A few dozen University of Alaska Fairbanks students, faculty and their dogs gathered in a frozen parking lot on campus in late February. It might’ve looked like a tailgate party — if not for the signs in their hands.
Many in the crowd, like undergraduate anthropology student Hazel Probst, were there to protest the University of Alaska Board of Regents’ decision last month to scrub all references to DEI from the university’s website and other publications.
“There are so many people out here dancing and just having fun and holding hope,” Probst said. “It's empowering.”
UAF is in the process of rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to comply with recent executive orders signed by President Donald Trump. Administrators say that’s to safeguard the flow of federal dollars to UAF research programs. Meanwhile, the federal government has announced investigations into some universities for noncompliance, while others have lost funding altogether.
That’s left some faculty and students waiting for the other shoe to drop.
UAF’s research dreams in the balance
Probst said she understands the university system’s desire to protect its federal funding, but she wishes administrators hadn’t capitulated so quickly.
“We need to continue to uphold the diversity and equity inclusion rules that the University has had for many years,” she said.” I think we need to wait. And once we are punished for continuing to uphold our DEI laws, then we can take action in court.”
But the University of Alaska system isn’t willing to accept that risk. UAF Chancellor Dan White said the university is committed to maintaining an inclusive, non-discriminatory environment. But he affirmed the Board of Regents’ decision.
“The motion came out and said: we support free speech,” said White. “We support these longstanding values of academic freedom, and we'll continue to do so. But in our institutional websites, let's take those words: ‘DEI,’ off of our website, and let’s think about, ‘Now, how do we understand belonging for all students?’”
Federal dollars make up more than a quarter of UAF's total operating revenue. The biggest portion of that pot of money — about 28% — comes from the National Science Foundation,, which is bracing for steep cuts in the Trump administration’s forthcoming budget.
White said that could throw UAF’s goal of becoming a top-tier research institution into jeopardy.
“If the National Science Foundation's budget were cut, that would have an impact on us,” he said. “But what we can do is focus on things we can control. And what we can control is continuing to recruit students, continuing to seek the funding that's important for research.”
Faculty divided on how to move forward
Carl Tape is a seismologist at the university’s Geophysical Institute. A lot of his funding comes from federal sources, including NSF and the Department of Defense. None of that funding has been interrupted, and Tape hopes it stays that way. Through it all, he said he’s mostly just trying to keep his head down.
“It's really upsetting a lot of people,” Tape said. “I can understand that. But it's like a family. I have students that I'm responsible for, and first and foremost, I have to figure out how to secure funding for them and for myself.”
Tape said equity practices are important, but most of his graduate students are federally funded. And he said any shakeup that could cause the federal government to cut funding would be catastrophic for their future employment and ongoing research.
But to professors in other departments, the federal shift away from DEI policies is the bigger catastrophe. Sarah McConnell, a professor in UAF’s music department, said she expects many of her students will be hurt by the change.
“A lot of what DEI does is it sets up opportunities for students to financially make those opportunities happen,” she said. “These kids who have earned the right to go to various institutions — whether it's an assistantship or some great scholarship or something else — is going to go away because they're removing the funding associated with any kind of DEI initiative.”
Several other UAF faculty members, who declined to be identified over concerns about their employment, echoed similar fears for students who have written diversity statements into their applications, or who have project proposals with DEI elements. Some said they worry about job security — especially those whose positions are attached to 1-year federal funding periods.
Many of them say they don’t want to be the proverbial “nail that gets hammered,” but there are internal debates happening over how and to what degree faculty members should comply with executive orders.
Chancellor White said he’s received “handfuls” of letters of concern, and that he’s trying to offer reassurance to UAF’s students and employees.
“We all have to understand that it's a rapidly changing environment,” White said. “The Board of Regents has a responsibility to help the university move forward.”
If there’s any consensus among faculty, it’s that they’re doing their best to look after their students, who could be most vulnerable to funding cuts.
