Okay, so there’s been a lot going on lately, so it’s entirely possible you’ve missed this particular item being communicated from our vitally important alt governmental folks. Apparently, as part of the recent initiatives to “freeze DEI activity” across different kinds of academic research, including medical research, there’s a list of specific words they’re looking for in order to “find DEI research.” Since then, the same list of words have been circulating to make sure no one uses them in governmental reports. As someone who teaches and studies about communication, these directives do violence to the very nature of communication and are extremely dangerous as a result. In this post I’ll try to quickly unpack these major issues, explaining why it’s a problem, and then call you to resist these efforts in a big way.

The List of Words the Administration Is Trying to Keep Government Folks From Saying or Writing About

So yeah, here’s the full list of words that’s been circulating that governmental funding shouldn’t research and federal employees aren’t meant to use in their reports:

activism, activists, advocacy, advocate, advocates, barrier, barriers, biased, biased toward, biases, biases towards, bipoc, black and latinx, community diversity, community equity, cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, disabilities, disability, discriminated, discrimination, discriminatory, diverse backgrounds, diverse communities, diverse community, diverse group, diverse groups, diversified, diversify, diversifying, diversity and inclusion, diversity equity, enhance the diversity, enhancing diversity, equal opportunity, equality, equitable, equity, ethnicity, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, excluded, female, females, fostering inclusivity, gender, gender diversity, genders, hate speech, hispanic minority, historically, implicit bias, implicit biases, inclusion, inclusive, inclusiveness, inclusivity, increase diversity, increase the diversity, indigenous community, inequalities, inequality, inequitable, inequities, institutional, Igbt, marginalize, marginalized, minorities, minority, multicultural, polarization, political, prejudice, privileges, promoting diversity, race and ethnicity, racial, racial diversity, racial inequality, racial justice, racially, racism, sense of belonging, sexual preferences, social justice, sociocultural, socioeconomic, status, stereotypes, systemic, trauma, under appreciated, under represented, under served, underrepresentation, underrepresented, underserved, undervalued, victim, women, women and underrepresented.

EDIT TO ADD: The above list has been reported on many places, including at Gizmodo (https://gizmodo.com/the-list-of-trumps-forbidden-words-that-will-get-your-paper-flagged-at-nsf-2000559661?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2VSlEWw4ZCt–7P5SYpCs2Q7yDoZr-HzFRfM_pM4PWt1jCSVbe6pVj8io_aem_oZgj9tKZxbmLRnrY8cfHjA), here at NPR (https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/02/07/nx-s1-5289912/unprecedented-white-house-moves-to-control-science-funding-worry-researchers), and possibly originated from pages 41-43 of this government document (https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/4BD2D522-2092-4246-91A5-58EEF99750BC). Back to the original blog post!

Ummmm, Wait, Some of Those Are Just Incredibly Impractical

Please, as you look at the above words, please think about how many many usages of these words are crucial for everyday use, just in describing how the world is.

No More “Blunt Force Trauma” On an Autopsy Report????

I mean, outside of the fact that I literally study trauma, think about how no one doing medical research or health communication or creating an autopsy report would be able to talk about physical trauma at all.

So, We’re Just Not Meant to Do Studies on Female Mice?

And outside of the fact that women are, you know, half the population and oddly want to exist and have rights, think about trying to write ANYTHING without mentioning the word. Or, you know, scientists studying female mice—whelp, you’re not meant to talk about that at all?

WAAAAIIIIIITTTTTT? Are We All One—Oops, Not Supposed to Use the Word—Gender Now??????

Or, wait, is the idea that they want us all to identify as a single gender? Without ever actually talking about gender at all? Because I thought the idea was that there were only meant to be two genders, but we couldn’t actually say that idea at all without mentioning the word gender.

Completely Impractical, This.

You see the problem here, right? The thing is that it doesn’t ever make sense, even outside of the MASSIVE first amendment violation issues going on here, and the attempts to do violence to entire groups of real human beings by not talking about them or their problems, to just ban entire groups of words.

