A Black Honors College at Sacramento State highlights how diversity hasn’t wilted under Trump

The college, located within the campus library, boasts around 800 students where the cirriculum is seeped in Black studies and Black perspectives.

Amid a national crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses and in businesses nationwide, one California university is not only backing its Black students but also elevating them.

At Sacramento State—or more formally, California State University, Sacramento—around 800 students from its reported student body of 30,000 are enrolled in the Black Honors College, located in the school’s library. While the majority of students in the Black Honors College identify as Black, the school told NPR it complies with both federal and state legislation, including Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

“It’s nondiscriminatory because you can be a white student, an Asian student or Latino and be in the Black Honors College,” Luke Wood, president of Sacramento State, says. “And we have non-Black students who apply who want to have an elite, specialized experience.”

The BHC is helping Black students at the school find their tribe.

Among the initiatives championed by the college are a general education pathway for First-Year incoming scholars, bi-weekly seminars on economic empowerment, self-determination and courageous leadership, paid internships, distinct research opportunities and creative arts and more.

Faculty at the Black Honors College are selected for their track record of educating Black students and course work is taught from a Black studies perspective. Since its founding in 2023, women have made up the majority of the Honors College’s student body. Boatamo Ati Mosupyoe, the dean of the Honors College, hopes that more men will join, with an added emphasis on mentors and role models to help grow the program even more.

DEI rollbacks have been a strong focus of Trump and the Department of Education since he returned to office in January 2025. During his State of the Union address this past February, he told the gathered members of Congress, “We ended D-E-I in America!”

Last month, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service floated a rule that would strip private colleges and universities of their tax-exempt status if they offer assistance to students based on race.

“Under President Trump, this Administration is standing up for America’s students by ensuring racial discrimination has no place in American education,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive, or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature. Today’s Treasury and IRS proposed regulations establish a clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status.”

However, the Honors College is helping Sacramento State thrive in terms of Black enrollment. According to Wood, Black student enrollment continues to increase, including students who are re-enrolling and graduating.