The University of Hawaii has joined other Hawaii institutions forced to respond to President Donald Trump’s flurry of executive orders to eliminate diversity and race-based programs and practices — while also putting at risk over $386 million in federal funding used to pay thousands of UH employees, UH President Wendy Hensel told the 10-campus system Tuesday.
“Moreover, students receive significant federal financial aid and other forms of support implicated by these orders,” Hensel wrote in her latest update about the fallout from Trump’s actions. “In short, we cannot carry out our core higher education mission without federal government funding.”
Hensel has kept UH updated on Trump’s impacts since he began issuing a series of executive orders starting on his first day back in the Oval Office in January.
On Thursday, Hensel also plans to brief UH regents at their board meeting at UH Hilo.
UH officials have been working with state Attorney General Anne Lopez, who has joined a hui of blue-state attorneys general pushing back in court against Trump’s policies, some of which courts have temporarily blocked.
“We will continue to pursue every means available to us to preserve our mission and core values, which have not and will not alter with these changes,” Hensel said. “Nevertheless, the power of the federal executive branch to set policy prospectively is significant. While these legal actions provide temporary relief, long-term implications
remain uncertain.”
Another Trump order bars diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs, along with ones also directed at affirmative action and “environmental justice.”
Hensel wrote, “On January 31, 2025, the President issued Executive Order 14173 titled ‘Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity.’ The directive states that DEIA programs can violate civil rights laws and directs all grant recipients, including universities, to end unlawful ‘preferences, mandates, policies, programs and activities.’ The EO requires universities, as a condition of receiving federal funding, to certify that they do not operate any
programs promoting DEIA. Consequences for false assertions are not only the loss of federal funding, including financial aid for
students, but potentially civil and criminal penalties for the university’s certifying official.”
The U.S. Department of Education on Friday offered guidance that “states categorically that ‘if an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.’ It prohibits universities from using race ‘in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation,
financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.’”
A subsequent DOE directive issued Sunday, Hensel said, “stated more clearly that universities may ‘no longer operate programs based on race.’”
Trump’s attitudes toward race and ethnicity have led to confusion at UH about the future of its ethnic studies programs that focus on specific ethnic populations and their histories in Hawaii, including Hawaiians, Pacific
Islanders and Asians.
And UH student organizations and clubs are specifically organized for students representing a wide range of ethnic backgrounds.
One Trump executive
order makes exceptions for universities that work to protect First Amendment rights of free speech and prevent illegal employment.
“While the meaning and extent of these exemptions are unclear, they suggest that academic programs and curricula currently may fall outside the order,” Hensel said.
Also under Trump, the National Institutes of Health has chopped “indirect cost recovery rates in federal grants, reducing them from university-negotiated rates (typically from 25% to 70%) to a maximum of 15%,” Hensel said. “This move is significant for all universities and potentially could reduce research funding nationally by billions of dollars.”
For UH specifically, she said that federal funding represents “an extremely significant source of financial support for the university.”
