Trump administration is trying to make colleges even whiter

President Donald Trump’s war on diversity, equity, and inclusion isn’t just hitting work programs at bigwig companies. Now they’re coming after the means in which minorities access financial aid and education. 

Attorney General Pam Bondi bragged on Friday afternoon about threatening Illinois colleges into ending scholarship programs for minorities. 

“Not today Illinois!” Bondi proudly tweeted. According to the Department of Justice, the scholarship “unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Bondi cited the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The ruling deemed that programs at universities geared specifically toward helping minorities achieve higher education were unconstitutional.

Many universities pulled the plug on their programs following the SCOTUS ruling. 

After the DOJ’s threat of legal action, multiple Illinois universities, including Northwestern University, Loyola University Chicago, and the University of Chicago, terminated their participation in the pro-diversity scholarship program.

Historically, scholarships such as these have existed as a means to keep higher education from being predominantly obtainable to white students. After all, students of color still face systemic barriers in getting accepted to and completing college.

In other words, the Trump administration’s cuts to education are likely to make colleges whiter. And that’s probably the point.

The University of Michigan quietly terminated its LEAD Scholars program, which was meant to provide merit-based scholarships for underrepresented groups who struggle with access to education. While the university didn’t release a statement on why, the decision followed Trump’s announcement that the Department of Education would be investigating nearly 50 universities, including the University of Michigan, for participating in “race-exclusionary practices.”

Higher education has been crumbling as the president callously freezes funding from universities. 

The president has canceled roughly $400 million in grants and funding for Columbia University, which led to the university caving to some of Trump’s demands. He also froze $1 billion in funding for Cornell University and $790 million for Northwestern University amid investigations into alleged discrimination on the campuses. 

The president has long campaigned on the idea that universities push agendas that promote a supposedly evil, progressive ideology. 

Now that the pieces are in place, his plan of attack seems to be coming perfectly together. 

On top of pulling scholarships, the president has come after protest policies and the rights of immigrant students. In the past month, over 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked by Secretary of State Marco Rubio due to their participation in protests, social media activity, or even past traffic violations. 

Some students are being held in brutal ICE detention facilities as they await trial or deportation for their supposed crime of supporting a political cause they believe in. 

Speaking to Daily Kos last month, one professor whose university system is under investigation said that she has instructed her students to code the titles of their research papers and delete their social media accounts out of fear of attacks.

“We’re professional nerds. We argue over the difference between rhetoric and discourse. To be described as ‘terrorists’ is crazy to me,” the professor told Daily Kos.

And while higher education is falling at a national level, even red states are following their commander in chief’s lead. A Mississippi library was ordered to scrub its database of all academic research articles related to gender ideology and race relations due to a new law that targeted DEI practices as well. 

Some of the academic research included topics such as ethnic studies, discrimination, and immigration in the state. 

​​“When you do things like this, take away that important content, they’re creating a powder keg,” Mississippi state Rep. Jeffery Harness, a Democrat, told Mississippi Today. “This is an attempt to erase history and make history the way they want it to be interpreted.”

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