University of Delaware has restored elements of student research

The University of Delaware has restored a collection of student research and academic materials on slavery and Newark history it had taken offline.

Over the past year, the institution has been reacting under pressure from a second Trump administration, while aiming to coordinate what it calls a “long-term strategy” on campus culture, diversity and inclusion. In part, that included removing certain webpages dedicated to research.

As Delaware Online/The News Journal reported on Feb. 3, some five years of student and faculty work within projects like the “Legacies of Enslavement and Dispossession,” as well as the university’s broader “UD Anti-Racism Initiative,” were taken down ahead of this academic year.

Later that afternoon, a restoration site came online.

“Earlier this year, the University took a number of program websites offline as part of a broader effort to coordinate and align our Campus Culture and Engagement (CCE) work,” UD wrote on that page, on Feb. 3. “In that process, academic materials and publications that had been housed on the UDARI website were inadvertently also taken offline. That disruption should not have happened. We recognize the concern and frustration this caused, and regret that this has had a negative impact on our community.”