On March 20, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities.” The order directs the secretary of education to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities while ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely.”
The order additionally states that the secretary of education “shall ensure that the allocation of any Federal Department of Education funds is subject to rigorous compliance with Federal law and Administration policy.” According to the order, this includes compliance with federal requirements to terminate “illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’” and to terminate programs that promote gender ideology.
With respect to higher education, the executive order asserts that closure of the ED “would drastically improve program implementation.” It specifically discusses ED’s role in managing the federal student loan debt portfolio, and it claims that ED “is not a bank, and it must return bank functions to an entity equipped to serve America’s students.”
It is still unknown how Secretary McMahon will execute this order. Despite Trump’s clear intentions to close ED, Congress would still need to pass legislation to officially dissolve the department. It remains to be seen whether McMahon and the Trump administration will move ED’s subagencies and their functions to other federal agencies as speculated.
More information is needed from ED to understand how this order will be implemented. CUPA-HR will continue to monitor for additional news and guidance from ED as it relates to the order.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday afternoon ordered U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education,” marking the boldest push from the president to shut down the agency since its establishment under the Carter administration over four decades ago.
Trump also said prior to the signing that he intends to disperse the department’s core functions — such as Pell Grants, Title I funding, and providing funding and resources for students with disabilities — to other parts of the government.
“They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them,” he said. “My administration will take all lawful steps to shut down the department. We’re going to shut it down and shut it down as quickly as possible.”
The layoffs preceding the Thursday order impacted nearly 1,300 workers in addition to the nearly 600 employees who accepted “buyouts.”
Trump has repeatedly and forcefully threatened to shut down the department since his first term in the White House, citing what he has called the agency’s “bloated budget” and a need to return education control to the states. His push to dismantle the department is in line with the 2024 Republican agenda, which included closing the department to “let the States run our educational system as it should be run.”
In a Thursday speech, just prior to signing the order, Trump also cited low student test scores as reason to close the department.
“After 45 years, the United States spends more money in education by far than any other country, and spends, likewise, by far, more money per pupil than any country,” he said. “But yet we rank near the bottom of the list in terms of success. That’s where we are — like it or not — and we’ve been there for a long time.”
Abolishing the 45-year-old agency altogether, however, requires a Senate supermajority of 60 votes. A similar proposal from conservatives in the House failed in 2023 when 60 House Republicans joined Democrats to defeat the measure.
Given the current closely divided Congress, many have considered it a longshot that lawmakers would approve the department’s demise.
However, in his Thursday speech, Trump said he hopes Democrats would be onboard if the legislation to officially close the department eventually comes before Congressional lawmakers.
What will be impacted?
Although the administration technically needs Congressional action to close the department, the Thursday order tells McMahon to push its closures “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law.”
The agency is responsible for a slew of programs key to school and college operations, including conducting federal civil rights investigations, overseeing federal student financial aid, and enforcing regulations on Title IX and other education laws. It is in charge of large programs that schools depend on, like Title I, which sends aid to low-income school districts, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that supports special education services.
Following the layoffs earlier this month, the department claimed its key functions, including overseeing COVID-19 pandemic relief, wouldn’t be impacted.
“Closing the Department does not mean cutting off funds from those who depend on them — we will continue to support K-12 students, students with special needs, college student borrowers, and others who rely on essential programs,” said McMahon in a statement praising the executive order on Thursday.
However, former employees and education policy experts have warned that a department functioning on only half its former manpower could lead to a decline in oversight, guidance and student protections while creating systemic “chaos.”
“Eliminating it would roll back decades of progress, leaving countless children behind in an education system that has historically failed the most marginalized,” said Keri Rodrigues, president of National Parents Union, in a Thursday statement responding to the order. “Without federal oversight, states will have free rein to lower standards, siphon funds from public schools, and dismantle hard-won civil rights protections.”
Educators have also warned that gutting the department would eventually lead to an increase in class sizes and reduce special education services for students with disabilities.
McMahon disagreed.
“Teachers will be unshackled from burdensome regulations and paperwork, empowering them to get back to teaching basic subjects,” she said in the statement. “Taxpayers will no longer be burdened with tens of billions of dollars of waste on progressive social experiments and obsolete programs,” she added.
Order follows McMahon’s ‘final mission’
During her Feb. 13 Senate confirmation hearing, McMahon did not commit to closing the Education Department and acknowledged that closure of the entire Education Department would need congressional approval. The White House echoed those sentiments on Thursday, just prior to the order’s signing.
McMahon also said programs established by federal statute, such as Title I for low-income schools and services to students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, would need to continue with or without an Education Department. But some federal education statutes are specific about certain offices’ responsibilities within the Education Department.
Still, on McMahon’s first day on the job last month, she publicly said she was planning for the “historic overhaul” of the department as its “final mission.”
“This review of our programs is long overdue,” she wrote in a letter posted by the department that same night, supporting what she called “elimination of bureaucratic bloat here at the Department of Education — a momentous final mission — quickly and responsibly.” McMahon and Trump have touted giving education decision-making power back to the states and parents.
However, “This is not about cutting bureaucracy — it’s about gutting the protections that safeguard our children’s education,” Rodrigues said in her statement.
Democratic lawmakers have also resisted the department’s recent cuts and have already pushed back against the order that followed it today.
“President Trump’s executive order to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) and ‘return education to the states’ will be challenged in the Courts,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., ranking member on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, along with two other Democratic lawmakers, also demanded answers from the agency in a 10-page letter sent Monday, asking McMahon and Institute of Education Sciences Acting Director Matthew Soldner how the agency intends to fulfill its statutory obligations with a reduced staff.
