Tag: investigation

  • FIRE statement on Pentagon investigation of video calling on troops to refuse illegal orders

    FIRE statement on Pentagon investigation of video calling on troops to refuse illegal orders

    On Nov. 24, the Pentagon announced it would initiate a review of Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain. The announcement comes six days after Kelly and other elected officials released a video calling on U.S. troops to refuse illegal orders. The group did not identify any specific illegal orders. Notably, service members already take an oath to uphold the Constitution.

    The Pentagon’s decision follows a Truth Social post from President Trump, saying that the video was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH.” He later walked back the post, saying, “I would say they’re in serious trouble. I’m not threatening death, but I think they’re in serious trouble. In the old days, it was death. That was seditious behavior.”

    The following statement can be attributed to Greg Lukianoff, president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

    The Pentagon’s actions are clear retaliation for something Sen. Kelly is entirely within his rights to say. America’s servicemembers already take an oath to uphold the Constitution, which includes not following illegal orders. The argument that the video’s message is sedition, or otherwise unprotected by the First Amendment, is flatly wrong.

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  • Texas Gov. Orders Financial Investigation of Texas Southern

    Texas Gov. Orders Financial Investigation of Texas Southern

    An auditor said that staffing vacancies at Texas Southern University had contributed to financial mismanagement.

    Istockphoto.com/michelmond

    Texas governor Greg Abbott and lieutenant governor Dan Patrick have ordered an investigation of Texas Southern University, a historically Black institution in Houston, after a state audit found evidence of financial mismanagement and bookkeeping inconsistencies, The Texas Tribune reported. Patrick also said he would look into freezing state funding to the institution.

    The audit found 700 invoices, totaling $280 million, linked to contracts that were listed as expired in the institution’s database. Another 800 invoices, worth $160 million, were dated before the purchases were approved, the Tribune reported. TSU was also months late in turning in financial statements for the past two fiscal years.

    The auditor attributed the errors to staffing vacancies, poor asset oversight and weak contracting processes.

    TSU officials said they had already fixed some of the issues outlined in the audit.

    “Texas Southern University has cooperated with the state auditor in evaluating our processes,” officials said in a statement. “The University enacted corrective measures prior to the release of the interim report, including a new procurement system. We look forward to gaining clarity and continuing to work with the state auditor to ensure transparency for all taxpayers of Texas.”

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  • Deadly Lincoln University mass shooting: Vigil held on campus; investigation continues (Fox 29 Philadelphia)

    Deadly Lincoln University mass shooting: Vigil held on campus; investigation continues (Fox 29 Philadelphia)

     

    Detectives believe multiple shooters were involved in a mass shooting that occurred during Lincoln University’s homecoming that left a 20-year-old Wilmington, Delaware man dead and six others injured.

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  • Berkeley Releases 160 Names, Complies With U.S. Investigation

    Berkeley Releases 160 Names, Complies With U.S. Investigation

    The names of faculty, students and staff were contained in documents related to a federal investigation on alleged campus antisemitism.

    Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

    The University of California, Berkeley, told about 160 faculty, staff and students on Sept. 4 that their names appeared in documents officials gave to the Trump administration, which is investigating the university’s response to reports of campus antisemitism, The New York Times reported. 

    According to Berkeley, the 160 names provided to the Education Department in compliance with the investigation include people accused of or affected by antisemitic incidents, as well as those who filed complaints about antisemitism on campus.

    Berkeley is one of numerous higher education institutions the Trump administration is investigating for alleged antisemitism, including the University of California, Los Angeles. The UC system is also weighing Trump’s demands that UCLA pay the government a $1.2 billion settlement to restore $584 million in frozen federal research funding.  

    Berkeley’s decision to hand over the 160 names comes two months after House Republicans grilled Berkeley’s chancellor, Rich Lyons, and two other university leaders at a hearing about their alleged failures to protect Jewish students from discrimination and harassment. At the hearing, Lyons said the university has an “obligation to protect our community from discrimination and harassment” and uphold the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech.

    While some alumni criticized Berkeley’s compliance with the Trump administration’s investigation, the UC system said in a statement to the Times that it’s “committed to protecting the privacy of our students, faculty, and staff to the greatest extent possible, while fulfilling its legal obligations.”

