This past January, less than two years after the U.S. Supreme Court made it illegal for colleges and universities to use affirmative action in admissions, President Donald Trump signed a flurry of executive orders that targeted broader DEI policies at schools (and many other places). His Education Department sent a letter to universities in February that expressly threatened to ax their federal funding should they factor race into scholarships, hiring, or “all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

Colleges seem to be capitulating: The University of Colorado Boulder drew headlines when it changed the name of its DEI department to the Office of Leadership Support and Programming. To find out how these changes may impact students, we spoke with CU Denver’s Antonio Farias—whose own title recently shifted from vice chancellor for diversity, equity, and inclusion to vice chancellor for access and campus engagement.

5280 April 2025
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Antonio Farias
Antonio Farias, vice chancellor for access and campus engagement at CU Denver. Photo by Paul Wedlake, courtesy of CU Denver

Editor’s note: The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

5280: From 2001 to 2021, the number of Hispanic students attending public four-year colleges in Colorado nearly tripled. Why the spike in enrollment?
Antonio Farias: I think a couple of years ago it came out that the most popular name for kindergarten children was no longer John or Jake; it was José or Miguel. So there’s been a significant shift in our population. I think the bottom line is [Hispanic] birth rates are increasing and other birth rates are decreasing. That translates to higher education.

You’re saying it had nothing to do with affirmative action?
The whole rigmarole around access and DEI—it impacts a very small fraction of the nearly 4,000 higher education institutions in this country. The real impact of [affirmative action] is at the very elite part of the funnel—the Ivy Leagues and the Stanfords of the world—where only a very small percentage of applicants get in.

Will Trump’s executive actions against DEI have an impact on Colorado universities?
They will, especially in the research space. At CU Denver, we’re among the top five percent of universities that do research, and also roughly 25 percent of our students are Hispanic. As [federal funding for research] shrinks, it’s going to have outsized impacts on our students.

We had this amazing student, a Latina from Denver. She’s first generation, low income. While at CU Denver, she received a biomedical research scholarship funded by one of the national institutes of health. She graduated as a complete rock star and went to the University of Michigan for her Ph.D. She’s now at CU Anschutz doing fertility work that is way beyond my understanding—other than it will save lives. All of that is because of federal funding.

Are schools renaming their DEI departments to maintain access to federal funding?
I don’t think that’s the case. There’s a lot of people out there with tin hats trying to connect dots and create conspiracies. What we’re trying to do is become more accessible in the language we use. DEI is not intended to get unqualified people into college. It’s about expanding opportunities. We have to go on the assumption that talent is spread evenly across all population groups. If that’s the case, then it’s our responsibility to unlock that talent by creating more opportunities for everybody.

So the assumption that race-based admissions or DEI led to more diversity at universities, that’s just wrong? People simply took advantage of their opportunities?
Yeah, people get it wrong. We like villains and heroes. People are addicted to outrage. Basic hard work is not exciting, but for the students that we serve at CU Denver, it means everything.