Others are celebrating the historic order.
“With the federal government stepping back, the potential for new, transformative education models has never been greater,” said Jeanne Allen, founder and CEO of the Center for Education Reform, in a statement on Wednesday night in anticipation of today’s order. “As every great innovator knows – whether in education, business, or technology – government interference stifles progress and disruptive innovations accelerate it.”
Many Republican lawmakers are also on board with gutting the agency.
“The key to improving education is empowering parents and students and reducing the role of Washington bureaucrats,” said House Committee on Education and the Workforce Chair Tim Walberg, R-Mi., in a Thursday statement. Walberg cited the Biden administration’s decisions during the pandemic, slowed student performance in the wake of the crisis, and its LGTBQ+ inclusive policies as some reasons to cut the department.
“Bottom line, the Department of Education has failed to deliver results for America’s students and today’s actions by the Trump administration will help ensure our nation’s youth are put first.”
The Trump administration has sent questionnaires to U.S.-funded Canadian and Australian researchers asking whether their research is a “DEI project,” whether it defends against “gender ideology” and whether it reinforces “U.S. sovereignty,” according to organizations in those countries.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers, a federation that says it represents 72,000 employees, provided Inside Higher Ed a copy of one of these surveys. One question asked, “Can you confirm that your organization does not work with entities associated with communist, socialist, or totalitarian parties, or any party that espouses anti-American beliefs?” Another asked, “Does this project reinforce U.S. sovereignty by limiting reliance on international organizations or global governance structures (e.g., UN, WHO)?”
David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian association, said his organization was informed of the questionnaires by U.S. Department of Agriculture–funded researchers who received them. The White House didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s request for comment Wednesday.
“It’s just unbelievable,” Robinson said. He said the U.S. government is trying to “impose a certain ideological viewpoint on research.”
Robinson also provided a survey that he said Australian researchers received. It contains the same questions and more, including, “What impact does this project have on protecting religious minorities, promoting religious freedom, and combatting Christian prosecution [sic]?”
Both surveys say “OMB”—standing for Office of Management and Budget—at the top. Chennupati Jagadish, president of the Australian Academy of Science, said in a statement Monday that “Australian scientists have been surveyed to disclose their institution’s compatibility with United States (US) foreign and domestic policy.”
“Any reasonable assessment of the survey indicates that US Government funded research in Australia could be terminated because an Australian institution—not the research project—has links with several named countries, or links with the United Nations and its agencies, or impacts the protection and promotion of specific religions,” Jagadish said.
The Trump administration is pausing $175 million in federal funding to the University of Pennsylvania, apparently because the college allowed a transgender woman to compete in women’s sports three years ago.
The funding pause, announced Wednesday via a White House social media post, is not related to any investigation. Instead, the Departments of Defense and Health and Human Services stopped the $175 million as part of an “immediate proactive action to review discretionary funding streams,” a senior White House official said in a statement. The legality of the move isn’t clear, and officials didn’t specify what the paused funding was intended to be used for.
The official did note that the university “infamously permitted a male to compete on its women’s swimming team.”
The University of Pennsylvania became a target for Republicans and conservatives after swimmer Lia Thomas, who initially competed on the men’s swimming team, transitioned and then swam for the women’s team during the 2021–22 season—in compliance with the NCAA policies at the time. Thomas went on to win the NCAA championship in the 500-yard freestyle, although her time was not an NCAA record.
President Donald Trump campaigned in part on getting “men out of women’s sports,” and signed an executive order in early February specifically banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports. The order is part of a broader rollback of trans rights, and Trump has gone so far as to deny the existence of trans and gender-nonconforming people, declaring that there are only two sexes, male and female.
Shortly after the order was signed, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights opened a Title IX investigation into transgender athletes participating in college sports at the University of Pennsylvania. The Education Department also urged the NCAA to rescind all “records, titles, awards, and recognitions” given to trans women and girls. Since Trump’s order, the NCAA and Penn have acceded and revised policies to prevent trans women from competing in women’s sports.
A senior Trump administration official told Fox Business that the pause was a “proactive punishment” and that the university is at risk of losing all federal funding as part of the ongoing Title IX investigation.
“This is just a taste of what could be coming down the pipe for Penn,” the official told Fox Business, which first reported on the pause.
A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson said Wednesday afternoon that the institution had yet to receive any official notification or any details about the pause. The spokesperson noted that Penn follows NCAA and Ivy League policies regarding student participation on athletic teams.
“We have been in the past, and remain today, in full compliance with the regulations that apply to not only Penn, but all of our NCAA and Ivy League peer institutions,” the spokesperson said.
Columbia, Penn and other universities are facing great uncertainty when it comes to federal funding as Trump looks to cut spending and crack down on programs that don’t align with his priorities. Penn recently paused hiring and took other steps to curb spending.
Pausing Penn’s funding without any formal investigation and outside the typical processes for such a punishment is just the latest salvo in Trump’s attacks on wealthy universities. Earlier this month, the administration cut $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University, accusing the institution of “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”—an unprecedented move that alarmed experts and higher education advocates. Trump officials then ratcheted up the pressure by demanding sweeping changes at Columbia as a precondition to formal negotiations. Columbia has until Thursday, March 20, to respond.
Jon Fansmith, senior vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, said the administration is punishing conduct they disagree with, adding that he found the Penn pause “more troubling” because of the lack of explanation or rationale.
“It’s one thing to say we think there’s a big problem,” he said. “It’s a much bigger deal to say we’re arbitrarily suspending funding without a reason … You should at least have a reason for taking serious action.”
