Some Schools Act After Trump’s D.E.I. Orders. Others Say They’ll Resist.

Students at North Carolina’s public universities can no longer be required to take classes related to diversity, equity and inclusion to graduate.

The University of Akron, citing changing state and federal guidance, will no longer host its “Rethinking Race” forum that it had held annually for more than two decades.

The University of Colorado took down its main D.E.I. webpage, and posted a new page for an Office of Collaboration.

Around the country, dozens of universities and colleges have begun to scrub websites and change programming in response to President Trump’s widening crusade against diversity and inclusion. But much remains unclear about the legality and reach of President Trump’s new orders.

So some schools are simply watching and waiting.

“It’s meant to create chaos in higher education, and in that it’s been successful,” said Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, of the attempts by President Trump to end D.E.I. activity on campuses. “The responses are all over the map.”

The president has signed several executive orders seeking to ban diversity practices across the federal government, educational institutions and private companies. The orders are sweeping in their language and scope. One demands that agencies and schools terminate D.E.I. offices, positions, action plans, grants and contracts. Another bans “gender ideology and discriminatory equity ideology” and threatens to withhold federal funding from schools that do not promote “patriotic” education.