Among the flurry of executive orders signed by the new US president Donald Trump on the day of his inauguration (20 January) is one titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing”. The order, calling diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes “illegal and immoral”, immediately led to the shutdown of federal DEI offices, and their staff were placed on leave as a precursor to being eventually laid off. The order has also affected federally funded museums—the Smithsonian Institution and Washington, DC’s National Gallery of Art (NGA) have closed their diversity offices.
The NGA made its decision late last week. According to The New York Times, the museum also removed the words “diversity”, “equity”, “inclusion” and “access” from its list of values—replacing them with “welcoming and accessible”. The NGA’s nixing of its Office of Belonging and Inclusion comes only four years after the department’s founding. The office’s leadership position has been open since the former director’s departure last year, and its two other employees were reassigned to open jobs elsewhere at the museum. The NGA receives almost 80% of its operating budget from the federal government. (It was also the venue for an expensive pre-inauguration fundraising gala hosted by vice president JD Vance.)
The Smithsonian followed suit earlier this week, according to the Washington Post, which reported that the institution had also frozen hiring and mandated that its employees return to the office full time. The moves are all in keeping with Trump’s new orders pertaining to federal workers. The Smithsonian’s accessibility programmes for visitors with disabilities have been renamed but remain the same. Lonnie G. Bunch III, secretary of the Smithsonian, announced these changes in an internal email to staff.
“Our core values of fairness and equity for all remain unchanged,” Bunch wrote in the email, adding that the Smithsonian would “continue to use every tool at our disposal to find and nurture excellence in our workforce” and “demand that our workplace is free from discrimination and harassment”.
It remains unclear how many Smithsonian employees have been directly affected by the closure of its diversity office. The Smithsonian—which oversees 21 museums across the US as well as the National Zoo in Washington, DC—receives 53% of its funding from the federal government.