Given the nonstop pace of the Trump administration news cycle, it would be easy to assume that all has gone quiet on the university front. Early enforcement actions to address rampant antisemitism at Columbia University and Harvard University dominated the headlines for months and offered university leaders a stark choice: accept a tough but fair civil rights settlement or risk institutional ruin.
Many college presidents and trustees were nonplussed by this opening salvo, figuring, reasonably enough, that there was safety in numbers.
With more than 60 colleges flagged for serious antisemitism concerns after Oct. 7, there simply wasn’t the bandwidth to reach civil rights settlements with scores of universities in the midst of negotiating trade deals with dozens of foreign nations. And when Education Secretary Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump extended an olive branch to universities in the form of a compact for academic excellence, not a single university took them up on it.
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But any university leader who thinks their institution can ride out the next three years without committing to serious institutional reform is being poorly advised by their lawyers. Reading the fine print of the Department of Justice’s agreements with Cornell University and Northwestern University suggests what may very well be in store for higher education civil rights enforcement for the next three years.
The top-line dollar figures — $30 million to the federal government and another $30 million investment in agricultural research for Cornell, and $75 million to the federal government for Northwestern — were widely reported, but are hardly the most significant factors in the agreement. Much like the contrast that the Trump administration drew between Columbia and Harvard, there is a dramatic contrast between Cornell and Northwestern when it comes to student admissions.
The federal government offered Cornell a shield, while hanging a Sword of Damocles over Northwestern and all other selective four-year universities. Cornell agreed to provide the federal government with admissions data disaggregated by race, GPA, and standardized tests for a comprehensive audit, whereas the federal government agreed to do its utmost to maintain the confidentiality of this data. Northwestern, on the other hand, provided the government with historical disaggregated admissions data to be “made available to the public each year for the term of the [three-year] agreement.” Although the federal government dropped all current civil rights investigations into Northwestern, it will be left stark naked and exposed if it continues to discriminate on the basis of race in admissions.
The Northwestern agreement, reached shortly after Thanksgiving, also featured a new coda, based on a Department of Education regulation finalized earlier last month. Northwestern is to “submit such data in the form consistent with the data provided to the Integrated Postsecondary Data System.” Few, aside from university bureaucrat compliance officers and professional education policy wonks, have likely ever heard of IPEDS. But Americans will be hearing a whole lot more about it next year. Pursuant to a presidential proclamation last month, McMahon finalized a regulation requiring four-year universities to report admissions data disaggregated by race, sex, and academic data.
Soon, therefore, all four-year universities will be just as exposed regarding admissions discrimination as Northwestern is now. Universities would not be presumed guilty until proven innocent, as they could have been until last week, when the Department of Justice rescinded its reliance on disparate impact in civil rights enforcement. But still, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
Federal civil rights enforcement officials from the Department of Education or the Department of Justice could initiate compliance reviews into universities that appear to be discriminating by race in admissions. To avoid an adverse finding that would render them ineligible for federal student aid dollars, universities under investigation for admissions discrimination would be wise to agree to voluntary resolutions similar in scope and character to Northwestern’s: pledge to cease all discrimination in admissions, hiring, student aid distribution, and academic programming.
While these universities are under investigation, their research grant requests could also be flagged for additional scrutiny by the Department of Health and Human Services. After all, given the choice, the federal government should obviously opt to subsidize universities that comply with rather than violate the Constitution. No essential research need be curtailed; professors from intransigent postsecondary institutions could simply leave for more constitutionally compliant ones and take their money with them.
Totally transparent data would make it far easier for the Trump administration to exert a dragnet effect to force compliance with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and the 14th Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court made their decision; this data would let Trump truly enforce it.
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It could also cause universities to reconsider the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” Part of the strategic ambiguity of the original document was that neither the reward nor the punishment for accepting or rejecting it was made entirely clear. But hopefully, the writing on the wall is a bit clearer now: For universities with a bad history of racial discrimination, or those who can’t manage to wean themselves off from racist practices, accepting parts or the whole of the compact could be an excellent way to get off the Department of Justice’s naughty list.
Trump and McMahon have some very important lessons to teach U.S. higher education. College leaders would be simply sophomoric to assume that their freshman year of Trump 47 would be the toughest.
Max Eden serves as director of Federal Education Policy at the America First Policy Institute.
