US Department of Education, DOGE issued letter Friday threatening to pull public education federal funding if DEI initiatives remain

Nora Igelnik, Reilly Ackermann
Tue, 18 Feb 2025 17:09:44 +0000
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The exterior of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Department of Education Building, located at 400 Maryland Ave. SW in Washington, D.C. Credit: Andy Feliciotti | Unsplash

In a Friday letter posted on the Department of Government Efficiency — or DOGE — X account, the Department of Education threatened to remove federal funding from public education institutions if the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives isn’t achieved by the end of the month.

The letter — written by Craig Trainor, the Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights — outlines public academic institutions’ “racial discrimination” through admissions, scholarships, housing accommodations, hiring practices and institutional programming — namely DEI policies, multicultural graduation ceremonies and dormitories.?

University spokesperson Ben Johnson said in an email Ohio State is currently in the process of reviewing the letter.

“It was just issued on Friday, and it’s too soon to speculate on the possible implications for specific programs,” Johnson said.

Trainor cited the Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the 2023 decision that overturned affirmative action — as a legal basis for the removal of DEI programming.

“Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly,” Trainor said in the letter. “At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.”

Education institutions have 14 days after the issuing of the letter to comply with its demands, which include ensuring policies and actions comply with civil rights law and ceasing efforts to get around DEI prohibitions by relying on proxies, third parties or other indirect efforts.

The letter comes in light of a Jan. 20 executive order from President Donald Trump’s administration titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” which terminated federal DEI initiatives, programming and funding.??

Trainor said public schools and universities have “toxically indoctrinated students” to believe the U.S. is built upon “systematic and structural racism.”

“Proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them — particularly during the last four years — under the banner of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’), smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline,” Trainor said.

Trainor looks to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution to support his claims, two pieces of legislation that protect citizens from discrimination based on race and national origin.?

Trainor also claimed public institutions continue to use “race-based decision-making” in students’ personal essays, writing samples and participation in extracurricular activities to favor or disfavor students.?

“Relying on non-racial information as a proxy for race, and making decisions based on that information, violates the law,” Trainor said. “That is true whether the proxies are used to grant preferences on an individual basis or a systematic one. It would, for instance, be unlawful for an educational institution to eliminate standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity.”

Additionally, Trainor cites public education institutions’ “less direct, but equally insidious” discrimination through DEI programs, claiming they give preference to different racial groups and “teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.”?

“Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes,” Trainor said. “Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.”?

In a Wednesday email letter to students, faculty and staff, titled “An update from university leadership,” multiple Ohio State administrators, including President Ted Carter Jr., said the university is assessing the role of DEI at the institution.

“We are continuing our ongoing evaluation of our university’s work in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and are forming working groups to review Ohio State jobs and duties related to DEI and to examine our DEI programming, initiatives and projects,” the article states. “Our goal is to ensure that we have a full picture of the university’s work in this area and can be positioned to make changes if state or federal law requires it or if we decide a different approach is in the university’s best interests.”

This article was updated Feb. 18 at 2:27 p.m. to reflect the message from university leadership was originally sent as an email letter, rather than an Ohio State News article.