The Department of Education released a letter last Friday threatening to cut federal funding to schools that do not eliminate “illegal” race-conscious programs — including diversity, equity and inclusion — in the next two weeks.
The move has sparked concern in higher education, including at Brown, but its direct consequences on College Hill remain uncertain.
“We vigilantly continue to review all new federal guidance and announcements, including the Dear Colleague letter issued by the U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 14,” University Spokesperson Brian Clark wrote in an email to The Herald.
“We remain committed to efforts to foster a strong academic community through initiatives that aim to help all faculty, students and staff thrive, feel welcome and participate fully in the life of the University while also complying fully with the law,” he wrote.
Brown has moved to maintain diversity programs at Brown. Earlier this month, President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 appointed Matthew Guterl as the University’s new vice president of diversity and inclusion with his appointment set to begin March 1. The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity will also be renamed the Office of Diversity and Inclusion beginning next month.
In the department’s letter, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor argues that DEI programs violate federal civil rights laws since they are “motivated by racial considerations.” He cited the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn race-based affirmative action in college admissions as a framework for this reasoning.
Luther Spoehr, a senior lecturer emeritus in education at Brown, said it is possible that Brown will be affected by the letter.
“I would guess that enforcement will be selective,” he wrote in an email to The Herald. “And that the government will choose prominent targets to serve as warnings for all the others. Brown is obviously a prominent target.”
At Brown, various program houses and affinity groups may be impacted. President Trump’s recent executive order to end DEI initiatives sparked concern for the future of these programs at Brown and other universities, The Herald previously reported.
Trainor claimed that these programs are “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming and discipline” and exhibit preferences for certain racial groups over others.
“In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students,” Trainor wrote.
The letter reaffirms that schools may not use factors such as personal essays or participation in extracurriculars as a means for determining a student’s race, “favoring or disfavoring” students in the admissions process. Trainor also specifically condemned the elimination of standardized test scores as a means of increasing a university’s racial diversity. Brown reinstated its standardized test requirement starting with the class of 2029.
“Admitting students because of a racial preference rather than because of their academic qualifications puts them at a disadvantage in the classroom,” Heather Mac Donald, a fellow at the conservative think tank the Manhattan Institute, wrote in an email to The Herald.
Mac Donald argued that complying with the letter will place more emphasis on academic skills instead of race during the admissions process. In the meantime, she wrote that underrepresented students and faculty members will “know that they were admitted and hired on their merits, not on the basis of their skin color.”
In the letter, Trainor wrote that DEI programs are discriminatory in “less direct but equally insidious ways.”
But Brian Rosenberg, a visiting professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, noted that the letter “would require the dismantling of essentially all efforts to support and even celebrate students of color as a group separate from other students.”
“My hope is that the University, and others, will not practice ‘anticipatory obedience’ in response to a threat that most agree is inconsistent with existing law and will, rather, push back,” Rosenberg wrote in an email to The Herald.
Clarification: The article’s headline and content has been edited to clarify that the Department of Education’s letter did not directly target Brown, but all schools that receive federal funding.
Cate Latimer is a university news editor covering faculty, University Hall and higher education. She is from Portland, OR, and studies English and Urban Studies. In her free time, you can find her playing ultimate frisbee or rewatching episodes of Parks and Rec.
Sophia Wotman is a University news editor covering activism and affinity & identity. She is a junior from Long Island, New York concentrating in Political Science with a focus on women’s rights. She is a jazz trumpet player, and often performs on campus and around Providence.
