Wesleyan University president Michael Roth condemned Donald Trump’s immigration and education policies following his election and pledged that the university will “redouble” its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“We don’t have to pretend to be neutral, but we do have a job to do,” Roth said in a statement released on Wednesday.
Roth condemned Trump’s pledge to conduct “mass deportations” of illegal immigrants and further promised that the university will do “everything it can to protect the most vulnerable among us,” particularly “students who may be undocumented.” Roth stated that the university will not voluntarily assist in any federal deportation efforts.
Citing Trump’s pledges to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion departments, Roth reaffirmed Wesleyan’s commitment to DEI by stating that “our Office for Equity and Inclusion has a vital role to play in our educational mission” and further promised that the university will “redouble [its] efforts.”
Wesleyan University’s Office for Equity and Inclusion website includes a “resources for antiracists” page that recommends How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi, White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo, and Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. The Office for Equity and Inclusion further suggests supporting the Black Lives Matter organization, the ACLU, and the Transgender Gender-Variant & Intersex Justice Project.
Wesleyan University also created its “Resource Center” in 2016 after students led a campaign that advocated for “administrative accountability, transparency and deliberate anti-racist measures,” according to the Resource Center’s website. The center’s programming includes a support group for “students of color to talk about their healing and self-care journeys,” an environmental-justice series of events to examine “intersections of power, privilege, oppression, sustainability, and the environment,” and “self-care study breaks.” The Wesleyan Resource Center also promotes various initiatives and student groups at the university, including the “WesBurlesque” annual burlesque show that donates all proceeds to Planned Parenthood and the “Wesleyan Doula Project” that provides “free and compassionate support for people making the decision to terminate their pregnancies”
“Through collaborating with students to promote social justice programming and activism, intersectional education and awareness initiatives, and community advocacy, the [Resource Center] strives to provide a safe and inclusive environment for underrepresented students, faculty, staff, alumni, Middletown community members, and their allies to connect, learn, organize, and lead,” reads the center’s website.
In his statement on Wednesday, Roth defended higher education and academic freedom, stating that “The classroom must remain a space for professors to share their professional expertise with students who could in turn explore ideas and methodologies without fear of imposed orthodoxies.”
On the 2025 free-speech rankings by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Wesleyan University was ranked #152 out of 251 colleges with a “slightly below average” score on speech climate. Earlier in 2024, an undergraduate at Wesleyan University who is “firmly in the progressive camp” wrote an opinion article in the student-run newspaper stating that “Wesleyan is a liberal echo chamber” and “No matter how one spins it, politics is nearly always approached from the left on this campus.”
Roth has been a critic of Trump for years, and wrote an opinion article in 2016 for the Huffington Post urging “bystander intervention” to “stop the Trump calamity.”
“As the president of a nonprofit university, I am advised by legal counsel that I should not take public positions in elections. . . and over the 15 years or so that I’ve been a college president, I have encouraged electoral participation without being overt about where I stand in regard to any particular candidate,” Roth wrote in 2016. He continued, “This year is different. Donald Trump has been using the tools characteristic of demagogues and fascists to do the only thing that really matters to him: gaining power. He will say anything that he thinks will help him win, and there is no telling what he will do if he is successful.”