Trump administration exploits landmark civil rights act to fight schools’ diversity initiatives

The Trump administration has ramped up efforts to exploit civil rights laws to target diversity and equity initiatives on US campuses by characterizing them as discriminatory.

These efforts escalated this week when the Department of Education escalated its attack against Harvard University, announcing an investigation of the law school over what it claims are discriminatory practices at the school’s student-run journal, the Harvard Law Review. The investigation is one of dozens the administration has launched on the basis of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits federally funded programs from discriminating on the basis of race, color and national origin.

Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has described the investigation as part of the administration’s effort to “reorient civil rights enforcement to ensure all students are protected from illegal discrimination”. But civil rights advocates have denounced them as vague, likely unlawful and a betrayal of the spirit of the civil rights protections they purport to invoke.

“What we’re witnessing is an administration that is working very hard to turn civil rights laws against” the people trying to faithfully implement them, said Maya Wiley, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “It’s really an effort to say, ‘If you don’t do what we tell you, we will turn our considerable power against you’.”

The Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, was a landmark achievement of the civil rights movement that sought to transform a country deeply segregated on the basis of race into one where all had access to equal opportunity. While it led to historic transformations in American society, it was also immediately met with conservative backlash. Today, rightwing activists are fighting to weaken the law, which they view as “an antiwhite weapon”.

Since coming into office, Trump has issued a barrage of measures aimed at reshaping US higher education, largely through an array of executive actions banning diversity initiatives and freezing billions in public research funds for institutions that don’t align with administration priorities. Last week, the administration announced that colleges and universities would no longer be eligible to receive federal National Institutes of Health grants if they boycotted Israel or operated any diversity, equity, and inclusion programmes.

Civil rights investigations like the one against Harvard Law School are another tool. The departments of Education and Health and Human Services, which announced the investigation jointly, maintain that the school violated civil rights law when one editor at the journal suggested fast-tracking consideration of an article “because the author was a minority” and another editor flagged as “concerning” that four of five people who sought to reply to an article about police reform were “white men”.

In recent weeks, the administration has also announced investigations into 45 public and private universities that it has accused of partnering with an organisation called The PhD Project, which works to increase the numbers of students of color in doctoral programs. (The group said in a statement that this year they opened applications to anyone who shares their vision.) It also launched investigations into six other universities over what it says are “impermissible race-based scholarships” and one university for allegedly administering a programme that segregates students on the basis of race.

Sixty universities are also under investigation over alleged Title VI violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination”, and several others are facing investigations under Title IX – which prohibits sex-based discrimination – over allegations that policies supporting transgender students violate that prohibition.

Last week, the administration also announced a Title VI investigation into the New York Department of Education over a controversy surrounding the Massapequa school district’s “Chiefs” mascot – a reference to Native Americans widely viewed as racist. The federal government says it is assessing whether the state’s threat to withhold funding to the district if it does not eliminate the mascot constitutes “discrimination” on the basis of race and national origin. “It is not lost on the department that there are several mascots that refer to indigenous or ethnic groups – the Vikings, Fighting Irish, the Cowboys – and yet New York has specifically singled out Native American heritage,” McMahon said in a statement.

On Tuesday, the department announced yet another Title VI investigation into Chicago public schools over a program designed to support Black children, arguing that it “seeks to allocate additional resources to favored students on the basis of race”.

For longtime civil rights advocates, the administration’s moves mark a troubling backslide and subversion of hard-won victories.

The Trump administration’s all-out attack on diversity initiatives was buoyed by a 2023 ruling by the US supreme court against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which ended affirmative action practices at US universities, ruling that they violated the constitution’s equal protection clause.

While acknowledging that the ruling addressed admissions decisions, the Trump administration claims that “the supreme court’s holding applies more broadly”.

“At its core, the test is simple,” the education department wrote in letters it sent to dozens of universities in February. “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.”

Critics say that’s an improper, overly broad interpretation that the right has wielded to attack all kinds of equity initiatives.

Isaac Kamola, a political science professor at Trinity College whose research focuses on conservative efforts to undermine higher education, said that the Trump administration is weaponizing the supreme court decision in an effort to “redefine all campus efforts to address racial inequality as violations of the Civil Rights Act”.

“The decision was about admissions practices, it did not say that diversity didn’t matter or that diversity was unlawful,” echoed Wiley, noting that what has been dubbed “DEI” is actually a diverse set of practices aiming to promote equity. “What this administration is doing essentially is taking one supreme court opinion about college admissions and trying to turn it into a sword against everything it doesn’t like, whether it’s lawful or not.”

Harvard, where Barack Obama was the first Black leader of the Law Review journal the administration is now investigating, has long been a prime target for the right’s attacks on higher education. In April, the administration froze $2.9bn in federal funds to the university over allegations of antisemitism, and threatened to cut several more and to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status. Harvard has sued the administration in response – the first university to do so – setting off an escalating battle with the federal government.

“This investigation also exemplifies a new era of federal overreach, a tactic to pressure Harvard’s independence. It mirrors a disturbing trend of weaponizing civil rights inquiries, not to redress historic wrongs, but as retribution against institutions like Harvard for defying political will,” said Michael Williams, a co-founder of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, an alumni group established in response to the affirmative action litigation.

“Americans recognize this perversion of civil rights traditions; we will not turn our backs on the hard-fought gains from the civil rights era.”