Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is raising alarms over what he calls a “politically lethal” combination of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies and mass immigration, which he says has resulted in systematic discrimination against the Trump voter base — particularly in higher education and corporate America.
In a private group chat with AI scientists and former Trump officials — screenshots of which were leaked and obtained by The Washington Post — Andreessen warned that the current trajectory of elite institutions could lead to a serious political backlash.
“The combination of DEI and immigration = Systematic discrimination against the Trump voter base,” Andreessen wrote.“The Trump voter base has figured this out. I have not yet found anyone in university leadership who will engage on this.”
Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, specifically accused elite universities of enacting policies that exclude the children of middle America from access to top-tier education.
“When these two forms of discrimination combine… they systematically cut most of the children of the Trump voter base out of any realistic prospect of access to higher education and corporate America,” he wrote.
He further explained that universities are not just guilty at the PhD level, but have created an entire “pipeline” of exclusion starting with K-12 and undergrad admissions. The result, he said, is a lack of domestic talent at the graduate level, forcing institutions to recruit PhD candidates from overseas.
“Most of the native-born kids who could have been in that pipeline were cut out of it long before you would have met them,” he told others in the chat.
Andreessen also criticized Stanford University and MIT, calling them “mainly political lobbying operations fighting American innovation.” He took aim at Stanford in particular for what he saw as retaliation against his wife, Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen, who was quietly removed as chair of the university’s philanthropy center.
“A decision that will cost them something like $5 billion in future donations,” he said.
In a recent interview with Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, Andreessen doubled down, saying:
“If you’re the parents of a smart kid where I grew up [rural Wisconsin] and you think you’re going to get them into a top university in this country, you’re fooling yourself.”
He continued:
“There’s this really fundamental question: What level of untapped talent exists in this country that a combination of DEI and immigration have basically cut out of the loop for the last 50 years?”
Andreessen and Horowitz publicly endorsed Donald Trump for president in 2024, a decision that drew praise from conservatives and backlash from tech progressives. This latest salvo continues his sharp criticism of the “coastal elite” ideology and the capture of academia by progressive politics.
