On his first day as president in 2021, Joe Biden issued an order “advancing racial equity.” Last January, President Donald Trump called that goal an “immense public waste and shameful discrimination.”
Whiplash continues over what constitutes racial justice in America.
In the Pioneer Valley, some institutions that receive federal money pared away stated commitments to diversity in their hiring and operations. The Republican found the changes by comparing current wording with earlier online pronouncements available through the Internet Archive.
Organizations had good reasons – financial and legal – to keep their heads down, softening or removing promises to address racial inequality. Pressure was mounting from Washington, D.C., to abandon affirmative steps against racism.
On Jan. 20, Trump had directed the Office of Management and Budget, the attorney general and the Office of Personnel Management to terminate “all discriminatory programs, including illegal DEI and ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
In an executive order Jan. 21, Trump widened his war on DEI to include the private sector.
The crackdown wasn’t limited to government operations – and employers across the country took note. The investigative news organization ProPublica found that more than a thousand charities retooled their mission statements to cut or tone down language that promised to address racial inequity and historic disadvantage.
Bay Path’s pivot
Before Trump returned to the White House, Bay Path University in Longmeadow had a lot to say on its website about its diversity goals. On a page labeled “Our Mission, Vision & Values,” the school listed eight overall goals to advance “every learner’s dreams of a better career, a richer life, and a brighter future.”
Today, three of those pledges are gone: “Diversity Makes Us Stronger,” “We Are Committed to Equity” and “We Pledge to Foster Inclusion and Belonging.”
The school’s archived webpage from Jan. 17, a week before Trump’s second inauguration, went deep in explaining why it held those goals. The school sought equity, it said, because “we share honest acknowledgement that pervasive, enduring and corrosive structural inequities have caused BPOC communities to suffer. … We recognize the uncomfortable and incontrovertible truth that ours is a world of imbalanced access to opportunities and resources.”
In its promise to “foster inclusion and belonging,” also removed from the webpage, the school had said this: “We value the work of being anti-racist and truly accessible to our diverse population of learners, faculty, and staff, where every voice is encouraged, heard, and respected, and authentic selves are valued.”
To be sure, jettisoning such public rhetoric doesn’t mean a college is turning away from the objectives in actual work on a campus.
Kathleen Wroblewski, Bay Path’s senior director of communications and media relations, said the university moved, on a lawyer’s advice, to change its statements after getting a “Dear Colleague” on Feb. 14 letter from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The letter made plain that schools faced the loss of federal funding if they didn’t adhere to the new administration’s rules.
Wroblewski said that would have hurt Bay Path students. Many are first-generation students and eligible for need-based federal Pell grants, she said. That funding is “essential to their ability to access and complete their education. … Failure to comply would have put that crucial support at risk, and with it, the educational pathways of the students we serve,” she said.
“Preparing students for successful careers is our priority,” Wroblewski said in a statement, in response to questions from The Republican. “That requires protecting the resources that make their education possible while ensuring we remain in full compliance with federal law.”
Bishop Talbert W. Swan II, president of the Greater Springfield NAACP, said institutions are doing what they can to survive.
“While we would like for them to stand strong and resist, we understand they have a constituency to serve with funds from our taxpayer dollars,” he said Friday. “They want to fly under the radar. In many ways, I can’t blame them. [The government] created a climate where these institutions feel threatened to lose funding if they don’t comply.”
Douglas Hook
Since removing content from its website, Wroblewski said the school has worked to make clear to students that it opposes “illegal discrimination in any form.”
The university’s president, Sandra J. Doran, told the school community last February that the campus, and the affiliated Cambridge College, values all of its members.
“We are an institution where every voice and perspective has been, continues to, and will always be valued,” Doran said in the statement.
The Longmeadow university was just one of many schools and nonprofits in the region that pulled back from DEI goals in mission statements.
Just a week after Trump’s orders, Boston University said it would close its Center for Antiracist Research. Across town, Northeastern University wiped mentions of DEI from its webpages and retitled its Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. New name: Office of Belonging.
Over the course of 2025, words like “belonging” often replaced or joined “inclusion.”
The school said it had to act to protect itself. “Failing to comply with the law could jeopardize student financial aid and federally funded research across a range of disciplines and projects,” Northeastern said in an online post.
Baystate’s ‘Black and Brown employees’
When Trump returned, Baystate Health, one of Western Massachusetts’ largest employers, with roughly 13,000 workers, was 17 years into what it termed its “diversity, equity and inclusion journey.”
“We are committed to examining our systems and behaviors to ensure they advance equity and shared prosperity,” Baystate Health said in its online mission statement, visible as of Jan. 22.
It invited visitors to download a 2022 report on its progress toward DEI goals. “Confronting racism and bias behaviors is critical,” the company said. “We are committed to achieving equity in the hiring, promotion and retention of Black and Brown employees.”
Today, that last sentence is gone from Baystate’s online mission statement. Also edited out is language about the importance of confronting racism and bias.
The page’s earlier heading, “Our Commitment to Confronting Racism and Bias,” was replaced with “Our Commitment to Equity, Inclusion and Belonging.”
The revised statement is not a full retreat from DEI goals, though the goal is newly framed as a push to benefit “everyone.”
Baystate says in online wording today that its vision is “to integrate equity and inclusion into every part of our work — from patient care to workplace culture — so that everyone experiences a sense of belonging and the chance to reach their fullest potential.”