He noted that the current regulations governing Title IX don’t specifically bar transgender students from participating in women’s sports, and that Penn is in compliance with the policies. So he’s not sure what Penn could offer the Trump administration to restore the funding.
Blake Emerson, a professor of law and political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, said the funding pause is illegal since the administration didn’t follow the processes under Title IX to pull funding. That process includes a formal hearing and a report to Congress.
“There is no freestanding executive power to cut off money without legal authority,” he said. “It’s another instance in this pattern of the Trump administration not just aggressively using the law to target political opponents and universities, but flouting the law and not even showing casual regard for the legal process.”
Emerson noted that executive orders aren’t laws, and that if the Trump administration wants to change the existing interpretations of Title IX, it has to go through the rule-making process.
He urged Penn and Columbia to fight the cuts, as he doesn’t think “acquiescence is likely to appease” the Trump administration.
“Universities have a strong case to make that the funds being cut off are really necessary to provide essential public services the universities provide,” he said. “We’re losing scientific research because of these illegal steps, and universities are failing to make the case for their own programs when the actions being taken against them are clearly illegal. To my mind, acquiescence is a major blunder.”
Meanwhile, conservative activists who have railed against trans athletes praised the move.
Riley Gaines, who competed against Thomas, called the timing of the announcement “serendipitous” in a social media post. Three years ago Wednesday, she tied with Thomas for fifth place in the 200-yard freestyle at the 2022 NCAA championships.
Beth Parlato, senior legal adviser for the Independent Women’s Law Center, said in a statement that the message from the funding pause was clear: comply or suffer the consequences.
“President Trump means business and he’s not going to tolerate any school willfully violating the law,” Parlato said. “It is so encouraging to see an administration actually follow through with promises made to the American people, and I’m looking forward to watching each and every school that fails to protect women and girls be held accountable.”
Australian researchers who receive United States funding have been asked to disclose links to China and whether they agree with US President Donald Trump’s “two sexes” executive order.
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This week I dug into how the Trump administration’s anti-climate blitz is hampering schools’ and colleges’ ability to green their operations, plus a new report on the California wildfires’ impact on students. Thank you for reading, and reply to this email to be in touch. — Caroline Preston
LeeAnn Kittle helps oversee the Denver public school district’s work to reduce carbon emissions by 90 percent by 2050.
In January, her job got a lot tougher.
Denver expected to receive tax credits via the Inflation Reduction Act for an additional 25 electric school buses. President Donald Trump attempted to freeze clean energy funds through the IRA in his first days in office. Kittle, the district’s executive director of sustainability, also considered applying for tax credit-like payments for energy-efficient heat pumps for the district’s older buildings that lack air conditioning. And she’d intended to apply this spring for a nearly $12 million grant through Renew America’s Schools, a Department of Energy program to help schools become more energy efficient. Staff working on that program have left and its future is uncertain.
“I think we’re all in shock,” said Kittle. “It’s like someone put us in a snow globe and shook us up, and now we’re asked to stand straight. And it’s like I don’t know how to stand straight right now.”
Since January, the Trump administration has launched a broadside against efforts to reduce gases that cause climate change, including by freezing clean energy spending, slashing environmental staff and research, scrubbing the words “climate change” from websites, and rethinking decades of science showing the harms of global warming to human health and the planet. Experts and education leaders say those actions — some of which have been challenged in court — are disrupting, but not extinguishing, efforts by schools and colleges to curtail their emissions and reduce their toll on the planet.
Related: Want to read more about how climate change is shaping education? Subscribe to our free newsletter.
At the start of the year, the State University of New York was awarded $15 million to buy 350 electric vehicle charging stations. “We have yet to see the dollars,” said its chancellor, John B. King Jr. A webinar on the Department of Transportation grant program, which is funded by the bipartisan infrastructure act, was canceled. “It’s been radio silence,” said Carter Strickland, the SUNY chief sustainability officer.
The SUNY system, which owns a staggering 40 percent of New York State’s public buildings, had also planned to apply for IRA payments for a variety of projects to electrify campuses, reduce pollution and improve energy efficiency. In November, it applied for approximately $1.45 million for an Oneonta campus project that uses geothermal wells to provide heating and cooling. It still expects to get that money since the project is complete and the IRA remains law, but it can no longer count on payments for newer projects, King said.
“What the IRA did was turbocharged everything and gave many more players the ability to see themselves as part of a clean energy economy,” said Timothy Carter, president of Second Nature, a group that supports climate work in higher education. But the confusion that the Trump administration has sowed — even though the IRA has not been repealed — means both K-12 and higher education institutions are reconsidering clean energy projects.
There’s no count of how many colleges have sought funding through the IRA and bipartisan infrastructure act-funded programs, said Carter, but the work is spread across red and blue states, and some education systems have dozens of projects under construction. The University of California system, for example, filed applications for more than 70 projects, including a $1 billion project to replace UC Davis’s leaky and inefficient heating and cooling system and a project at UC Berkeley to phase out an old power plant and replace it with a microgrid.
“We remain hopeful that funding will be provided per the program provisions,” David Phillips, associate vice president for capital programs at the University of California, wrote in an email.
Sara Ross, co-founder of Undaunted K12, which helps school districts green their operations, said her group tells school leaders that for now, “energy tax credits are still the law of the land.”
But she expects those credits could be eliminated in the new tax bill that Congress is negotiating this year.
In the past, entities that begin construction on projects before any changes in a new law go into effect have been grandfathered in and still received that money, she said. “No promises,” Ross said, but historically that’s how such tax credit scenarios have worked. She said some school districts are speeding up projects to beat that possible deadline, while others are abandoning them.
