The University of Arizona is set to begin a new general education curriculum in 2026 that will require undergraduate students to complete two courses about diversity and equity, among other mandates, in order to graduate.
University spokesperson Mitch Zak said Friday he is uncertain whether current federal orders will affect the curriculum. UA President Suresh Garimella has said the university will inventory its Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility-related programs, jobs and activities to determine how to comply with the orders.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Jan. 20 saying DEI programs illegally discriminate, and his Department of Education is pledging to withhold federal funding to universities that offer them. As a result, the UA removed two diversity-related websites and deleted the phrase “committed to diversity and inclusion” from its widely used “land acknowledgement” statement over the last week. Late Friday, a federal judge in Baltimore temporarily blocked Trump’s order targeting DEI programs in federal government, saying it likely violates free speech rights.
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Starting in fall 2026, the UA’s new general education curriculum will require undergraduate students to choose “Exploring Perspectives and Building Connections” courses to fulfill the following “topical area” or “attribute” requirements:
— Diversity and equity;
— Quantitative reasoning;
— World cultures and societies;
To graduate, students will be expected to take two courses from the diversity and equity attribute, with one focused on U.S. context; two courses each from the quantitative reasoning and writing attributes; and one course from the world cultures and societies attribute.
“I will not speculate about what might change or be implemented in the future,” Susan Miller-Cochran, UA executive director of general education, told the Arizona Daily Star on Friday. “All curricula at the university are under continuous review and revision through an intensive shared governance approval process.”
The new general education curriculum will require students to fulfill the diversity and equity requirement by studying “how historical and contemporary populations have experienced inequality, considering diversity, power and equity through disciplinary perspectives,” according to information posted on the university’s website in October 2023.
By contrast, the existing general education curriculum does not require undergraduate students to take courses related to the four attributes listed above to graduate.
An upcoming University of Arizona requirement mandates students take two courses centered around diversity and equity in order to graduate. A UA spokesperson said he is uncertain whether President Donald Trump’s orders targeting DEI programs and pledging to withhold federal funding will affect the curriculum change.
As of now, the Exploring Perspectives and Building Connections webpage explains students need to choose “Exploring Perspectives” courses from four focus areas of artist, humanist, natural scientist and social scientist, each of which has courses relating to a mix of those. The current requirement is for students to complete a minimum of 12 units from those four focus areas. And in “Building Connections” courses, students need to choose and complete three courses with a minimum of nine units.
The upcoming curriculum change was initially set to go into effect in 2022 but was postponed to fall 2024, said Mark Stegeman, a UA associate professor of economics at the Eller College of Management and a faculty senator.
The change was first approved in December 2020, and later approved by the undergraduate council in March 2021, by the UA Faculty Senate in April 2021, and by the Arizona Board of Regents (ABOR) in June 2021, Miller-Cochran has previously said.
“By exploring diversity and equity both within a U.S. context and across the globe, I hope that students are able to understand a range of perspectives, aligning with the goals of our general education program,” Miller-Cochran told the Star in October 2023.
However, this curriculum has not yet gone into effect since the UA, along with Arizona State University and Northern Arizona University, wanted to incorporate ABOR’s general education policy revision in their curriculums, said Zak.
The revision to ABOR’s policy took place in February 2021 and Zak said UA’s new “gen ed” curriculum will include those revisions starting in fall 2026.
The 2021 revision, centered around refining and clarifying portions of the policy relating to American institutions and civic knowledge, added the following language to the policy:
“The study of American Institutions will include at minimum (I) how the history of the United States continues to shape the present; (II) the basic principles of American constitutional democracy and how they are applied under a republican form of government; (III) the United States Constitution and major American constitutional debates and developments; (IV) the essential founding documents and how they have shaped the nature and functions of American Institutions of self-governance; (V) landmark Supreme Court cases that have shaped law and society; (VI) the civic actions necessary for effective citizenship and civic participation in a self-governing society — for example civil dialog and civil disagreement; and (VII) basic economic knowledge to critically assess public policy options and to inform professional and personal decisions.”
Stegeman partly agreed with the explanation that the postponement took place due to ABOR revisions, and said another reason was the university wasn’t entirely ready to implement the new curriculum. He said the university was considering postponing the curriculum a third time even before any of the Trump administration’s federal orders were released.
“They were half inclined to pull the plug on it anyway, not for any political reason, but because people felt that the protocol was getting too complicated and they were looking for ways to simplify it,” he said.
The Department of Education and DOGE are warning state education agencies they may lose federal funding if they do not remove DEI programs.
“But (now) we have this new federal action, and the university has not yet formulated a complete response to that, but my guess is that it further reduces the likelihood that that attribute will ever be implemented. That’s just my guess, that’s not reflecting anyone’s decision or any announcement. But I think it was already on shaky ground and this new environment will, with high probability, be enough to kill it permanently,” said Stegeman, referring not just to the diversity and equity attribute, but to all four attributes included in the curriculum change.
Previously, when the curriculum was set to go into effect in fall 2024, the Goldwater Institute, an Arizona-based conservative think tank, said the diversity and equity mandate was discriminatory and possibly illegal.
The institute filed a public records request with the UA, seeking all information on materials for diversity and inclusion training for faculty, staff and the provost’s office, as well as copies of all course syllabi and reading lists for the university’s diversity and equity attributed courses.
The reason for the public records request, Goldwater said, was Arizona state law mandating that government-funded entities such as the UA could not place blame or judgement “on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex,” including stating that one group is “inherently morally or intellectually superior” or that an individual is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” because of their own race, ethnicity or sex.
Goldwater’s intention has always been to find out what exactly the university is going to be teaching as part of the diversity and equity attribute in the curriculum, the institute’s senior communications manager Joe Setyon said Friday.
An upcoming University of Arizona requirement mandates students take two courses centered around diversity and equity in order to graduate. A UA spokesperson said he is uncertain whether President Donald Trump’s orders targeting DEI programs and pledging to withhold federal funding will affect the curriculum change.
Reporter Prerana Sannappanavar covers higher education for the Arizona Daily Star and Tucson.com. Contact her at psannappa1@tucson.com or DM her on Twitter.