February 6, 2025
3 min read
Trump’s DEI Purge Comes at a Cost to Indigenous Communities
President Donald Trump’s purge of diversity initiatives has affected both federal agencies and the institutions they fund, including those that work with Indigenous communities
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while signing executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Monday, Jan. 20, 2025.
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
CLIMATEWIRE | The National Center for Atmospheric Research, an institute funded by the National Science Foundation, has closed all its offices engaging in work related to diversity, equity and inclusion — including at least one initiative aimed at encouraging collaborations among Indigenous communities and environmental researchers.
Sometime in the last two weeks, information about the Rising Voices Center for Indigenous and Earth Sciences has disappeared from the website for the nonprofit University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, which manages NCAR.
An archived version of the site, preserved by the Internet Archive, describes the initiative as a community “inviting engagement to nurture collaborations that weave together Indigenous and other Earth sciences, knowledge systems, and traditions.”
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Founded in 2013, the Rising Voices Center was previously administered jointly by NCAR and the Livelihoods Knowledge Exchange Network (LiKEN). A Rising Voices webpage also has disappeared from LIKEN’s website.
Rising Voices was scheduled to hold an annual workshop in May, focused this year on topics related to climate adaptation and restoration on the Louisiana coastline. The workshop’s event page has disappeared from UCAR’s website as well.
Scientists lamented the Rising Voices Center’s closure on social media.
“For over a decade, Rising Voices fostered collaborations between Indigenous and Earth (atmospheric, social, biological, ecological) sciences to advance community resilience,” said Meade Krosby, a climate scientist at the University of Washington, in a post on Bluesky. “This is a huge loss.”
David Hosansky, a media relations manager for NCAR and UCAR, confirmed they are no longer supporting the Rising Voices program, noting they “closed all offices last week that engaged in diversity, equity, and inclusion work” to comply with President Donald Trump’s recent executive orders.
A statement on UCAR’s website notes that “staff in those offices have been placed on paid administrative leave, and all of the organization’s DEI-related work has been ended.”
Hosansky declined to provide a complete list of all the offices that closed in relation to DEI work. But an analysis by POLITICO’s E&E News of archived NCAR and UCAR webpages suggests multiple offices have closed.
A webpage for UCAR’s Office for Access, Culture and Opportunity has disappeared. An archived version suggests the office previously focused on “removing barriers that prevent people from fair participation in our organization, and building a workplace culture where everyone belongs and feels supported and empowered.”
A webpage for NCAR’s CORE Office — short for “Collaborative Opportunities for Research and Engagement” — has disappeared too. An archived version notes the office focused on initiatives “with an emphasis on engaging minority-serving institutions (MSIs) to expand scientific efforts and capacity in Earth system science.”
The office closures underscore the chilling effect of Trump’s executive orders on both federal agencies and the institutions they fund.
NCAR is a federally funded research and development center, with most of its sponsorship coming from NSF, alongside other federal agencies and nonfederal sources. UCAR, the entity that manages it, is a nonprofit consortium of more than 100 research institutions across the United States offering programs related to atmospheric science.
The shift at NCAR mirrors a move among some universities across the country — many of which rely on research funding from federal agencies — to close their own DEI offices.
The closures reflect widespread confusion among research institutes about the scope of Trump’s executive order.
The order states that it “terminates ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) discrimination in the federal workforce, and in federal contracting and spending.” But the exact definition of DEI remains vague — leading agencies and the institutes they fund scrambling to interpret the order’s breadth.
The University of Colorado posted a recent statement on its website aimed at providing guidance to federally funded researchers. “Until we have a formal definition of the meaning of ‘DEI’ and ‘DEIA’ as referenced in the presidential executive order(s), it is recommended that DEI and DEIA be interpreted broadly,” the statement said.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