There is some political movement to preserve clean energy tax credits. Roughly 85 percent of the private-sector dollars that have gone into clean energy projects are in GOP-led districts, according to a report last year. Some GOP lawmakers have advocated for maintaining that funding, which has contributed to a surge in renewable energy jobs.
Steven Bloom, assistant vice president of government relations with the American Council on Education, said that gives supporters of the IRA some hope. But he said that many higher education institutions are facing so much pain and uncertainty from other Trump administration actions, like the National Institutes of Health’s plan to slash overhead payments and investigations into alleged antisemitism, that unfortunately “climate investments may get pushed down the ladder of priorities in the near term.”
Another important vehicle for greening schools, the Renew America’s Schools grant program, was started in 2022 with $500 million for school districts. Many of the Department of Energy staff working on that effort have left, Ross said, and some school districts have not heard back about the status of funding for their projects.
In Massachusetts, the Lowell school district won a prize through the Renew America program that could unlock up to $15 million to help the district improve its aged facilities. The district’s facilities for the most part lack air conditioning and schools have been closed on occasion due to high temperatures.
Katherine Moses, the city of Lowell’s sustainability director, wrote in an email that the district had so far pocketed $300,000 that it is using for energy audits to identify inefficiencies and lay the groundwork for a larger investment. It’s unclear what could happen beyond that and if the district will receive more money. She said Lowell is proceeding according to the requirements of the grant “until we hear otherwise from DOE.”
More than 3,400 school districts have applied for money through programs created under the bipartisan infrastructure law and the IRA to electrify school buses. After a federal judge ruled against the administration’s freeze on clean energy spending, grants through those programs appear to have been unfrozen and districts have been able to access payments, said Sue Gander, director of the electric school bus initiative with the nonprofit World Resources Institute.
But rebates for electric buses are still stalled, she said. Districts are submitting forms to receive rebates, she said, “but there’s no communication coming back to them through the system about the status of their award or any indication that any payment that may have been requested is being provided.”
The Transportation and Energy departments and the Environmental Protection Agency, which runs the Clean School Bus Program, did not respond by deadline to requests for comment for this article.
King, of SUNY, noted that climate change is already negatively affecting young people and contributing to worsening disasters like floods and fires. For some faculty, staff and students, the backtracking from climate action at the federal level is stirring disappointment and fear, he said. “There is this very intense frustration that as a society we are stopping efforts to deal with what is truly an existential threat.”
Contact Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, on Signal at CPreston.83 or via email at [email protected].
This story about clean energy was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our climate and education newsletter.
What I’m reading:
My colleague Neal Morton traveled to northwest Colorado for a story on how phasing out coal-powered plants affects school budgets and career prospects for graduates. School districts haven’t done enough to plan for those changes or prepare students for alternate careers, he writes, and renewable energy projects are not popping up fast enough to smooth the financial pain.
Some 725,000 students at more than 1,000 schools faced school closures during the California wildfires in January, according to a new report from Undaunted K12 and EdTrust. The fire had a disproportionate impact on students living in poverty and from underrepresented backgrounds, the report says: Three-quarters of the affected students came from low-income households, and 66 percent were Hispanic.
The U.S. Coast Guard Academy removed the words “climate change” from its curriculum, reports Inside Climate News. The academy falls under the purview of the Department of Homeland Security, whose new director, Kristi Noem, issued a directive in February to “eliminate all climate change activities and the use of climate change terminology in DHS policies and programs.”
Schools with satisfactory heating systems reduce student absences by 3 percent and suspensions by 6 percent, and record a 5 percent increase in math scores, according to a study by researchers at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Schools with satisfactory cooling systems see an increase of 3 percent in reading scores.
Contact editor Caroline Preston at 212-870-8965, on Signal at CPreston.83 or via email at [email protected].
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
If Columbia University wants a financial relationship with the federal government, the Ivy League institution will need to overhaul its discipline process, ban masks, expel some students, put an academic department under review, give its campus security “full law enforcement authority” and reform its admissions practices.
Those are just some of the sweeping and unprecedented demands the Trump administration made Thursday in a letter to the Manhattan-based institution. They come less than a week after the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts at the university. Columbia has until March 20 to respond.
“We expect your immediate compliance with these critical next steps,” three Trump officials wrote. “After which we hope to open a conversation about immediate and long-term structural reforms that will return Columbia to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence.”
The demands escalate an already precarious situation for Columbia as it simultaneously faces pressure from the White House to comply and pressure from students and faculty to fight back.
“We are in a state of shock and disbelief, and we are working with our administration to … reaffirm free speech and shared governance on campus, and to resist all Trump efforts to take academic decisions out of the hands of academics,” said Jean Howard, a member of the executive committee of the Columbia chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “Our administration has been cautious in dealing with Trump up to now. We’re hoping they will take a more aggressive posture in the future.”
A Columbia spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that officials are reviewing the letter but didn’t say Friday whether the university will comply with the demands. Several free speech and higher ed policy experts say the letter amounts to an unprecedented assault on higher education that could threaten foundational principles such as academic freedom. The demands, which don’t appear rooted in any specific legal authority, also offer yet another hint at how President Trump could reshape higher education.
“The subjugation of universities to official power is a hallmark of autocracy,” Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, said in a statement. “No one should be under any illusions about what’s going on here.”
But the Trump administration says canceling the grants and contracts is necessary due to Columbia’s “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” In the letter, officials said that the university “has fundamentally failed to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence.”
Building Tensions
Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, criticized the letter as an “outrageous” example of “extreme federal overreach,” adding that institutional autonomy is a critical part of American higher education.