Heather Duggan, Baystate’s manager of external communications, said that commitment is alive and well. She said in a statement, in response to questions, that doing right by caregivers and patients “has been at the heart of our organization for more than 140 years.” Baystate is faithful “in words and actions” to long-held goals of what she termed “welcoming and belonging, social and health justice, meaningful and structural change, and community impact.”
“While some of our language has changed, Baystate Health’s commitment to our people, our communities, and a culture of inclusion and belonging remains unwavering,” Duggan said.
The people making these changes had cause to think someone with a long reach and access to the U.S. Treasury was watching.
In his Jan. 21 executive order, the president claimed that “critical and influential institutions of American society … have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ … that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation.”
Trump ordered executive branch departments and agencies to end all DEI mandates and programs. On top of that, he called on officials charged with upholding civil rights “to combat illegal private-sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.”
More subtle changes
Some wording changes have been relatively subtle. The Caring Health Center in Springfield, for example, had used its website to declare that it stood ready to serve newcomers to America.
“As the community continues to welcome refugees and immigrants,” it said in text available on its website June 4, 2024, “our commitment to providing appropriate and accessible care is demonstrated by the use of multilingual translation services, and sensitivity to the unique cultural needs of the people we serve.”
Today, the post’s reference to “refugees and immigrants” is gone.
Attempts to reach Caring Health Center for comment last week were unsuccessful.
The newspaper also reviewed IRS documents, comparing language from nonprofits that must file Form 990 before and after Trump’s return to the White House. Part III of the form requires a mission statement. Caring Health did not adjust its mission statement in IRS Form 990 this year. As in the previous two years, the agency said it works “to bring the highest level of health care to those who are challenged by socio-economic, linguistic, and cultural barriers.”
Also in Springfield, the nonprofit Way Finders Inc., which builds and manages affordable housing, ended 2024 with a particular online commitment that did not survive 2025.
“Way Finders builds and advocates for a thriving and equitable region,” a webpage said in December 2024, “by improving the stability and economic mobility of families and individuals, together with developing and managing a wide range of housing to support strong communities.”
Today, that statement of mission does not include the word “equitable” or the term “economic mobility.” It reads, “Way Finders builds and advocates for thriving communities by strengthening housing options, supportive programs, and economic opportunities.”
Back in January, The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts’ online statement of “core values” made three specific pledges related to “diversity and inclusiveness.” The nonprofit said it would “strive” to have the region’s diversity reflected on its staff and board. It said understanding inequality in access to food “is essential to conducting our work.” And it committed itself to “increasing cultural competence and inclusion.”
As of last week, that 52-word section had been winnowed, with “strive” gone, to a 19-word promise to “foster diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.”
Holding their ground
Many institutions in the region have held onto their promises to be inclusive.
The United Way of Pioneer Valley’s “Inclusion Policy” reads the same way as it did on Jan. 20. “Inclusion is essential to what we do, as it creates and strengthens our community,” the nonprofit said then – and now.
Gȧndara Center, in Springfield, has not changed how it lists its mission – “to promote the well-being of Hispanics, African-Americans and other culturally diverse populations” – on its IRS filing in 2025.
The nonprofit Center for Human Development made no change this year in how it described its mission to the IRS. That wording had not mentioned race; the agency said only that it is “dedicated to promoting, enhancing, and protecting the dignity and welfare of people in need.”
On its website, CHD notes that it launched a DEI program in 2022. “Diversity, equity, and inclusion should always be at the heart of what we do to support our staff and those we serve,” Jim Goodwin, the agency’s president and CEO, said in a statement on the website.
Also holding firm – and then some – is the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The organization raises and manages funding for charitable groups in Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire counties.
“We will advance equity, diversity, and inclusion throughout the region’s three counties, including our workplaces and institutions by prioritizing racial equity in all facets of our work,” it says online. “We have chosen racial equity specifically because of the pervasiveness of racism in interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships and interactions, institutions, and systems in our region and in our country throughout our history. We believe that working toward dismantling systems of racial inequality provides a framework for dismantling all other forms of oppression.”
Western New England University in Springfield maintained a promise, on its webpage, to “celebrating the diversity of our community, locally and globally, and creating a community that fosters tolerance, integrity, accountability, citizenship, and social responsibility.”
Pledges by other higher education institutions in the Pioneer Valley to pursue DEI goals remained visible on many websites, including those of Mount Holyoke College, Springfield Technical Community College and Westfield State University.
Mount Holyoke College devotes a webpage to explaining its stance on DEI.
STCC links on its website to a 59-page document that includes 22 references to “diversity.”
At some point after March 2024, Elms College in Chicopee added a specific webpage called “Our Commitment to Diversity and Nondiscrimination.” It refers specifically to diversity and inclusion and guides anyone with “questions about DEI” to contact a college representative handling that issue.
“Our Catholic mission calls us to educate and serve a diverse student population, without discrimination, in an inclusive and vibrant learning community, in an effort to effect positive change in a pluralistic world,” the college says.
Support for DEI goals is plainly stated by American International College. The college made pledges before Trump’s second term and those remain unchanged in its online presence.
The Behavioral Health Network, which provides mental and behavioral health care to 33,000 adults and children annually, has not changed what it says online about discrimination since at least mid-2024. “We believe that all people have the right to exist free of stigma and discrimination,” it says. “We promote and value diversity throughout the BHN community and shape our services and interactions with respect to one another’s culture and personal preferences.”
Trinity Health, which runs Mercy Medical Center in Springfield, had not referred explicitly to DEI goals in its online mission statement as 2025 began. That wording cited “the spirit of the Gospel as a compassionate and transforming healing presence” and wasn’t changed this year.
