As diversity, equity and inclusion programs disappear from campuses, the message to many first-generation and immigrant students is becoming clearer: Belonging was never guaranteed.
“Dem can tek anything, but dem cyant tek yuh education“—which loosely translates to, “People can take anything from you, but they can never take away your education.”
My roots are in Guyana, a Caribbean nation, and this mantra of resilience echoed through generations and followed me from Guyana to Queens, N.Y. It is a saying that my father and grandmother always told me—but when President Donald Trump declared, “We ended DEI in America” in this year’s State of the Union, he was openly celebrating the very shift I’ve already felt in my own education.
Education in our household was not just a path to success—it was sacred. Education was the purest form of power. It was wealth, happiness and protection. It was the one thing no one could steal.
In 2024, I earned my bachelor of science in public health from Fairfield University, proud to be one step closer to a career in reproductive health and academia. Shortly after, I began my master of public health at Columbia University, believing graduate school would sharpen my purpose and expand my ability to serve.
But somewhere between my family’s dream of opportunity and my reality as a first-generation woman of color in American higher education, that promise feels fractured. The classrooms that were supposed to feel like sanctuaries now feel transactional. The degrees I once saw as instruments of liberation increasingly feel like debt: financial, emotional and cultural.
The very pathways that made my presence in these institutions possible are now being publicly dismantled through legislation and policy.
For my family, education was currency; a bridge out of generational struggle. They left Guyana so their children could access opportunities they never had: well-funded schools, expansive libraries and teachers with resources. In Guyana, access to education remains constrained by inequality, colonial legacies and weak infrastructure.
In Guyana, stark gender disparities persist; only 53 percent of women aged 15 to 64 participate in the labor force, compared to 80 percent of men. Many girls and women face overwork, low wages and sexual harassment in the workplace, while gender-based violence continues to be a major obstacle to their education and employment.
When I entered college in Fairfield, Conn., I carried more than my own ambition. I carried the unrealized dreams of my grandmother and the women in our village who were told their place was in the home, not a lecture hall. My education isn’t just for me—it’s for my family, my community and every girl back in our motherland who never got the chance and never will.
But higher education in the United States has increasingly transformed from a public good into a private marketplace. It rewards resume lines over reflection, and prestige over perspective. First-generation college students are more likely to come from low-income backgrounds and underrepresented communities, juggling coursework with part-time or even full-time jobs just to stay enrolled. Unlike their peers, they often lack the emotional and academic support systems that come from families familiar with college expectations. The result is a constant balancing act: managing financial pressures, navigating feelings of isolation, and confronting the invisible weight of being “the first.”
First-generation students are not only more likely to struggle with time management and self-doubt, but also with imposter syndrome. Some may be torn between two worlds: the family and community they come from, and the college environment that expects independence and achievement. This pressure, alongside high levels of stress and social perfectionism, makes the college experience as much an emotional battle as an academic one.
For first-generation students like me, it feels like being dropped into a game whose rules everyone else already knows. We decode financial aid forms alone. We translate academic jargon. We perform with gratitude. But gratitude does not erase isolation.
And now, in 2026, the message feels even clearer: Belonging is conditional.
… For many of us, education is not about prestige. It is about possibility, and protecting that possibility requires action.
Across the country, diversity, equity and inclusion programs are being dismantled. Books about race, gender and sexuality are being banned from libraries and schools. Professors are being silenced for teaching history too honestly. Colleges and universities are losing funding while politicians claim education has become “too woke.” The One Big Beautiful Bill Act impacts federal loans, limiting students that need it the most. When national leaders frame DEI as a threat rather than a tool for equity, it sends a signal to students like me: Your presence was tolerated, not valued.
This is not abstract politics. It is personal. As the daughter of immigrants, education was framed as the ultimate safeguard. Yet today, that safeguard feels politicized. The same institutions that once touted diversity in glossy brochures are retreating from the commitments that made those brochures possible. But what gets lost in this political debate is the value students like us bring.
Immigrant and first-generation students do not weaken universities. We strengthen them.
We expand the questions asked in classrooms. We challenge narrow agendas. We connect theory to lived reality.
In public health, in particular, the communities most affected by inequity must be represented by the people designing solutions. When institutions exclude or marginalize first-generation and immigrant students, they are not preserving academic excellence. They are shrinking it.
Higher education mirrors the inequities of the society it claims to critique. It privileges those who already know the rules. It rewards those who already belong.
And yet, I still believe in education. I believe in what happens when a first-generation student studies public health and asks why maternal mortality disproportionately affects Black and Brown women. I believe in what happens when someone raised between cultures questions whose knowledge counts in academic spaces. I believe in classrooms where DEI is not a buzzword, but a commitment to expanding who gets to produce knowledge—not the corporatized and politicized version currently under siege.
But education as liberation. Education as critical thinking. Education as the courage to ask uncomfortable questions. Education as the ability to understand power and challenge it. For many of us, attending college and graduate school is not just a career step, it is preparation to serve communities that have long been excluded from decision-making tables. When DEI initiatives are dismantled, it is not simply administrative restructuring; it is a narrowing of whose futures are considered worth investing in.
My grandmother’s words still ring true: “Dem can tek anything, but dem cyant tek yuh education.”
But today, that statement feels less like certainty and more like a question. If education can be defunded, politicized, stripped of equity initiatives, and reshaped to exclude, what exactly are we protecting? If higher education truly wants to live up to its mission, it must decide whether it exists to reproduce hierarchy or to dismantle it.
These systems must remember that for many of us, education is not about prestige. It is about possibility, and protecting that possibility requires action. It means demanding transparency when universities quietly roll back equity commitments. It means supporting student-led organizing and faculty who defend academic freedom. It means voting for leaders who see diversity not as a threat, but as democratic strength. It means funding institutions, so access does not depend on generational wealth.
If we believe education cannot be taken from us, then we must be willing to fight for the conditions that make it accessible in the first place. In a political moment where leaders celebrate the end of DEI as progress, defending its need has never felt more urgent.
Ms. Classroom wants to hear from educators and students being impacted by legislation attacking public education, higher education, gender, race and sexuality studies, activism and social justice in education, and diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Cue: a new series from Ms., ‘Banned! Voices from the Classroom.’ Submit pitches and/or op-eds and reflections (between 500-800 words) to Ms. contributing editor Aviva Dove-Viebahn at adove-viebahn@msmagazine.com. Posts will be accepted on a rolling basis.