“It’s perfectly reasonable for the federal government to hold all of those institutions accountable to civil rights laws, and we expect that,” he said. “But for the government to prescribe changes in academic structure, changes essentially in curriculum and to curtail research, that’s beyond the pale.”
One of the letter’s 12 demands is for Columbia to put its Middle East, South Asian and African Studies department under academic receivership for at least five years. This would mean that faculty lose control of the department and the university puts an outside chair in charge. The letter didn’t specify why officials focused on this particular department. But it’s worth noting the academic division is home to Joseph Massad, a controversial tenured professor whom lawmakers have accused of making anti-Israel and anti-Jewish statements over the years.
Federal scrutiny of colleges and universities, especially by Republicans, ratcheted up after the wave of pro-Palestinian protests in fall 2023 and spring 2024. But the Trump administration has only added to the pressure on colleges since it took office in January, quickly moving to cut funding to programs and institutions seemingly at odds with the president’s priorities.
Columbia has been at the epicenter of the scrutiny, particularly after an encampment popped up on the small Manhattan campus’s central lawn last April. The protests culminated in early May, when students occupied a campus building and New York City police officers eventually stormed the hall, arresting those inside.
Although other colleges faced protests and were accused of mishandling reports of antisemitic harassment and discrimination, Columbia took a hard line with protesters and was one of the few to bring in law enforcement. But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from targeting the university, nor has it led Columbia to draw a line and start fighting back.
On Thursday, the same day the letter was sent, Columbia handed down student sanctions related to the building occupation. The sentences ranged from multiyear suspensions and expulsions to temporary degree revocations for graduates.
Professors and other experts have warned that federal scrutiny—including high-profile grillings and subpoenas from Capitol Hill—could have damaging consequences for colleges. But alarm escalated significantly last week when the Trump administration bypassed the typical investigation process for civil rights violations and slashed Columbia’s access to grants and contracts.
The cuts, made by Trump’s novel multidepartment antisemitism task force, are the first but likely not the last.
The task force has already said at least 10 other universities are under review, including Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. Meanwhile, the Office for Civil Rights is investigating allegations related to antisemitism at at least 60 colleges.
Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, said Columbia needs to reject the demands and other universities need to speak up now in defense of higher education. If left on its own, Columbia could fail to defend itself, he said.
“Other universities have an imperative to come to the defense of Columbia, because this is not just about Columbia,” Enos said. “The Trump administration is trying to attack all of higher education, and Columbia cannot try to mount a defense on its own.”
Frustrations Abound
Outside policy analysts and scholars on both sides of the political spectrum are frustrated with the situation—but for different reasons.
Frederick Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank, described Columbia’s handling of antisemitism on campus over the course of the past year as “egregious” and a “clear violation” of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on ethnicity or national origin. But at the same time, he said the Trump administration’s unclear process for determining a remedy is problematic.
“Some of the things on the list I find pretty facially plausible. Others require a much higher standard of justification,” he said. “But because they have not been transparent and … there has not been any back-and-forth, there has not been a proper demonstration of the misconduct, which would be necessary to convince me that these specific remedies are called for.”
Benjamin Ginsberg, a Johns Hopkins University professor who studies American politics and Jewish history, sees the situation as one of “competing truths.”
“The Columbia administration has needed for a long time to act against antisemitic demonstrators and vandals on the campus,” Ginsberg said, noting that arrests without indictments or suspensions are not enough. But at the same time, “the Trump administration has overreached by threatening Columbia with dire consequences,” he added.
He noted that the situation presents Columbia administrators with an opportunity.
“Sure, the [Trump] administration has overstepped. It’s threatening to fire a cannon, drop a nuclear bomb,” Ginsberg said. “But as I say, that threat gives the Columbia administration an opportunity to do things that it has needed to do and probably wanted to do for some time.”
He added that though he’s certainly hesitant when the government tries to dictate what departments are valid, in this instance, higher education has failed in its responsibility to its students. He also trusts that the Trump administration will be satisfied so long as Columbia carries out disciplinary action against students who disrupt academic life and threaten others’ safety.
“Anytime the federal government tells the university how to organize its admissions processes, or which, if any, academic departments are valid and legitimate, of course I’m concerned,” Ginsberg said. “But my guess is that nothing will come of those particular demands. I mean, I hope the university won’t cave in.”
On the other hand, Eddy Conroy, a senior education policy manager at New America, a left-leaning think tank, said all the Trump administration’s recent actions should be “deeply troubling.”
Columbia has already demonstrated an aggressive response to student protests, which should be protected by the First Amendment, Conroy said, and it’s not up to the federal government to determine whether those disciplinary procedures were adequate.
“We have an important history of peaceful protest in the United States, and sit-ins are part of that. Columbia can choose if it wants to deal with those things through its own disciplinary procedure or by pursuing trespassing charges,” he said. But to Trump, this “is a test case of how far we can push things when it comes to suppressing speech.”
Conroy believes that the president is trying to make an example of Columbia in the hops that other institutions will then capitulate without fight, and the university’s response as a test dummy isn’t helping.
“The [Trump] administration hits Columbia, and Columbia cowers and says, ‘Please hit us harder,’” he said.
To Howard, the Columbia AAUP representative, Trump’s actions are a threat to the gemstone that is American higher education.
We’ve become “the greatest university system in the world. But that requires independence. It requires the free expression of differing viewpoints,” she said. Trump’s demands are “so undemocratic, so against the norms and conventions of university life, that to comply would just destroy the heart of the institution.”
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Columbia University received a daunting laundry list of tasks Thursday from the Trump administration: Suspend or expel protesters. Enact a mask ban. Give university security “full law enforcement authority.”
