, not anyone in the executive branch of our government.
Q: What is the most asked for material from students?
A: Honestly, you know what, people always just like to talk about social media. That’s their favorite thing. That’s what they’d rather just talk about. And so then I’ve realized, well, there are things that they want to talk about, that they come to them through social media. And so it’s longer conversations of drawing that out or presenting things to them that I know you have heard them say and talk about that they are only like they’re only getting information about from social media. And then I also hear that desire to do social media and I’ve tried to turn my teaching a little bit to that by having it be more social with the with the social annotating reading application, where students are actually commenting, reading each other’s comments and commenting to each other. And then doing a lot of small group work in our discussions, because when they’re saying that, they me a lot of things by it. One of the things they want to talk about a lot is media representation. Another thing they want to talk about is they just want more social connection.
Q: What are your thoughts on the current state of administrative action against DEI?
A: What’s about to be adjudicated right now is the dear colleague letter that came out from the Department of Education. So that came out and that took a very strong position. It went further than the 2022 Supreme Court overturning of, banning of affirmative action in college admissions. That was a specific. When laws are decided they’re usually very specific. So that was a college admissions case. And now this dear colleague letter, the Department of Education, has said that they want to eradicate racism and in their view, the only way to eradicate racism is to eradicate any group that is formed on the basis of race or any affinity groups.
The letter consists of different motives that could potentially become an attack on education as it states that the idea of the US being built on structural racism shall not be taught. It proceeds to read that educators cannot teach that there are moral burdens on a specific group, or that white individuals should feel guilty for having white privilege. In addition, the letter brings awareness to human interaction as it is the leading tool in conducting lives, organizations and discourses.
The coded language used throughout the letter subtly declares the impending attack on many of the theories that have helped people from all socially marginalized groups through cutting federal funding for educators that cater to these issues.
Q: CNN reported on Mar. 8, 2025, that the University of Iowa announced last week it would no longer offer its living learning communities focused on the latino, Black and LGBTQ + experiences in its resident halls starting in the new school year because of the Department of Education letter. In his inaugural speech, President Trump said, “We will forge a society that is color blind and merit based”. Has that worked in the past?
A: We don’t have any evidence that that’s worked in the past. Before we had these programs and before we specifically had education, I think the programs that are different are designed to raise consciousness and awareness and empowerment and to celebrate different ethnic cultures and contributions to the country. When people have not been educated or led with legislation, what has happened is that white men have been the ones in the positions of power have been the ones to get the opportunities. And largely this is a networking issue and a wealth issue.
Q: President Trump has Karoline Levitt, the youngest White House spokesperson. Rick Grenell is the first openly gay Republican cabinet, a member who is in his first term, who’s now in his second term, and Susie Wiles is the first chief of staff, a female chief of staff ever. Tulsi Gabbard is the first Hindu American in a cabinet and the director of the National Intelligence, Kash Patel is the first non white male to be the director of the FBI. But is that enough?
A: What people are saying is that overall, most of these people, they don’t believe are qualified for their positions. And so even the fact that they are women or men of color, most people’s objections that object to things that the administration is doing is that the people that are being chosen for the positions are actually don’t have the expertise, the experience. They’re literally not qualified for the jobs. With Pam Bondi, that’s different.
