Priscilla Chan’s tuition-free academic establishment for low-income households, The Major Faculty, is shutting down operations after practically 10 years — a transfer that comes amid anti-diversity rollbacks at her husband Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta.
In a statement on its website, the Major Faculty did not point out why it was closing its East Bay and East Palo Alto places on the finish of the 2025-2026 educational yr and mentioned solely that it was a “very troublesome determination” that got here “after a lot deliberation.”
As Business Insider pointed out, nevertheless, the closure comes not solely after cofounder Meredith Liu died in 2023, but additionally after Chan’s husband — who isn’t concerned immediately with the college’s operations — ended so-called variety, fairness, and inclusion (DEI) packages at his tech firm and at their shared philanthropic enterprise.
In February, The Guardian reported that the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the couple’s for-profit charity that funded the school, had knowledgeable staff that it was eliminating each inner and exterior DEI packages because of the “shifting regulatory and authorized panorama” surrounding such efforts.
That transfer, notably, got here just some weeks after the charity claimed it was not going to do away with its DEI packages in response to staff involved that Meta’s massive shift away from such measures simply forward of Donald Trump’s second inauguration.
Not like Meta and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, that are each for-profit entities that instituted (and subsequently reduce) inclusion packages, the nonprofit Major Faculty was fairly actually based on DEI rules.
In a description of its approach, the college notes that the youngsters and households they serve, most of whom are low-income and Latino, “could also be experiencing poverty, housing insecurity, racism, and different tense and traumatic conditions.” Although that type of language is par for the course in nonprofit world, it has been beneath assault within the Trump administration — to not point out the social networks Zuckerberg based.
No matter her private beliefs are, Chan’s appearance with Zuckerberg at Trump’s inauguration — and the swift adjustments and closures which have adopted at her firms — make it fairly clear that the social justice values espoused by her tuition-free colleges for low-income children within the Bay Space matter lower than the alliance her husband seeks with the president.
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