“DEI is gone, forever,” promised Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an X post earlier this year. Rubio was reacting to President Donald Trump’s memorandum of March 18, which banned diversity hiring and promotion practices throughout the State Department and prohibited “all officers and employees” from taking any action to “promote, advocate for, or otherwise inculcate support for discriminatory equity ideology.” Trump’s memorandum was consistent with one of his Inauguration Day executive orders, which prohibited DEI activities by all government agencies, grantees and contractors.
Nine months into Trump’s second term, however, DEI programs are still alive and well in at least one important sphere of State Department operations: America’s overseas schools. Receiving tens of millions of dollars in funds administered by the department’s little-known Office of Overseas Schools, they give K-12 instruction to over 138,000 students—American as well as foreign—enrolled in 193 schools worldwide. These outposts of “American-style” education generally serve the children of U.S. diplomats, well-to-do expatriates and foreign elites who covet their credentials. Many of their graduates go on to top-flight universities and high-profile international careers.
Despite Washington’s DEI ban and the clear popular mandate behind it, there is little sign that the personnel who administer and teach in the State Department’s overseas schools have changed their rosy perspectives on that divisive, un-American and now unlawful ideology.
Back in March, Manhattan Institute policy analyst Neetu Arnold documented dozens of State Department-funded institutions that continued to pursue active DEI policies and programs. In many cases, they appear to have received guidance from consultants who advised them to swap standard DEI terminology for less obvious concepts like “belonging” or “justice,” likely to evade detection. Arnold also documented an unabating flow of State Department funds to professional associations that appear to have continued offering DEI-themed content in training sessions on curricula, recruitment, professional development and other areas. Some of that training seems to feature strategies to deflect criticism of DEI, despite its having been banned by the president of the United States.
Arnold highlighted her research in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, but little or no action appears to have been taken in Foggy Bottom. Months later, according to a report released this week by the Ben Franklin Fellowship, an association of constitutionally minded foreign policy professionals, DEI is holding strong in overseas schools that still receive generous funding from the Trump administration. The Taipei American School, for example, adverts a calendar celebrating monthly “diversity” themes for identities valorized by progressives, including “Latine & Hispanic,” “Black and African American,” “LGBTQ+,” and “Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander.” The school announced its initiative as “part of our commitment to developing Globally-Minded Contributors” who, it hopes, will “advocate for inclusive practices that advance diversity, equity, and justice”—at least for the “right” categories of people.
Lebanon’s American Community School “is committed to creating an equitable and inclusive environment and fostering a community of diverse perspectives.” That institution, which abuts and sends students to the similarly DEI-infused yet still U.S. government-subsidized American University of Beirut, jumbled the order of the acronym’s terms, but you don’t need an elite “American-style” education to find the “D,” “E,” and “I” in its legally questionable commitment.
Not all overseas schools are as subtle. The Bangkok International School maintains a webpage devoted to “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging,” while the Western Academy of Beijing does the same thing by touting its “commitment to promoting diversity, equity, inclusion and justice.” Maybe they hired the same consultant, who could easily have flown (business class, of course) between those two cities.
Within the State Department, the Office of Overseas Schools continues to take advice from an appointed council whose purpose is to advise on overseas school policy and drum up private-sector support “for improving educational opportunities.” This Overseas Schools Advisory Council is subject to review and renewal every two years but was last renewed in January 2023—nearly three years ago—by the Biden administration, which mandated DEI’s active promotion throughout the State Department and in all other federal agencies.
Why are these Biden holdovers still advising the Trump administration on the education of thousands of students? They should have been gone on day one, which conveniently coincided with their council’s statutory biannual review and renewal, neither of which appears to have been conducted. Over at the Department of War, meanwhile, schools serving some 71,000 children of servicemen saw DEI wiped out (despite residual legal challenges) in early February.
The State Department has made much progress in removing DEI from its operations. Its Biden-era Office of Diversity and Inclusion has been shut down; the office’s website is listed as “archived” and its personnel are gone. Early in the year, the department-run Foreign Service Institute eliminated over 1,200 courses with DEI and other diversity themes. Listing pronouns in official e-mail signatures is prohibited. Funding for DEI-themed study and scholarship has rightly been junked. But when it comes to overseas schools, much work remains to be done. It should start today.