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  • Haverford College faces Education Department investigation into antisemitism

    Haverford College faces Education Department investigation into antisemitism

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     Dive Brief:

    • The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Haverford College in Pennsylvania over allegations the institution hasn’t done enough to respond to campus antisemitism.
    • The department cited unspecified “credible reporting” that senior leaders at the small liberal arts college told Jewish students who reported harassment that they should not expect to be safe, instead telling them to be brave.
    • Haverford is the latest college facing a federal investigation into antisemitism as the Trump administration seeks to exert increasing control over the higher education sector.

    Dive Insight:

    The Education Department’s investigation into Haverford focuses on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin at institutions that receive federal funds.

    “Like many other institutions of higher education, Haverford College is alleged to have ignored anti-Semitic harassment on its campus, contravening federal civil rights law and its own anti-discrimination policies,” Craig Trainor, the department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, said in a Wednesday statement.

    A spokesperson for Haverford confirmed Thursday that the college had received a copy of the complaint and is reviewing it.

    In May, Republican lawmakers called the leaders from three colleges, including Haverford, before the House education committee to discuss how they’ve responded to allegations of antisemitism on their campuses. Committee Chair Tim Walberg said he called Haverford to testify because relatively small colleges were “seeing shocking rises in anti-Jewish incidents and rhetoric” and “antisemitism has taken root at Haverford College.“

    Haverford President Wendy Raymond told legislators that the roughly 1,500-student college hadn’t “always succeeded in living up to our ideals” but that she remained “committed to addressing antisemitism and all issues that harm our community members.”

    Haverford’s handling of campus tensions since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing Middle East conflict have received mixed responses from students.

    In 2024, a group of Jewish Haverford students, faculty, alumni and parents sued the college over allegations it failed to protect Jewish students and ensure students could participate in classes “without fear of harassment if they express beliefs about Israel that are anything less than eliminationist.” 

    Despite questions about the student lawsuit, Raymond declined to discuss individual reports of alleged antisemitism or disciplinary actions with lawmakers.

    The plaintiffs amended their lawsuit in January after U.S. District Judge Gerald McHugh dismissed the case, but he again granted Haverford’s request to dismiss the complaint in June. McHugh ruled that the students’ arguments failed to meet the threshold for a Title VI claim, including by failing to show that the college had “deliberate indifference” to antisemitism.

    “While Plaintiffs paint a picture of a stressful campus climate for Jewish students, many of the incidents pled fall within the protection of the First Amendment,” McHugh wrote in his decision. He also said the plaintiffs did not demonstrate a “concrete educational impact” resulting from the alleged incidents.

    Other Jewish students defended Haverford in an op-ed in the college’s independent student newspaper, saying the college teaches them “to engage critically with different viewpoints.” The op-ed, published prior to Raymond’s testimony, also criticized the House education committee, alleging it was weaponizing antisemitism and calling the scheduled hearing “unmistakably an excuse to target the most vulnerable people on our campus.” 

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  • UC Will “Dialogue” With Feds Over Civil Rights Investigation

    UC Will “Dialogue” With Feds Over Civil Rights Investigation

    The UC system says it will “engage in dialogue with the federal administration” over grant cuts.

    Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

    The University of California system announced Wednesday that it would negotiate with the federal government. The response comes a day after the Department of Justice’s deadline for the institution to express its interest in finding a “voluntary resolution agreement” to the agency’s investigation into antisemitism on the University of California, Los Angeles, campus. 

    On the line is—according to a UC estimate—$584 million in funding that at least three different federal agencies announced they were suspending in the week between the DOJ’s July 29 letter to system officials and its Aug. 5 deadline for them to respond.

    If the UC system comes to a resolution with the Trump administration, UCLA would become the first public university to openly make a deal with the federal government to restore grant funding. In the past month, Columbia and Brown Universities have agreed to collectively pay hundreds of millions of dollars to get their funding back.

    In the two-paragraph statement, UC system president James B. Milliken said, “Our immediate goal is to see the $584 million in suspended and at-risk federal funding restored to the university as soon as possible,” but he argued that the “cuts do nothing to address antisemitism.”