The Ivy League institutionmust comply with these and other demands by March 20 or further endanger its “continued financial relationship with the United States government,”according to a copy of the letter obtained by multiple news sources.
Last week, the Trump administration’s newly created Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism canceled $400 million of Columbia’s federal grants and contracts,alleging the university had failed to take action “in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” It also noted that Columbia has $5 billion in federal grant commitments at stake.
The stunning move came only four days after the task force opened an antisemitism investigation into the university.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education also sent warnings to 60 colleges — including Columbia — that it could take punitive action if it determines they aren’t sufficiently protecting Jewish students from discrimination or harassment.
In Thursday’s letter, Trump administration officials said they expected Columbia’s “immediate compliance” after which they hope to “open a conversation about immediate and long-term structural reforms that will return Columbia to its original mission of innovative research and academic excellence.”
The letter’s edicts are just the latest in a series of decisions made by the Trump administration and Columbia officials that have put the well-known New York institution into a tailspin.
Strong language, few details
Officials at the Education Department, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and U.S. General Services Administrationsent Columbia Interim President Dr. Katrina Armstrongnine policy changes the Trump administration expects the university to make to retain federal funding.
The agencies — all of which are part of the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force — accused Columbia of failing “to protect American students and faculty from antisemitic violence and harassment,” along with other alleged violations of civil rights laws.
But despite the high stakes, the task force’s demands are ambiguous.
For example, its letter orders the university to deliver a plan on “comprehensive admissions reform.”
“The plan must include a strategy to reform undergraduate admissions, international recruiting, and graduate admissions practices to conform with federal law and policy,” it said.
The task force’s letter offers no further insight into what it expects Columbia to change or how it believes the university is out of line with federal standards.
The letter goes far beyond what is appropriate for the government to mandate and will chill campus discourse.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
The GSA directed an emailed request for comment to the Education Department. Neither the Education Department nor HHS responded to inquiries Friday.
The task force also ordered the university to ban masks that “are intended to conceal identity or intimidate others,” while offering exceptions for religious and health reasons.But it did not give criteria to determine why someone is wearing a mask.
“We are reviewing the letter from the Department of Education, Department of Health and Human Services, and General Services Administration,” a spokesperson for Columbia said Friday. “We are committed at all times to advancing our mission, supporting our students, and addressing all forms of discrimination and hatred on our campus.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a civil rights watchdog, criticized the federal officials’ demands Friday.
While the group has been critical of Columbia’s handling of student protesters, it said the letter does not follow “the normal procedure for revocation of federal financial assistance for violations of Title VI.” Title VI refers to the law barring discrimination on race, color and national origin at federally funded educational institutions.
“While these include some policy steps that Columbia should already have taken, the letter goes far beyond what is appropriate for the government to mandate and will chill campus discourse,” FIRE said in a statement.
A change in due process
The Trump administration’s task force is demanding Columbia completeongoing disciplinary proceedings against pro-Palestinian protesters who occupied campus buildings and organized encampments last year. The university must dole out meaningful discipline — meaning expulsions or multi-year suspensions — the letter said.
The same day the task force’s letter is dated, Columbiaannounced it had issued “multi-year suspensions, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions” related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall.
In April 2024,pro-Palestinian protesters occupied the university’s Hamilton Hall after then-President Minouche Shafik announced Columbia would not divest from companies with ties to Israel.
Columbia brought New York City Police onto its private campus for the second time that month — and only the second time since 1968— against the authority of the University Senate. Officers arrested more than 100 people.
The disciplinary rulings from Columbia’s University Judicial Board, the panel that reviews misconduct cases and issues sanctions, came 11 months later.
It is unclear if the UJB issued its rulings before or after Columbia received the task force’s letter. And a university spokesperson said in an email Friday that Columbia could not confirm who or how many protesters had been sanctioned due to student privacy laws.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student organizations that helped organize the protests, said on social media Thursday that 22 students had been disciplined.
Columbia University’s immediate submission and betrayal of the core mission of higher education reflects cowardice and capitulation to a government that seems intent on destroying US higher education.
Todd Wolfson
President of the American Association of University Professors
And the United Auto Workers union announced that the university had expelledGrant Miner, president of UAW Local 2710, which represents student workers at Columbia.
The move, effectively firing Miner, came “one day before contract negotiations were set to open with the University,” the union said in a statement.
“It is no accident that this comes days after the federal government froze Columbia’s funding, and threatened to pull funding from 60 other universities across the country,” it said. “It is no accident that the University is targeting a union leader whose local went on strike in the last round of bargaining.”
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, condemned Columbia’s decision against Miner as “a severe violation of student and worker rights aimed at silencing all voices of dissent who have spoken out for peace and against the war in Gaza.”
He also accused the university of being willing to “sacrifice its own students to the demands of an authoritarian government.”
“Columbia University’s immediate submission and betrayal of the core mission of higher education reflects cowardice and capitulation to a government that seems intent on destroying US higher education,” he said in a Friday statement.
The task force also told Columbia to dissolve UJB.The five-member board includes representatives from the faculty, student body and the university’s noninstructional employees such as librarians and administrative staff.
In lieu of this due process system, the letter instructed the institution to shift its disciplinary proceedings entirely under Armstong’s office.
Columbia must enact “primacy of the president in disciplinary matters,” giving the president’s office unilateral power to suspend and expel students and oversee the appeals process, the letter said.
Law enforcement on campus
The Trump administration also demanded that Columbia give its security force the power to arrest and remove “agitators who foster an unsafe or hostile work or study environment” or interfere with classroom instruction.
