During his presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to «take back our once great educational institutions from the radical left.»

The latest edicts from Trump and his new administration mandate that colleges end programmes for DEI, which stands for diversity, equity and inclusion. If not, they risk losing federal funding. Several universities now say they aim to initiate this process.

This pleases many conservative Americans, who are tired of the hysteria that has infected academic institutions in the US. But Florida was already on the ball, writes the Wall Street Journal.

Document also covered it when the University of Florida fired the entire DEI staff. This happened over a year ago.

Later, Florida banned all forms of LGBTQ education in elementary schools.

Now several other states are following suit. The University of North Carolina will no longer require students to take DEI-related courses to fulfil graduation requirements. The risk of jeopardising federal research funding was «simply too great to delay action,» says university vice president Andrew Tripp.

After the Trump administration cancelled about $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University last week, the university’s leadership pledged to work with the government to restore the funding.

The Ivy League university has come under scrutiny by the Trump administration for its failure to protect Jewish students during the pro-Hamas demonstrations that have marked many US campuses since 7 October 2023.

Florida, under Governor Ron DeSantis, has a three-year head start. A series of laws are redefining general education requirements, banning some subjects from the classroom and emphasising others across the state’s 40 public colleges and universities.

In February, DeSantis announced an initiative to combat waste and fraud at the state level and to «make sure that these universities are really fulfilling the classic mission that a university should have, and that’s not to impose ideology. It is to teach students how to think and prepare them to be citizens of our republic.»

At the University of Florida’s beautiful campus, the new laws have changed the way classes are taught, how students meet and work, and the words people use. The Woke language has been removed from the website. The Centre for Inclusion and Multicultural Engagement has a new name: Office of Community and Belonging.

In the rebranded student meeting centre, the university has removed photographs of civil rights leaders from the office for black students and rainbow flags from the centre for LGBTQ students, and it has removed a painting in the student office for Asian Pacific Islander and Desi students that depicted a «Saigon» party in which white students were dressed as American soldiers, while female students looked like Vietnamese prostitutes.

Since the law prohibits faculty and staff from advocating for DEI, university officials did not organise the usual welcome events for affinity groups. But isn’t it really much better to have a joint event for all new students?

What’s happening in the US right now is a dramatic cultural revolution, and there are many conservatives (and people on the left who are anti-woke) who hope this trend spreads to Europe too.

But since this is Trump policy, it seems difficult for European politicians to accept anything from the US for the next four years. Even so-called conservatives are scrambling to reject Trump as much as possible.

Not surprisingly, there are students who oppose the new anti-woke rules. Student Arshan Falasiri recounts his outrage when he was told by his lecturer to stop using words like intersectionality.

The new laws allow students to record lectures without the lecturer’s consent, which also creates some anxiety, as lecturers fear using the wrong words. But this has been the case for anti-woke students and lecturers for many years, and of course you don’t want to lose your job for using the wrong words, as you actually risked last year.

Norwegian Terje Østebø works for the Centre for African Studies & Department of Religion at the University of Florida. He tells the WSJ:

– When I walk into the classroom, I don’t know if there’s a student recording what I’m saying and if that student can use this to accuse me of teaching identity politics.

– Sometimes you’ll see a student pick up the phone and wonder what angle he or she is holding it.

Students also feel a certain anxiety.

– You should be able to have some sort of half-finished opinion that you work through with other students and professors in a group, says English major Peyton Harris.

– But there’s a danger of it being spread on social media, and that could have consequences for your mental health or even your job prospects.

Once again: This was a real threat to students who last year opposed trans activism and men in women’s sports, or who supported Israel in its war against the terrorists of Hamas.

Hopefully, normality will return to American universities. The hope should be to restore unity, even among political dissenters, not to carry out some kind of revenge against the woke people.