Claremont McKenna College’s Civility, Access, Resource and Expression (CARE) Center celebrated its 10-year anniversary on March 4. Students and faculty spoke to CARE’s impact on campus amid threats to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from the Trump administration.
At the time of the center’s founding in 2016, students have demanded that the college do more to include students of color and address their concerns.
“Students pushed for a center to engage in dialogue … challenging the campuses to increase resources for systemic barriers,” Vince Greer, CMC assistant vice president for dialogue and diversity, said.
Since then, the CARE Center has worked to address systemic barriers within education and create a space for open conversations about politics, social issues and varying identities.
Recent federal criticisms of DEI programs as “wasteful spending,” policy changes from the U.S. Department of Education and funding cuts have increased scrutiny of DEI initiatives in higher education. These cuts have reignited debates about how colleges should address issues of free speech and identity on campus.
To Greer, the current political climate makes the CARE center and its mission “more important [now] than ever.”
“There’s just a willingness to retreat and not have those challenging discussions,” he said. “The CARE Center is critical to equip our students, to normalize having these discussions, to practice increased level[s] of understanding and awareness building.”
Nour Qarmout CM ’29 said the center also provides a supportive outlet to help students sort out their thoughts in response to overwhelming political news.
“It’s hard for students to find the space to talk about these [political] things that maybe aren’t part of [the] curriculum,” Qarmout said. “[CARE] is where all the uncomfortable conversations can happen in a place of comfort.”
Qarmout is one of the center’s CARE Fellows — a cohort of students selected through an application process who are trained to facilitate constructive dialogue across campus. Each fellow is required to host at least one event through the center. Recently organized programs have included various discussions on the implications of dismantling DEI, navigating U.S. politics as an international student and how AI should be viewed in relation to humans.
CMC students are also welcome to host events of their own through the center. Cerena Karmaliani CM ‘29 said she felt isolated following ICE violence and shootings in her hometown of Minneapolis and coordinated with CARE to create a fireside chat event to allow students to open up about violence in Minnesota.
“It didn’t feel like there was a lot of acknowledgement [of violence by ICE] on campus, to be honest,” Karmaliani said.
Karmaliani said CARE provided guidance on leading the conversation through constructive dialogue training and helped advertise the event beyond her immediate circle of friends.
“The CARE Center was super helpful in giving me support and resources,” Karmaliani said.
By facilitating student-led discussions on polarizing topics, the center equips students to engage in critical dialogue that doesn’t feel accessible in other on-campus spaces, according to CARE Center student manager Jenni Florencio CM ’26.
Florencio said the space has allowed her and her peers to navigate difficult conversations about politics and identity.
“CARE has been a space, for me, of resistance, a space where we’re able to be open and talk about things that institutionally might be censored,” she said.
As the CARE Center enters its second decade at CMC, Greer said its mission of encouraging dialogue across differences remains central to the campus community.
“It would be easier for us to just say ‘We’re not going to touch that. That’s too controversial or too taboo,’” Greer said. “CARE is pushing and challenging our community very thoughtfully to learn to better understand one another and immerse ourselves in challenging conversations that will only help to mold us.”
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