President Donald Trump has sought to crack down on campus demonstrations, threatening to pull federal funding from colleges that allow “illegal protests” and to arrest, deport and expel student demonstrators.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the first step toward fulfilling that promise last week, again putting Columbia at the center of a firestorm.
On Saturday, ICE agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia student who completed his graduate studies in December, in his university housing.
Khalil, a permanent U.S. resident who holds a green card, served as a driving force behind the pro-Palestinian protests onColumbia’s campus and represented student activists in negotiations with the university’s administration.
A U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson alleged that he “led activities aligned to Hamas,” according to The Associated Press.
Khalil’s arrest and continued detention by ICE immediately drew condemnation from free speech and civil rights groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined his legal team this week.
His detainment, which is shaping up to be a landmark civil rights case, has not deterred the Trump administration.
An official at the U.S. Department of Justice, which is also on the antisemitism task force, said Friday that the agency is investigating if campus protesters broke federal anti-terrorism laws and whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws.
“This is long overdue,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press conference.
And on Thursday, agents from Homeland Security searched two on-campus residences at Columbia, according to Armstrong.
“The University requires that law enforcement have a judicial warrant to enter non-public University areas, including residential University buildings,” she said in a statement. “Tonight, that threshold was met, and the University is obligated to comply with the law.”
No one was arrested or detained, and nothing was taken from the residents, Armstrong said.
“I understand the immense stress our community is under,” Armstrong said. She closed the letter with counseling and well-being resources for students and, in a separate statement that day, reiterated Columbia’s commitment to its international community.
On Friday, over 100 demonstrators gathered outside of the campus’ gates to protest the sanctions against the Hamilton Hall occupiers and the university’s response to Khalil’s detainment, according to the Columbia Daily Spectator.
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Millions in cuts to federal funding. Letters from the highest education official in the country expressing disappointment. Enforcement directives to immediately address a “backlog” of antisemitism complaints.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has taken sudden and unprecedented actions in the past month highlighting its desire to protect Jewish students from discrimination. At the same time, no such imperative has been evident in investigations into or statements on Islamophobia on school or campus grounds.
“This administration appears to be focused solely on responses to antisemitic incidents on campus,” said Jackie Gharapour Wernz, an education civil rights attorney who worked at OCR under the Obama and the first Trump administrations. “But schools need to be focused on both.”
‘Lip service’ to protecting all as Muslim students are targeted
The same civil rights law that protects Jewish students from antisemitism — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — also protects Muslim students from Islamophobia.
Under the Biden administration, and especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war protests after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department repeatedly expressed to schools that they must protect Jewish, Muslim, Palestinian and Israeli students equally.
“Jewish students, Israeli students, Muslim students, Arab students, Palestinian students, and all other students who reside within our school communities have the right to learn in our nation’s schools free from discrimination,” Catherine Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights for the Education Department under the Biden administration, warned in a Dear Colleague letter in November 2023.
The Biden administration issued the letter amid what it called an “alarming rise” in both antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents at schools.
Conversely, the Trump Education Department has made at least five announcements related to ending antisemitism in schools — none of which also expressed protections for students of Muslim, Arab or Palestinian backgrounds.
“They are centering Jewish students or others who are experiencing antisemitic behaviors, and they’re very clearly going after Palestinian and or Muslim students, as in the example at Columbia [University],” said Brett Sokolow, a Title VI and Title IX education civil rights expert who often works with school district administrators seeking to comply with federal regulations. “So while there’s some lip service to protecting all, I think the [Title VI] enforcement tool is going to be used primarily to the benefit of those who are experiencing antisemitism.”
Last week, the Trump administration cut $400 million in funding to Columbia University over what it called “inaction” in harassment of Jewish students, and warned of more cancellations to follow. Referring to anti-Israel protests that erupted on campuses over the Israel-Hamas war, the Education Department said “any college or university that allows illegal protests and repeatedly fails to protect students from anti-Semitic harassment on campus will be subject to the loss of federal funding.”
“This is only the beginning,” said Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights and head of the federal Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, in a joint March 7 statement with the Education Department.
Just a few days later, Trump vehemently supported Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s arrest of prominent Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, saying the move was the first of “many to come.” Khalil, a legal permanent resident of the United States and recent Columbia graduate, helped lead campus protests opposing the war in Gaza.
Addressing a ‘backlog’ of antisemitism complaints
Israel-Hamas war protests erupted on higher education and K-12 campuses under the Biden administration.
As part of its broader effort to crack down on Title VI after Oct. 7, 2023, the Education Department’s OCR opened civil rights investigations into complaints of both Islamophobia and antisemitism. Its caseload had gotten so unwieldy that Lhamon and then-Education Secretary Miguel Cardona pleaded at the time with Congress for more funding to support investigative staff and address the high number of complaints.
In one high-profile example in 2023, the department opened an investigation into New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school system, for allegedly failing to protect students from a hostile environment resulting from both antisemitism and Islamophobia.
Toward the tail end of Biden’s presidency, the administration had begun resolving the influx of Title VI complaints raised after the latest Israel-Hamas war.
But the Trump administration, in a March 7 statement, has referred to this OCR’s Title VI caseload as a “backlog of Biden Administration-era complaints alleging antisemitism” and said the resolution agreements under Biden were “toothless” and continue to provide “little to no remedy for Jewish students.”
While curtailing awareness around Islamophobia and Muslim students’ protections, the new administration has also reopened Title VI investigations into many of the same institutions that had already reached settlement agreements over alleged antisemitism with OCR under Biden, said Harold Jordan, nationwide education equity coordinator at the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania.