It’s like when they try to “ban pronouns.” You simply can’t effectively ban parts of speech. It’s not remotely possible. I’ve previously talked about the anti-pronoun rhetoric here.

Why It’s Impossible to “Ban Diversity”

Speaking of words on the list, let’s talk about the word diversity, shall we? And cultural differences. Because one of the very very very basic communication principles we have in the way we talk to one another is that the “technology” of language and non-verbal communication only exists because, at heart, every single human has a different perspective on the world.

Let me say that again: WE WOULD NOT NEED WORDS IF WE ALL THOUGHT ALIKE.

Which means that diversity and difference are baked into who we are as humans, whether we’re “allowed” to use those words or not.

A Thought Experiment

And that’s the thing, even outside of the clumsiness, I get the least about anti-DEI initiatives. I mean, sure (just as a thought experiment—I’m not advocating—oops, there’s one of those pesky words again! for this here AT ALL), complain that you want to preserve your patriarchal white supremacist ideologies all you want, and try to ban equity and inclusion as a result.

You’ll run into a million legal challenges for good reason, but sure, let’s for a second imagine people tried to do that.

Because let’s be clear, all of the actions being taken by the present administration make it clear that’s what this administration is really trying to do.

When the D in DEI is Impossible to Erase

But even if you managed to do that—and it’s not like those social hierarchies don’t already exist—in the real world where the rest of us live, diversity still exists.

As do women.

And LGBT people (I actually find it pretty amusing that LGBTQ+ and LGBTQIA+ aren’t on the list, by the way.)

Black and Latinx people exist.

People with disabilities exist.

Etc. etc. etc.

Such an Awful List!

You get the drift. I mean, don’t get me wrong, this is an awful list.

It’s also an incredibly impractical list.

And it violates about a million foundational long-on-the-books laws to try to outlaw people from, say, talking about the ways in which we all have different perspectives on the world.

That latter is an odd strength about this list, though, because it makes it incredibly easy to sue about.

What We Can Do In Response to This Garbage

So, what to do in response to this garbage?

1. Do not obey in advance, obviously. Use these words as much as you need to. Speak up on behalf of vulnerable groups and their reality. Point out to others how hard it is to live without these words practically, and what it would mean to have government communications and things like medical research without them entirely.  
2. If you want help explaining to people why this kind of thing matters, read and recommend that others read the fiction book Ella Minnow Pea, which is an easy to read book along a similar theme as this list. It’s about a community that tries to start outlawing communication without particular letters of the alphabet. (If you finish that one and want a little inspiration, may I also suggest Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books and The Lion Women of Tehran? Very relevant and helpful and inspirational just now, those.)
3. If someone tells you you can’t use the above words, sue. If it doesn’t affect you as specifically, support the ACLU and other grassroots legal organizations doing the heavy lifting about suing about this stuff. There’s a great litigation tracker keeping track of the lawsuits against the administration here: https://www.justsecurity.org/107087/tracker-legal-challenges-trump-administration-actions/
4. Keep up with news from your alt governmental groups on Facebook and BlueSky (alt National Park Service, alt NIH, Alt CDC, alt FEMA, etc.). Also follow Jay Kuo and others for updates on the legal news.
5. Call your Congressional (and state, if this kind of thing is happening at the state level as well) reps daily. The 5Calls app is great–it gives you numbers to call for your Congressional reps and keeps you up to date on which issues to call about and ideas of what to say. I tend to choose 2-3 issues per day and leave a voicemail about each issue when I can’t call during usual hours. Express your outrage about this. And speaking of research and communication, please express your outrage that health communication is also currently banned from federal agencies as well, which means things like food recalls aren’t being reported. And about the fact that they’re trying to push through major cuts to funding of research on things like cancer, far outside of “DEI” issues.
6. Get in touch with your local Indivisible Group or other organizations working to help make society more reasonable again. Take action.

That’s enough to get started, for the moment at least. I’m going to wrap this up for now.

A Final Charge

Go team #AssertiveSpirituality! Let’s continue to do what we can, where we are, with what we’ve got, toward a healthier world for us all. We can do this thing.

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