Portland State University is not ditching its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. But administrators are reorganizing the university’s current DEI structure.

PSU President Ann Cudd has announced a series of structural changes that will start taking effect in 2026.

Among them, the student support services currently within Global Diversity and Inclusion, including multicultural student services and student retention programs, will move to the Office of Academic Affairs. Global Diversity and Inclusion as a separate office will close.

The Office of Equity and Compliance will transition to a newly created Office of Equity, Compliance & Internal Audit. Cudd’s July 28 message said the university will hire a new, university-wide chief diversity officer, reporting to the president and working with departments across campus.

Katy Swordfisk, a spokesperson for the university, said some positions will be eliminated and some will be created. But she said the changes will come in two phases and won’t take effect until Jan. 1, so it’s premature to say yet how many jobs will be impacted.

In an email to students on Tuesday, Ame Lambert, the vice president of Global Diversity & Inclusion at PSU, responded to the changes.

“We are dreamers and possibility thinkers, but we do not believe in, or advocate for, toxic positivity,” she wrote. “We will feel all the emotions, and my team and I have felt all of them since we got the news last Monday.”

With the closure of GDI, Lambert’s position will no longer exist under the plan Cudd is pursuing.

In the Tuesday email, Lambert said that as the community grieves, adjusts and prepares to close, the campus should also “honor, celebrate and codify the wins and impact of the last 15 years for the future to remember after we are gone.”

University says changes are unrelated to federal stance on DEI

According to a timeline Lambert shared, PSU hired its first Chief Diversity Officer in 2010, along with the establishment of the GDI office the university is now closing. Lambert acknowledged that there are details of the latest changes that are still being worked out.

“Leadership is hard… and we recognize the many headwinds facing the institution,” Lambert wrote. “We also recognize the impact and losses that will occur, especially at this time in our institutional and national history, and think it is very important to acknowledge them.”

These changes are coming while the university is under a Title VI federal civil rights investigation for alleged antisemitism last year.

Separately in Portland this past week, Mayor Keith Wilson ordered city bureaus to change the wording for city programs that benefit minority groups so they would better comply with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI directives.

Spokesperson Swordfisk said the changes at Portland State have “nothing to do with the federal administration.”

This decision is based, in part, on a recommendation made to PSU administration in 2022 by the Huron Consulting Group, she said. The university partnered with Huron, as described on the university’s website, to conduct a comprehensive review of support services and operations.

Swordfisk said the changes, as a result, have been “carefully considered and refined over time through community conversations about our administrative structure with an eye toward streamlining pathways and services for student success.”

“The consolidation of administrative functions under the Office of Academic Affairs — also known as a ‘strong provost’ model — is a common practice at many universities and allows for the streamlining of operations and an improvement in overall student experience,” she wrote in a statement to OPB.

Cudd’s announcement last week also said the university will begin the search for a new provost. Current provost Shelly Chabon’s term ends next year.

“By bringing together all student services and all steps in the student journey — from application to matriculation to graduation — in one unit,” Swordfisk said, “we are better equipped to help students navigate their PSU experience and find success.”

Swordfisk said that as an emerging Minority Serving Institution, it is essential they continue to serve and support diverse students. More than half of the 20,470 students at PSU identify as Black, Indigenous or people of color.

“PSU’s values of equity, inclusion, belonging,” Swordfisk said, “and support for students with diverse backgrounds will not change.”

Student leader questions the changes

Brady Roland is the president of the Associated Students of Portland State University, Portland State’s student government. She’s a rising junior studying public health and sociology.

She said it’s quiet on campus right now because it’s summer, but the student leaders like her who heard the news recently were largely confused and trying to piece together information.

“From what [Lambert] sent out? You know, it doesn’t look awesome,” Roland said. “It looks like there will be a lot of faculty layoffs.”

Roland said that in her two years at PSU, she’s heard students bring up “administrative bloat” at every board meeting, asking questions like, “Why are there so many administrators at the school? Why are you cutting faculty?”

“They’ve always wanted to respond to that and do something,” she said, “but to cut GDI was just not the right answer, in my opinion.”

Roland says she’s still learning about the changes, but she’s concerned that moving many of the GDI office’s functions under academic affairs, a student-facing department, will mean that some of these DEI offerings won’t be as readily available to staff, faculty and others in the campus community.

“After getting to know more administrators on a personal level and hearing about what they want for our university and how they plan to resist Trump’s oligarchy, I have a lot of faith and respect for many administrators on that front,” she said.

“But do I think that my school always is moving two steps forward, one step back? Yes.”

Her biggest concern? That student voices aren’t being included in the process. Or if they are, it’s after major changes like this are announced.

Roland said she feels like the administrators’ intentions are good, but they’re missing an important step.

“They don’t consult the students that are directly impacted by these decisions.”

OPB higher education reporter Tiffany Camhi contributed to this story.

News Source : https://www.opb.org/article/2025/08/05/portland-state-university-shutters-dei-office-in-effort-to-restructure/