"We have a right to exist," and "Defending your people is a social duty, not an anti-social crime." Daniels called the posters, left by a racist organization, a "transparent effort to bait people into overreacting, thereby giving a minuscule fringe group attention it does not deserve, and that we decline to do." He also noted that the views of the organization behind the posters "are obviously inconsistent with the values and principles we believe in here at Purdue." In January 2017, students staged a sit-in of Hovde Hall, where Daniels's office is located. The occupation continued for 91 days. During that time, Daniels refused to meet the students. In 2019, Daniels met with Purdue student government leaders to discuss a controversy surrounding a Purdue student who was unable to buy cold medicine when an off-campus CVS clerk did not accept his Puerto Rican driver's license as valid. Following the scheduled meeting, Daniels had an impromptu 30-minute meeting with student activists who had various concerns about diversity at Purdue. At one point in the conversation, Daniels described his ongoing efforts to recruit an African American faculty member by calling the individual "one of the rarest creatures in America—a leading, I mean a really leading, African-American scholar". The University Senate's Equity and Diversity Committee issued a statement calling Daniels's phrasing "problematic" stating, "The idea that there is a scarcity of leading African American scholars is simply not true". In a New York Times op-ed, G. Gabrielle Starr, president of Pomona College, wrote, "In just a few sentences, Mr. Daniels seemed to question the possibility of sustained black excellence:. Following the criticism, Daniels issued an apology. "I retract and apologize for a figure of speech I used in a recent impromptu dialogue with students...The word in question was ill chosen and imprecise". In June 2020, as the Black Lives Matter movement gained national momentum, Daniels endorsed the creation of a university system-wide task force to examine racial inequality in response to the murder of George Floyd and other incidents of racial injustice. The task force resulted in the inclusion of racial equity as one of five goals in Purdue's $260 million strategic plan update. As of May 2021, Daniels had helped Purdue raise $27 million for minority scholarship and recruitment efforts in that year, an increase of about 15% over the previous year. Each fall, Daniels sends a message to the entire campus