DEI Crackdowns Leave Florida’s Hispanic‑Serving Institutions Fighting for Their Future

For many Latino students, going to a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) is more than just going to college. For Beatriz Milian, a senior at Florida International University — the largest Hispanic-enrolling HSI in the country — it was a chance to connect directly with her culture while gaining access to programs.

“I wanted to be surrounded by people that looked like me, that came from the same background as me, had immigrant parents — the whole experience,” said Milian.

But following September 2025 cuts to Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) grant programs, including Hispanic-Serving, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian-Serving, and Predominantly Black Institutions, the futures of HSIs have become unclear.

Milian, who hails from Cuba and moved to the United States at five years old, shares that as these changes have taken shape, much of the conversation about how Hispanic students are getting access to opportunities has reverted to “you only got that because you’re Hispanic,” a common stereotype aimed towards Latinos across the country.

According to a study from Coqual, a global think tank that researches “identity, inclusion, leadership, and the future of work,” 23% of Hispanic/Latino professionals say colleagues express stereotypes about Hispanics or Latinos at least monthly.

South Florida is home to two of the largest HSIs in the country, FIU and Florida Atlantic University, both of which enroll upwards of 25% of their full-time Hispanic undergraduate students.

Attacks on DEI initiatives at South Florida HSIs:

But attacks on HSIs in Florida don’t exist on their own.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs at public universities in Florida, including FIU and FAU, have faced significant challenges since 2023, following the introduction of state legislation such as HB 7, also known as the “Stop WOKE Act,” restricting gender and race education, and SB 266, which prohibits funding for DEI initiatives.

At FAU, the passage of these bills led to the closure of the school’s diversity center, or the Center for IDEAS. For Andrés Ramirez, associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, the center’s closure was one of the first steps the university took toward dismantling DEI programs, although he mentions that following the Covid-19 pandemic, these programs were already winding down.

“But then, it was really unfortunate that the interest was winding down right before Covid, I would say, and then after that, it was really difficult to continue with it in the same way. So we just continued doing this little by little,” said Ramirez.

Ramirez, who started at FAU in 2014, oversaw the creation of the HSI research interest group after FAU received a federal HSI designation in 2017.

He shares that the group was initially founded by him and María Vásquez, associate professor in educational leadership and research methodology, but did not receive federal funding, relying mostly on internal support for research projects rather than financial compensation.

Ramirez explains that what began to change for his projects following attacks on DEI in Florida, as well as for others within his interest group, was continued support for diversity, which he calls “diversity fatigue.”

“People like me who care a lot about diversity, it’s also taxing on us to actually do all the work to maintain that, and then after a while it was clear that the situation was not going to change,” said Ramirez.

A 2021 study conducted by Jessi Smith and Jennifer Poe, at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, and Peter McPartlan at San Diego State University found that “the more a university’s faculty felt diversity fatigue, the less likely they were to want to implement it in the future.”

Stephanie Aguilar-Smith, assistant professor of higher education at the University of Georgia, studies MSIs and how federal funding impacts them.

Aguilar-Smith explains that cuts to state-wide funding for DEI initiatives, although not directly affecting HSIs’ federal funding, still affect the spirit of their end.

Aguilar-Smith finds that whereas specific legislation might call for the end of DEI trainings or programs, it doesn’t necessarily seep into research or coursework at a university; yet its existence might provoke fear among students and professors, leading them to continue pursuing topics related to DEI or specifically affecting the Latine community.

This is what she calls the “spirit of the law” versus the “letter of the law.”

“When there’s a lot of money on the table, and there’s these big political contests over what higher-ed should or shouldn’t be, right, those can create a lot of really uncomfortable decision points,” said Aguilar-Smith. “I think at times administrators were particularly in a public institution that’s really reliant on state dollars, there’s a real tension between the like, how far can you push right when you’re reliant and beholden to the state purse.”

At FIU, the closure of its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Department led to the loss of over $1 million in state funds, according to reporting from the university’s student-run newspaper, Panther Now.

Milian only began to notice changes after the fact, recalling that the DEI chair for Phi Delta Epsilon at FIU was swiftly renamed the “inclusivity” chair. She wonders how this rhetorical framing changes the communities affected.

“So if we’re going around just trying to change language and to fit some sort of standard or quota, you’re hurting people at their roots, you know, if you have a school filled with Hispanic people and you’re saying you want to remove this label, what does that say?” said Milian.

