Sonja B. Starr, Professor of Law (University of Chicago) offers a legal opinion on the incendiary “Dear Colleague” letter issued recently by an Acting Assistant Secretary at the Department of Education.

Starr assesses the “Dear Colleague” letter: “The Department of Education issued a threatening letter this month addressed to all educational institutions that receive federal funds. The letter offers an extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity, equity and inclusion policy. It demands that schools abandon not just affirmative-action-like programs that consider the race of individuals but also policies that are blind to individuals’ race if those policies were adopted, even in part, to promote racial diversity.”

“The letter also claims that federal law prohibits schools from teaching or promoting certain ideas about race that the department deems unacceptable,” Starr notes.

“The department gives schools until Feb. 28 to comply with this interpretation of the law or risk losing their federal funding, which would endanger the existence of many colleges and universities. This threat is a brazen attempt to bully schools into making policy changes that the law does not require,” according to Starr.

The Trump-appointed officials at the Department of Education are indeed attempting to bully colleges and universities into abandoning their critical higher education missions of providing an education based in scientific research and academic knowledge.

This is a clear assault on the principles of academic freedom, university autonomy, faculty governance, and faculty-driven curricula. Professors are researchers and teachers who are trained to have expertise in their disciplinary fields. Professors, not politicians, should determine what subjects are taught and how the curricula are composed within their disciplinary programs.

“The primary legal authority the letter cites is the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which effectively ended affirmative action in university admissions. Some of the letter’s demands, such as getting rid of scholarship programs that consider an applicant’s race, are reasonable extensions of the court’s decision. But the letter goes beyond those demands, misreading the law in a way that further imperils racial diversity in schools.”

Starr argues that “The Department of Education’s letter also overreaches in its attempt to police schools’ communication of certain ideas about race. It cites ‘D.E.I. programs’ that teach, for example, ;that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not.’ That passage of the letter is brief, and what exactly it prohibits is left vague. But the implication is that the department interprets Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as restricting what schools can teach students.”

Sonja B. Starr provides advice to universities and colleges on how to respond to the “Dear Colleague” letter, stating emphatically that “schools should not cave to the Department of Education’s indefensible further demands, and the courts must curtail this blatant overreach.”

Starr, Sonja B. “The Department of Education Threatens to Pull the Plug on Colleges.” The New York Times (26 February 2025).