Syracuse mandates freshman students take intersectional privilege seminar 

Syracuse University in New York makes new students take a seminar where online resources promote claims about so-called white privilege.

The school is doing this even after it closed its diversity office.

Freshmen and transfer students must take First Year Seminar, which Syracuse calls FYS 101. The one-credit course lasts 15 weeks. Academic advisers enroll students⁠, who normally take it during their first semester.

The requirement survived changes Syracuse made after President Donald Trump returned to office. His administration has cracked down on racial preferences⁠ in higher education.

In July 2025⁠, Syracuse announced it would close its Office of Diversity and Inclusion. University leaders said its staff would move into human resources and comprise a unit focused on employee development and campus relations.

The school tied the move to federal law compliance.

However, a Syracuse library resource page⁠ for the required seminar titled “Intersectional Privilege, Oppression, and Marginalization” was available until just a few days before publication.

The page said “ALL white people benefit from white advantage in various ways,” not making antiracist choices helps uphold white supremacy, and minorities can’t be racist.

“Oppression = prejudice + power,” the page also claimed, directing students to some of Ibram X. Kendi’s work. It also links to the New York Times’ 1619 Project and an essay demanding reparations.

The university lists the materials as course resources.

Syracuse created this seminar five years ago. Its 2024 description⁠ said students would talk about their identities before receiving diversity lessons and examining privilege in the community.

But some students criticized the course.

In a November 2022 report⁠ by the Daily Orange, Syracuse’s student newspaper, then-freshman Julia Moreno said the seminar’s structure singles out many students.

“Every single question is about you,” Moreno said. “But nobody wants to share that because a lot of it’s really personal.”

Moreno told the paper the course was poorly run.

The school says the course helps students adjust to college. Its current goals⁠ also include helping students engage with different worldviews.

Other schools have shuffled their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) staff around to avoid criticism from the Trump administration.

Heartlander News published an investigation by The Center Square⁠ that found the University of Wisconsin-Madison moved nearly all employees from its former diversity division to other departments. Many kept diversity-related titles.

“The closure was purely cosmetic,” Wisconsin state Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, vice chair of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities, said in the report. “Not only is the university not tracking what is being spent, it doesn’t even have a way to measure whether it’s producing the results it was set out to produce.”

Heartlander News also reported that America First Legal asked the Justice Department to investigate Washington University in St. Louis. The group said the school kept illegal DEI practices by changing the structure and wording around.

(Image credit: Photo by Joss Broward on Unsplash)