    “The extensive work that UCLA and the entire University of California have taken to combat antisemitism has apparently been ignored,” he said. “The announced cuts would be a death knell for innovative work that saves lives, grows our economy, and fortifies our national security. It is in our country’s best interest that funding be restored.”

    The DOJ’s July 29 letter to the system said its months-long investigations, which remain ongoing, have so far found that UCLA violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in its response to a protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024.

    In a press release about the letter, Attorney General Pam Bondi said, “DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.” The agency said in the letter that it is prepared to sue by Sept. 2 “unless there is reasonable certainty that we can reach an agreement.”

    But the Trump administration still hasn’t made clear what exactly it wants UCLA to do. Unlike with Columbia and Harvard, the federal government hasn’t listed its overarching demands. And the administration doesn’t appear to only be interested in addressing last year’s encampment at UCLA.

    In their own letters to UCLA last week, the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department announced funding suspensions, citing UCLA’s failure “to promote a research environment free of antisemitism and bias” and saying it “endangers women by allowing men in women’s sports and private women-only spaces.” Both agencies also accused UCLA of considering race in admissions.

    The Health and Human Services agency, which includes the National Institutes of Health, didn’t provide Inside Higher Ed with NIH’s grant suspension letter, and an HHS spokesperson declined to comment Wednesday. A DOJ spokesperson also declined to comment, and the White House didn’t respond to a request for comment. UC system spokespeople didn’t provide interviews or answer written questions.

    UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a separate statement that the institution is doing everything it can “to protect the interests of faculty, students and staff—and to defend our values and principles.”

    “We will continue to hold town halls, convene office hours and share information with you, particularly those who are in the most directly affected areas,” Frenk told his employees. “This includes departments that rely on funding from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and Department of Energy.”

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  • GMU President Responds to Civil Rights Investigation

    GMU President Responds to Civil Rights Investigation

    In a pointed letter to the George Mason University community Wednesday, President Gregory Washington defended his institution against the Trump administration, which launched an investigation last week into the university’s alleged violations of Title VI.

    According to an announcement from the Education Department, GMU “illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion.”

    In his letter, Washington vowed to “cooperate fully” with the Office for Civil Rights.

    “I can assure you that George Mason has always operated with a commitment to equality under the law, ever since our inception,” he wrote. ”It is simply the Mason way, and in my experience, it has not discriminated based on race, color, national origin, or otherwise. Our diversity efforts are designed to expand opportunity and build inclusive excellence—not to exclude or advantage any group unlawfully.”

    He offered a brief history of Title VI—which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in federally funded programs—and the rest of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Then, without naming any names, he essentially accused the Trump administration of willfully misinterpreting the law.

    “Today, we are seeing a profound shift in how Title VI is being applied,” he wrote. “Longstanding efforts to address inequality—such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups—are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful. Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory.

    “This shift represents a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written: not to erase difference, but to protect individuals from exclusion and to enable equal opportunity for all.”

    He noted that GMU—which enrolls roughly 40,000 students—admits 90 percent of applicants and has more Pell-eligible students than any other institution in Virginia.

    The university’s mission “includes the belief that diversity includes thought, background, and circumstance and any attempt to artificially redefine our diversity, as one of race-based exclusivity, is doomed to fail no matter who ends up being excluded,” he wrote.

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : HEI Investigation: Campus.edu

    Higher Education Inquirer : HEI Investigation: Campus.edu

    In a sector under constant strain, Campus.edu is being heralded by some as the future of community college—and by others as a slick repackaging of the troubled for-profit college model. What many don’t realize is that before it became Campus.edu, the company was known as MTI College, a private, for-profit trade school based in Sacramento, California.

    Campus.edu rebranded in 2020 under tech entrepreneur Tade Oyerinde, is backed by nearly $100 million in venture capital. Campus now markets itself as a tech-powered alternative to traditional community colleges—and a lifeline for students underserved by conventional higher ed.

    The rebranding, however, raises red flags. While Campus.edu pitches a student-first mission with attractive promises—zero-cost tuition, free laptops, elite educators—the model has echoes of the troubled for-profit sector, with privatization, outsourcing, and digital-first delivery taking precedence over public accountability and academic governance.

