University of Delaware Bends the Knee to Trump

Anisha Gupta struggled to focus on other work.

Just a few more minutes. A few more pages of census records, of Newark land deeds, of university archives, might reveal details on African Americans living around her university in the mid 1800s.

“My research was on free Black landownership around UD, and that was really difficult,” the doctoral student recalled. “I mean, we didn’t even have the names of the people who did incredible things, like free themselves, and then buy land and homes for their families.”

Finally, one hand-drawn map of Newark’s New London Road neighborhood unlocked the names of a burgeoning Black community. These families owned their land years before owning other people was outlawed in the U.S., or just down the street. Others even fought in the Civil War.

This University of Delaware graduate student plugged away at her research with the help of UD archives, professors and local historians. By 2022, she published a paper that even surprised living decedents.

“This was the first time I really felt like I was doing work alongside these community members,” said the student of preservation studies, who had just left a museum job that felt too detached. “And the impact – it didn’t matter if my work was published in an academic journal, which would have been a previous goal – it really was sharing it with the community members who it mattered to the most.”

It was published on a university-hosted website, among some five years’ worth of other student and faculty work exploring the history of slavery, segregation and Black history around UD.

Now, it’s gone.

Over the past year, Delaware’s largest university has been quietly reacting to pressure under a second Trump administration, while fine-tuning a “long-term strategy” to review campus practices on diversity and inclusion.

In one small part, that has included taking down a website dedicated to research. Gupta’s work was published in one area of the broader “UD Anti-Racism Initiative.” This site now reroutes users to a letter announcing the “Campus Culture and Engagement” initiative.

Last fall, and reaffirmed this January, UD has told Delaware Online/The News Journal that is “a comprehensive, long-term strategy and framework for operationalizing our values of diversity and inclusion.” And UD said “several programs” fell within that scope, though it did not provide a list.

“Obviously, we’re making responsive changes based on the expectations of our role within, you know, the infrastructure of receiving federal grants, which are very important to UD,” Vice President for Student Life José-Luis Riera said, when asked about the website and other changes in November.

UD has also made changes to personnel titles, alongside at least one area of the faculty handbook. Some see these as protective, others detrimental.