University crackdown heads west
Columbia sets precedent … $5 billion incoming … And all the cool kids read.
The going rate for a university to get the Trump administration off its back is now $221 million.
That’s how much Columbia University agreed to pay the Trump administration last week to settle claims of antisemitism on campus.
In exchange for the money, which the Wall Street Journal called “unlike anything seen before in higher education,” Columbia will get its federal funding restored.
But the school also has to make sure its Middle East curriculum jibes with the Trump administration’s definition of antisemitism and give federal officials oversight to ensure compliance, among many other concessions.
It’s a settlement that White House officials are now considering a precedent for other universities that provoke President Donald Trump’s wrath. Trump reportedly wants even more money if he wins a legal battle with Harvard.
Not done yet
The president’s wrath could be aimed at universities in Arizona before too long.
What started as an assault on Ivy League schools on the East Coast has grown to include other schools.
And it’s moving westward.
Last month, the University of Virginia’s president resigned after the Trump administration gave him an ultimatum: Get rid of every DEI-related program or we’ll withhold hundreds of millions of dollars, which would lead to layoffs and cuts to research funding.
Then the Trump administration announced investigations of even more universities last week: University of Louisville, University of Nebraska Omaha, University of Miami, University of Michigan and Western Michigan University.
Why those particular universities? Because federal officials don’t like that they grant scholarships to undocumented students.
Specifically, officials pointed to students who live legally in the U.S. through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which gives legal status to immigrants who were brought to the country as children (also known as Dreamers).
The theory is that Dreamers are getting scholarships instead of U.S.-born students, officials at the U.S. Department of Education said in a news release.
The legal underpinning of that theory is that the 1964 Civil Rights Act bans discrimination based on race or national origin, which is similar to what Trump officials said when they were trying to withhold federal funds from K-12 schools that offered DEI programs.
And it’s in line with a much larger effort to remake the Civil Rights Act to match conservative values.
“The right needs to have its own interpretation of civil rights law and it needs to take over the enforcement of civil rights law,” conservative activist Christopher Rufo told the New York Times in April. “It needs to have essentially an alternative vision, a kind of Spartan system of colorblind equality, that is in my view better grounded in the Constitution and the law.”
And it’s not just about Dreamers. The Trump administration’s beef with the University of Louisville also stems from the school offering scholarships to LGBTQ+ students of color, and the University of Nebraska Omaha and Western Michigan doing the same for underrepresented minority students.
For now, the farthest west this particular stage of the onslaught on higher education has reached is Nebraska. But the Trump administration is still stripping away huge amounts of federal research funding at universities across the country.
And Arizona State University did pop up on the Trump administration’s radar in March, when federal officials named ASU as one of 45 universities that were being investigated for “race-exclusionary practices” by offering DEI programs.
It’s worth noting that the University of Arizona spiraled into a financial crisis when it discovered a $140 million budget shortfall.
That’s a lot less than the $221 million paid by Columbia.
The westward push by the Trump administration didn’t just rope in new schools. It also shone a light on an often-overlooked player: The Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project.
Department of Education officials specifically cited the foundation’s complaints as the reason the Trump administration was going after the schools in Louisville, Miami, Michigan and Nebraska.
Officials even quoted the foundation’s founder, William A. Jacobson, in the news release as saying, “discrimination against American-born students must not be tolerated.”
In fact, the press release from the Department of Education is almost a mirror image of the foundation’s own news release, complete with a list of recent complaints the foundation filed against the new schools.
Who is Jacobson?
He’s a clinical professor at Cornell University’s Law School and the director of the school’s Securities Law Clinic.
He founded Legal Insurrection in 2008 as a blog to “counter widespread leftwing media bias he saw in coverage of Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign,” according to the foundation’s most recent annual report.
He launched the Critical Race Training in Education Project in 2021 and then the Equal Protection Project in 2023, which is “devoted to fighting discrimination in education that takes place in the name of DEI.”
Last year, he sued the Ithaca City School District for excluding white students from the Students of Color United Summit. School district officials ended up getting racist and threatening messages, before apologizing and opening the event to all students, the Cornell Daily Sun reported.
Jacobson told the Sun that his main issue with higher education is the “group-identity ideology” on campuses, such as critical race theory, intersectionality, anti-racism and diversity, equity and inclusion.
He also successfully sued the Providence Public School District for offering teachers a student loan forgiveness plan that was only available to people of color.
Getting their money back: Federal officials said they will release $5 billion in education funds they’d been withholding, NPR reports. That’s good news for Arizona school districts, like the Tucson Unified School District, where the money will pay for programs for 10,000 students, the Arizona Luminaria’s Shannon Conner reports. Local school district officials were stressed, but stayed diplomatic in their comments about the release of the much-needed funding, the Republic’s Alexandra Hardle reports. But it’s not over yet. Federal funding for the Secure Rural Schools Program is still in limbo, including $2.3 million destined for Yavapai County.
Embracing AI: The U.S. Department of Education released its guidance for using artificial intelligence in the classroom. Federal officials say AI could “revolutionize education,” but they still want to hear what educators have to say. The Trump administration is pushing for the U.S. to be a leader in the AI industry and it sees education as a cornerstone of that strategy.
What happens in Vegas…shows up in the budget: Officials at Dysart Schools are defending a trip they took to Las Vegas that cost $500,000, AZ Family’s Derek Staahl reports. Nearly 200 district employees went to Caesars Palace for a three-day training event, just weeks after the district announced it would end bus service for students due to budget constraints. The savings from cutting bus service will come to just about what the district spent on the Vegas trip.
Roll the dice on subscribing to the Education Agenda. We promise you’ll feel a lot better than you would after a weekend in Vegas.
Minor trouble: While responding to a records request, Arizona Treasurer Kimberly Yee’s office revealed that school voucher funds are being used to pay minors to tutor and babysit, 12News’ Joe Dana reports. Yee’s office said it couldn’t release some records because they would have revealed personal information about those minors. Speaking of vouchers, Georgia is following in Arizona’s footsteps on vouchers, but officials are seeing far fewer applicants for the state’s new voucher program than they expected, the Augusta Chronicle reports.
Rough outing: The Tolleson Union High School District took a lot of heat from Republican legislators for the district’s low test scores and financial meltdown this spring, the Arizona Capitol Times’ Jakob Thorington reports. The lawmakers on the Joint Legislative Audit Committee also grilled Superintendent Jeremy Calles over accusations of self-dealing.
Can’t run away from your record: Primavera’s troubles in Arizona are making it harder for the online charter school to expand to Oklahoma, the Oklahoman reports. The Oklahoma State Board of Education isn’t happy that the state schools superintendent partnered with Primavera, despite the school’s poor track record in Arizona, where the school was getting such poor grades that it would have lost its charter if Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne hadn’t stepped in.
Cuts to education mean fewer schools are offering summer programs, so Arizona nonprofit Read Better Be Better launched its own “Changemaker Summer Program.”
Based on the idea that “readers become leaders,” the four-week program is free for students in 1st through 9th grade and available at several locations across the Valley. Younger readers get teamed up with older leaders for an evidence-based, peer-led literacy curriculum program. And high school students interested in careers in education can even get paid to serve as program assistants.
And it’s not just reading — the program includes basketball, poetry, yoga, gardening and reptile encounters. Plus, breakfast, lunch and snacks.
Summer programs are already filled, but fall after-school literacy programs start soon. Learn more and donate to support the programs here.1
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