    The Promises: What Campus.edu Offers

    Campus.edu markets itself with a clean, six-step path to success. The pitch is aspirational, accessible, and designed to appeal to working-class students, first-generation college-goers, and those shut out of elite institutions. Here’s what the company promises:

    1. Straightforward Application – A simple application process, followed by matching with an admissions advisor who helps identify a student’s purpose and educational fit.

    2. Tech for Those Who Need It – A free laptop and Wi-Fi access for students who lack them, ensuring digital inclusion.

    3. Personal Success Coach – Each student is assigned a personal success coach, offering free tutoring, career advising, and 24/7 access to wellness services.

    4. Elite Educators – Courses are taught live via Zoom by faculty who also teach at top universities like Stanford and Columbia.

    5. Enduring Support – Whether transferring to a four-year college or entering the workforce, Campus promises help with building skills and networks.

    6. More Learning, Less Debt – For Pell Grant-eligible students, Campus markets its programs as costing nothing out-of-pocket, with some students completing degrees debt-free.

    It’s a compelling narrative—combining social mobility, digital access, and educational prestige into a neat online package.

    Behind the Curtain: MTI College and the For-Profit Legacy

    Campus.edu did not rise out of nowhere. It emerged from the bones of MTI College, a long-running, accredited for-profit vocational school. MTI offered hands-on training in legal, IT, cosmetology, and health fields—typical offerings in the for-profit world. The purchase and transformation of MTI into Campus.edu allowed Oyerinde to retain accreditation, avoiding the long and uncertain process of seeking approval for a brand-new college.

    This kind of maneuver—buying a for-profit and relaunching it under a new brand—is not new. We’ve seen similar strategies with Kaplan (now Purdue Global), Ashford (now the University of Arizona Global Campus), and Grand Canyon University. What makes Campus.edu unique is the degree to which it blends Silicon Valley aesthetics with the structural DNA of a for-profit college.

    Missing Data, Big Promises

    Campus.edu boasts high engagement and satisfaction, but as of now, no independent data on student completion, debt outcomes, or long-term career impact is publicly available. The company remains in its early stages, with aggressive growth goals and millions in investor backing—but little regulatory scrutiny.

    With investors like Sam Altman (OpenAI), Jason Citron (Discord), and Bloomberg Beta, the pressure to scale is intense. But scale can come at the expense of quality, especially when students are promised the moon.

    Marketing Meets Memory

    Campus.edu is savvy. Its marketing strikes all the right notes: digital equity, economic mobility, mental health, and student empowerment. It presents itself as the antidote to everything wrong with higher education.

    But as its past as MTI College shows, branding can obscure history. And as for-profit operators adapt to a new digital age, it’s essential to distinguish innovation from opportunism. Without transparency, regulation, and democratic oversight, models like Campus.edu could replicate the same old exploitation—with better user interfaces.

    The stakes are high. For students already at the margins, a false promise can be more damaging than no promise at all.

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  • EEOC Initiates Investigation Into Harvard University Over Racial Discrimination – CUPA-HR

    EEOC Initiates Investigation Into Harvard University Over Racial Discrimination – CUPA-HR

    by CUPA-HR | May 19, 2025

    On April 25, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Acting Chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a Commissioner’s Charge against Harvard University announcing that the EEOC is investigating whether “Harvard may have violated and may be continuing to violate Title VII [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] by engaging in a pattern or practice of disparate treatment against white, Asian, male, or straight employees, applicants, and training program participants in hiring, promotion (including but not limited to tenure decisions), compensation, and separation decisions; internship programs; and mentoring, leadership development, and other career development programs.”

    The charge also covers “entities managed by, affiliated with, related, or operating jointly with or successors to” Harvard University. This includes the institution’s medical school, school of public health, and school of arts and sciences, as well as the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital, among others. The investigation will look back to 2018 for potential discrimination.

    As Acting Chair Lucas explains in the charge, the allegations “are based on publicly available information regarding Harvard, including, but not limited to, documents and information published on Harvard and its affiliates’ public webpages (including archived pages); public statements by Harvard and its leadership; and news reporting.” The charge references documents that were on Harvard’s website, including resources that tracked its decade-long progress to diversify its faculty, but these documents have since been deleted from the university’s website.