However, quantifying the Education Department’s efforts to resolve both Islamophobia and antisemitism cases under the Trump administration is difficult. Although the administration has been publicly lighting a fire under schools for their handling of alleged antisemitism incidents, it has not updated its website to reflect any pending civil rights investigations since Jan. 14, 2025 — the Tuesday before Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. Prior to the inauguration, OCR updated its pending and settled investigations every Tuesday for the sake of public transparency.
“The Office for Civil Rights should not be picking and choosing whose rights are important,” said Lhamon, who cracked down on Title VI violations following Oct. 7 while at OCR. “So you know, it’s very disturbing to me to hear only about some kinds of harm in the press releases and the public announcements of the department now.”
The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive’s multiple requests for comment on whether it intends to protect Muslim students and students from Muslim-majority countries as it is protecting Jewish and Israeli students, or on the status of complaints involving alleged Islamophobia especially in light of increased incidents following Oct. 7.
Backdrop of rising Islamophobia
As the Trump administration is seemingly sidelining Muslim and Arab students, incidents of Islamophobia on school grounds rise.
In 2024, education discrimination was among the most common types of complaints filed with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights advocacy organization, according to the group’s annual report released March 11. That’s in addition to complaints of bullying of Muslim students, the CAIR report said.
CAIR is expecting Muslim students’ Title VI civil rights complaints to only increase under the current administration and is urging the Trump administration to oppose both antisemitism and Islamophobia, along with all forms of bigotry.
The ACLU agrees. “We want every allegation of discrimination that falls within the purview of that department — you know, race, gender, national origin, etc. — to be taken seriously,” said Jordan.
“That includes students who have complained that they are being mistreated because they are Muslim. And that does not appear to be happening in the current administration at this moment.”
Clarification: This article has been updated to clarify Harold Jordan’s affiliation.
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The U.S. Department of Education has let go of hundreds of its employees charged with protecting the civil rights of students and educators. The agency also shuttered seven of its 12 civil rights enforcement offices, according to former department employees.
Offices in Chicago, Philadelphia, New York City, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston and Cleveland have been closed. Those in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City and Seattle remain open, as well as the OCR headquarters in Washington, D.C.
In total, the seven closed offices of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights oversaw half of the nation’s states, impacting nearly 60,000 public schools and over 30 million K-12 students.
Those fired include scores of civil rights attorneys, according to an internal memo from the American Federation of Government Employees Local 252. The union represents nearly 1,000 of the roughly 1,300 Education Department employees laid off Tuesday evening as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping effort to gut the department, including at least 240 OCR staff.
More than 6,000 investigations impacted
“The Department of Education has turned its back on civil rights in schools,” said Catherine Lhamon, who led OCR under the Biden administration. “It’s not possible to resolve cases… effectively with fewer than half the investigative staff that the office had had two days ago”
The agency’s civil rights enforcement arm is responsible for implementing protections for all students, including underserved students. It is tasked with ensuring that, among others, students with disabilities, students from all racial backgrounds, and sexual assault survivors have equal access to education.
Doing so requires investigations of alleged civil rights violations and compliance reviews of school systems that sometimes take years — even with all 12 offices operating and fully staffed. The offices that were closed were in charge of many of those cases.
“You’re talking about cases being in the middle of mediation right now,” said Victoria DeLano, who worked for the Atlanta office as an equal opportunity specialist prior to her termination.
The cases OCR settles with schools and universities often set the tone for civil rights policies and practices in schools nationwide. The seven offices shuttered had over 6,000 open investigations as of Jan. 14, according to OCR’s website that was last updated under the Biden administration.
With the abrupt closures and layoffs, however, much of that is up in the air.
“I can’t even comprehend it — the fallout that this is going to have,” said DeLano.
Offices close as complaints climb
In the past few years, the office’s caseload had been steadily climbing. In fiscal year 2023, the office received 19,201 complaints, representing a 2% increase from 2022 and nearly triple the number of complaints in 2009.
Prior to the new administration and its sweeping layoffs, each OCR investigative staff was juggling a caseload of about 50 complaints, which Lhamon already considered “untenable.” In fact, the high number of cases and slim number of investigators at the time had prompted former Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to request more funding from Congress, which would have helped hire additional OCR staff.
In contrast, the Trump administration has cited a desire to reduce the Education Department’s budget as part of the reason driving the sweeping layoffs.
Some of those cut as part of President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s effort to “end bureaucratic bloat” were onboarded just months before being fired without notice, according to DeLano, who was hired in December under the former administration and then terminated in February.
DeLano realized she was out of a job after being locked out of her government laptop, and she only received a formal notice of termination after six days of being denied access.
“It was done just completely heartless,” DeLano said. “I cannot believe that 50% of OCR is gone.”
The massive cuts come after the administration told OCR staff to hit pause on its open investigations, and — instead of addressing public complaints — directed its resources to addressing the president’s priorities, like scaling back Title IX to exclude LGBTQ+ rights. Following a Feb. 5 executive order barring transgender women from playing on sports teams aligning with their gender identities, the Education Department launched multiple investigations into athletic associations, colleges and schools over their sports policies.
Now, the slashing of over half of OCR’s civil rights offices leaves many questions unanswered: What happens to the thousands of cases under the jurisdiction of the impacted offices? Who, if anyone, will monitor school compliance in those regions? Where do students or educators in the regions overseen by those offices file their civil rights complaints? If schools in those areas have questions, how will they access resources like civil rights trainings that were previously offered by the OCR?
The Education Department did not respond to K-12 Dive’s multiple requests for comment.
“Frankly, we are in uncharted territory now,” said Lhamon. “Because the department has done something that I believe to be unlawful — to close these offices and to ensure that there are insufficient staff to meet the quantum of need that we have about civil rights.”
