Education secretary initially ducks talk of campus protests with lawmakers

In a roughly three-minute-long opening statement in front of Senate appropriators, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona mentioned nearly every major issue in higher education today — except campus unrest.

Only after Republican nudging did Cardona address the protests, encampments and antisemitism at campuses across the country and what his department is doing to support students.

“You have more immediate means at your disposal. For instance, removing federal funds from institutions that get federal funds ... if they’re in violation of Title VI,” Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) told Cardona during a Tuesday Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing. “Are you intending to do that?”

“What's happening on our campuses is abhorrent,” Cardona told Capito, later adding: “Ultimately, if a school refuses to comply with Title VI, yes, we would remove federal dollars.”

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin.

A number of Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, in recent days have called on Cardona to cut off federal funds of colleges and universities for not cracking down hard enough of antisemitism.

Lawmakers in the upper chamber pressed Cardona in the hearing on how his department has responded to the uproar rocking college campuses around the nation.

“I would ask you to take action to protect our Jewish students and restore order on college campuses across America,” Moore Capito said in her opening remarks.

Twenty-seven GOP senators, including subcommittee ranking member Moore Capito and Labor-H Sens. Katie Britt (R-Ala.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), John Kennedy (R-La.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) sent a letter to Cardona and Attorney General Merrick Garland last week urging the department and federal law enforcement to “restore order” on college campuses. The senators suggested that the Education Department should revoke the visas of foreign nationals, such as exchange students, who have taken part in the protests.