    Lucas highlights data showing a 10% drop in white men among “all ladder faculty” from 2013 to 2023 and the corresponding 10% increase in total women, nonbinary, and faculty of color in the same time span. She also points to the increase in the percentage of tenured and tenure-track faculty that are women, nonbinary, and/or people of color. Acting Chair Lucas believes Harvard took “such unlawful action in an effort to achieve, in Harvard’s own words, ‘demographic diversification of the faculty.’” Moreover, Lucas claims, “there is reason to believe that these trends and the underlying pattern or practice of discrimination based on race and sex have continued in 2024 and are ongoing.”

    The charge also emphasizes that various programs hosted by the university and its affiliates — including fellowship programs, research opportunities, and other initiatives targeted toward underserved groups, including Black and Native American students — demonstrate disparate treatment by the university and its affiliates against White, Asian, male, and straight applicants and training program participants.

    The EEOC’s Commissioner’s Charge is the latest escalation of the battle between Harvard and the Trump administration, which has frozen or paused billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts, threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status, and initiated a task force to investigate the university’s behavior towards Jewish students. The Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services are also investigating the university, including for race-based discrimination.

    In a letter in response to the Department of Education, Harvard explained:

    “Employment at Harvard is similarly based on merit and achievement. We seek the best educators, researchers, and scholars at our schools. We do not have quotas, whether based on race or ethnicity or any other characteristic. We do not employ ideological litmus tests. We do not use diversity, equity, and inclusion statements in our hiring decisions. We hire people because of their individual accomplishments, promise, and creativity in their fields or areas of expertise, and their ability to communicate effectively with students, faculty, and staff. And we take all of our legal obligations seriously, including those that pertain to faculty employment at Harvard, as we seek to offer our students the most dynamic and rewarding educational experience that we can.”

    CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for updates related to this charge and other relevant enforcement activity at the EEOC.



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  • UC Berkeley Faces Foreign Gifts Investigation

    UC Berkeley Faces Foreign Gifts Investigation

    The Education Department is investigating the University of California, Berkeley, regarding compliance with a federal law that requires colleges to disclose certain foreign gifts and contracts.

    It’s the first such review launched since President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday aimed at increasing transparency over the “foreign influence at American universities.”

    A notice of the investigation and corresponding records requests were sent to UC Berkeley on Friday morning after the department found that the university’s disclosures might be incomplete.

    “There have been widespread media reports over the last several years of Berkeley’s very substantial—in the hundreds of millions of dollars—receipt of money from foreign governments, in this case, particularly China,” a senior Education Department official said on a press call Friday. But while the development of “important technologies” has been shared with foreign nations, the funding that made it possible “has not been reported to the department, as it’s required by law,” in Section 117 of the Higher Education Act, the official added.

    Under Section 117, colleges and universities must report twice a year all grants and contracts with foreign entities that are worth more than $250,000. The department opened a similar review into Harvard last week.

    UC Berkeley administrators will have 30 days to respond with the requested records. From there, the Department of Education’s general counsel, in partnership with the Departments of Justice and Treasury, will “verify the degree to which UC Berkeley is or is not compliant.” (Unlike with Harvard, the Department of Education did not disclose the specific records it had requested from Berkeley.)

    “The Biden-Harris Administration turned a blind eye to colleges and universities’ legal obligations by deprioritizing oversight and allowing foreign gifts to pour onto American campuses,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a news release. “I have great confidence in my Office of General Counsel to investigate these matters fully.”

    Trump and congressional Republicans have been trying to crack down on the enforcement of Section 117 since the first Trump administration. Already this year, House Republicans passed a bill, known as the DETERRENT Act, which would lower the general threshold required for reporting foreign donations from $250,000 to $50,000. Gifts from some countries, like China and Russia, would have to be reported no matter the value. The Senate has yet to move forward with the bill. 

    When asked how Trump’s executive order differentiates itself from the DETERRENT Act, the department official said the legislation would be “entirely consistent with the EO’s directives” and that the department is “very supportive” of congressional Republicans’ efforts.

    “The EO basically just says, enforce the law vigorously, return to enforcement of the law, stop the nonsense and work with other agencies to do it,” the official explained. “So whether the reporting requirement is for $250,000 or more per year or the lower threshold, our approach will be the same.”

    Inside Higher Ed asked the department if there would be more investigations but has not yet received a response.

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