How does federal legislation change the political landscape for HSIs?

On February 14, 2025, the United States Department of Education’s (DOE) Office for Civil Rights sent a memo to K-12 and postsecondary institutions across the country that receive federal funding, urging them to comply with Title VI rules following a 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended the use of Affirmative action at universities nationwide.

In June 2025, Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit group behind the Harvard lawsuit, and the State of Tennessee sued the DOE for the existence of Hispanic-Serving Institutions, and according to the press release regarding the lawsuit, for the belief that the program’s existence “engages in unconstitutional racial balancing and exceeds Congress’s constitutional authority.”

In July of that year, the U.S. Department of Justice notified U.S. Congress that it would not defend the existence of HSIs. By October, the DOE had eliminated more than $350 million in federal grants for MSI programs, including those that encompassed work by HSIs.

These cuts have left universities that were once largely funded by these grants — including those, like FIU and FAU, that were once designated as Fulbright HSI Leaders by the Fulbright program — gutted.

Many programs once funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation were also scrapped, including one at FIU, Advances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP). The program, which once offered alliances with higher education institutions to increase the representation of historically underrepresented communities in STEM faculty, has since been archived.

The Latino News Network reached out to Deidra Hodges, Michelle Bradham-Cousar, and Alla Mirzoyan, leaders of FIU’s alliance with the AGEP, for comment, but did not receive a comment in time for publication. One of the leaders, Hodges, wrote, “I do not have any comments to offer.”

In 2016, FAU received a $4.4 million Title III grant from the DOE for programs benefitting Hispanic and low-income students studying computer science, computer engineering, and electrical engineering. Programs, like this one, have been cut following the September 2025 decision.

What does the future look like for HSIs in Florida and around the U.S?

Ramirez isn’t sure what the future of DEI education or of the HSI designation holds, but still firmly believes that the damage to it cannot be undone.

“I feel that the damage is already done, that it doesn’t matter. They already dismantled a lot of the DEI initiatives anyway,” said Ramirez. “And here in our university, the DEI initiatives were dismantled. The director left. I mean, some other people that have to do with diversity and inclusion, of course, saw themselves under siege, and they couldn’t [stay].”

Although the program isn’t necessarily “dead,” it can be ended by Congress through legislation. Aguilar-Smith doesn’t believe that Congress will try to end it this way; instead, she foresees the DOE continuing to “starve” it.

“Congress can kill it, legislatively. The DOE can starve it. And so right now, by defunding it, that’s essentially what they’ve done,” said Aguilar-Smith.

Aguilar-Smith still hopes that communities within universities that are leading HSI programming and other DEI initiatives will continue to push forward. She believes that since the ideas for diversity and Hispanic programming were already created, they cannot be taken back.

“The idea already exists, and it is very hard to kill ideas. Regardless of whether the DOE refunds these programs or whether the funding is real, the idea of an HSI, though it is contested, exists,” said Aguilar-Smith.

For Milian, pushing towards a more diverse community is still possible. She shares her experiences starting the Latino Medical Students Association (LMSA at FIU), where she has helped build community.

“It is one thing to have a community that has the same background, but it’s another to have the same background and have people who are working towards the same goal as you and supporting each other,” she said. “We had to seek and really go and find [resources] in like the cracks and crevices, but now [members] are just in a Club that provides that to them and makes it more accessible.”

Additionally, organizations such as the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defence and Education Fund (LatinoJustice PRLDEF) are at the forefront of the fight against the June SFFA lawsuit.

Early in 2025, three Florida university professors announced they would challenge SB 266 in the State Legislature through a lawsuit funded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida. The professors, although unsuccessful in reversing the legislation, still made waves in national news.

“The one hope I have is that, kind of regardless of the politics, the idea is already really real and [for] places committed to it, that will be true with or without funding,” said Aguilar-Smith.

Gabriela Quintero is a High School senior at Florida Atlantic University High School and will be attending Barnard College at Columbia University in the fall to pursue her B.A. in Political Science and English. Interested in politics, migration, policy, and culture, she hopes to pursue a career in political and cultural journalism.

DEI Crackdowns Leave Florida’s Hispanic‑Serving Institutions Fighting for Their Future was first published on Latino News Network and was republished with permission.