Universities are giving up the fight for free speech — students aren’t
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Summary
Universities have largely acceded to the Trump administration’s demands in the hopes of avoiding losing federal funding, including disciplinary proceedings for student protesters, changes to the admissions process, and bans on masks on campus, and supervision of entire academic departments.
President Trump has followed through on threats to cut funding to universities that have diversity and inclusion programs, as well as those that have not sufficiently penalised pro-Palestine activists, and froze $175m slated for the University of Pennsylvania over the school’s policies on transgender athletes.
The US Department of Education is investigating 45 universities over their involvement with the PhD Project, a program aimed at increasing racial diversity among business school professors which the DoE claims breaches Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
Several universities have been probed by the Justice Department Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, with the task force planning to visit at least 10 to determine whether they “failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination” and therefore violated Title VI.