Last week, the Trump administration took unprecedented action against one of this nation’s premier educational institutions, canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University.
Columbia is being penalized in the aftermath of its handling of responses to the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel and complaints about antisemitism on campus. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon explained, “Institutions that receive federal funds have a responsibility to protect all students from discrimination. Columbia’s apparent failure to uphold their end of this basic agreement raises very serious questions about the institution’s fitness to continue doing business with the United States government.”
But Columbia is not the only college or university attracting scrutiny from the administration. Last month, the administration opened investigations into allegations of antisemitism at five U.S. universities, including Columbia, Cal-Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, Northwestern and Portland State. It has now added more names to the list, including George Washington University, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, New York University, the UCLA, USC and Wellesley.
Although it has doubled down on its scrutiny of higher education, the White House is trumpeting its plans to scale back the government’s role in American life. On March 6, it criticized former President Biden for adding “nearly $2 trillion in new regulations over his four years in office” and highlighted that Trump “immediately blocked these proposed rules and has initiated an aggressive deregulatory agenda that requires substantial cuts in existing regulations for each new agency rule.”
But apparently, in his view, universities need more regulation, not less.
On Feb. 14, for example, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights issued a “Dear Colleague” letter explaining its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s July 2023 decision ending affirmative action in college admissions decisions. “The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent.”
That letter entirely redefined “the nondiscrimination obligations of schools and other entities that receive federal financial assistance from the United States Department of Education” well beyond affirmative action, and “is an example of the kind of social engineering that conservatives and MAGA loyalists have long criticized.”
On Feb.19, the office issued an FAQ to clarify its letter, doubling down on some of its most expansive readings of the affirmative action decision. While acknowledging that “the facts of the case before the Supreme Court were specifically about racial preferences in university admissions,” it insisted that “the court applied broad reasoning to its decision, which has broad implications for race-based policies in education generally.”
In another less-noticed action designed to roll back anything associated with diversity, equity and inclusion, U.S. Attorney Edwin Martin wrote to the dean of the Georgetown University Law School last month noting that his institution “continues to teach and promote DEI. This is unacceptable.” He then informed the dean that no student from the law school would be considered for a position in his office as long as Georgetown “continues to teach and utilize DEI.”
The Washington Post reported, “It was not immediately clear why Martin, a devout Catholic and lawyer, apparently singled out Georgetown, the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit university with a prestigious law school. But in previous public comments, Martin has cast the school as anti-Trump.”
The Georgetown dean responded with an aggressive First Amendment defense of the school’s right to teach its subjects without government interference. He told Martin, “Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution.”
Without adding more regulations to the Federal Register, the Trump administration is acting in unprecedented ways. The president has said that overregulation “discourages innovation and infringes on the liberties of American citizens.” This also should also apply to colleges and universities.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College.
