GW postponed its 10th Diversity Summit to spring 2026, creating a two-year gap between summits as the office responsible for the event faces a leadership vacancy and universities nationwide revise diversity, equity and inclusion programs to align with President Donald Trump’s policies.
Officials said this week they now expect to hold the Diversity Summit in spring 2026 — a shift that follows their decision months earlier to postpone the event from last spring to this October, leaving no summit during the 2024-25 academic year. The decision, which officials said will allow them to “reimagine a new opportunity,” followed community concerns last spring that canceling the event could signal the University is retreating from its commitment to diversity initiatives and comes amid Trump’s ongoing crackdown on DEI programs and a leadership vacancy in the Office for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement.
Officials initially slated the 10th Diversity Summit for Oct. 16-18, according to a May release. Between Aug. 29 and last week, officials changed the website’s landing page to announce the postponement. According to web archives, officials also removed a “Latest Updates” tab when they updated the site but kept an archive page on past Diversity Summits.
“We anticipate that this event will be held in spring 2026,” the current Diversity Summit webpage reads. “Additional details will be forthcoming.”
The Office for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement, which hosts the event, is led by the Vice Provost for Diversity, Equity and Community Engagement — a position that has been vacant since Caroline Laguerre-Brown left in July 2024. A University spokesperson said last November that the search to fill the role is ongoing. GW does not currently have an open job posting for the role.
The decision also comes as universities across the country grapple with Trump’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including the executive order he signed on his second day in office to terminate “to the maximum extent allowed by law” DEI offices and positions. More than 400 campuses eliminated or rebranded their DEI-related programs and centers heading into the 2025-26 academic year, as the executive order warned universities could lose federal funding if they did not comply.
A July memo from the Department of Justice warns higher education institutions that receive federal funding and are subject to federal anti-discrimination laws, like GW, of “significant legal risks” if they engage in what the Trump administration defines as discriminatory practices, like DEI programs. University spokesperson Shannon McClendon told The Hatchet in August that GW’s Office of the General Counsel was conducting a “careful review” of the memo and its implications for GW’s approach to abiding by federal anti-discrimination laws.
A University spokesperson declined to comment further on why officials postponed the summit, including whether Trump-related DEI policies influenced the decision.
GW hosted a diversity summit every academic year since 2015 until the 2024-25 academic year, with officials holding the last event in February 2024. The Diversity Summit’s current page notes only the postponement and an archive of the past three summits.
When officials first announced in April that the summit would take place this fall instead of last spring, past participants and a higher education expert said the decision could signal the University is backing away from diversity-related efforts.
Diversity Summits seek to teach attendees about the history of activism and social change in the U.S., learn the definition of liberation and justice from “various perspectives and identities” and establish new opportunities for collaboration and coalition building, according to a now-archived webpage of the 2024 Diversity Summit’s goals.
Officials have historically asked the community to propose ideas for presentations and workshops a few months ahead of the event. For the last Diversity Summit, which took place from Feb. 22 to 24, 2024, officials sought out community proposals starting in November 2023, just over three months before the programming, according to an email sent to the GW community.
Officials did not send out requests for community proposals for the upcoming Diversity Summit ahead of the postponement, last telling community members in a May email to expect further communication about participation opportunities.
The tenth summit is now slated to take place next spring, two years after the last event in February 2024. Officials hosted the summit in spring 2017 and 2023, but from 2018 to 2021 hosted the summit in the fall semester — including virtually in 2020 and 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
For the 2023-24 academic year, officials had planned to host Diversity Summit programming during both the fall and spring semesters, but the entire slate of programming took place in February 2024 following the fall event’s postponement. Officials postponed the summit’s fall 2023 programming after pro-Palestinian protestors projected anti-Israel and anti-GW messaging onto Gelman Library in October, a month before programming was set to take place.
Officials said in an October 2023 email to the summit’s participants that the postponement was the result of the “current climate” on campus. Officials said in the email that moving forward with programming would be “dismissive” to the burgeoning war in Gaza.
