Trump’s war on self-serving colleges and universities appears to be going well. Settlements from race and sex discrimination investigations have been reached with Columbia, Brown, and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. However, one provision in these Resolution Agreements is a problem: the requirement that schools hire yet another bureaucrat on campus, often called a Title VI Coordinator. The idea comes from Title IX practice after Obama officials demanded that each school hire a Title IX coordinator to fight the phony sexual assault crisis. The idea was bad then, and it’s bad now.
For those unaware, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause ban discrimination based on race—the former applies in the private sector (so to private schools), while the latter applies to governmental action (so to public schools). Meanwhile, Title IX is the Congressional ban on sex discrimination in federally funded education, which is to say, most colleges and universities. Already, schools complete paperwork assuring the federal government that they comply with these civil rights laws. In fact, student loan money is conditioned on this paperwork, called the Program Participation Agreement or “PPA.”
While many Americans see race-based civil rights laws as protecting minorities, the laws are actually written broadly to protect all citizens. They ban discrimination “on the basis of race,” for example. So those protected also include citizens of European descent, or what are now called “whites” (though Irish and Italian Americans used to feel pretty different), as well as those of Jewish ancestry.
The President’s most high-profile Title VI investigations have been of Harvard and Columbia Universities, stemming from campus protests over Middle East conflicts. The protests targeted and threatened Jewish students, prompting Title VI complaints. When libraries and classrooms were taken over, educational access was compromised.
The Resolution Agreements are generally good news, as lawful, peaceful protests can continue provided Jewish students are not the target or intimidated by a hostile environment directed at them. Many of the agreements require schools to pay fines for past oversights and to be more vigilant about possible threats to educational access in the future.
But a few agreements also require schools to add to their already bloated administrations in the form of yet another bureaucratic layer with a new “Title VI Coordinator.” This employee would monitor for possible racial discrimination, potentially by spying on students or eavesdropping on conversations, and encourage formal complaints of discrimination to which the Title VI Coordinator can then respond and investigate.
In other words, the requirement envisions yet another bureaucrat on campus at best, or something like speech and thought police at worst.
The idea comes directly from campus Title IX practice, where the Title IX Office is headed by a Title IX Coordinator, thanks to the 2015 guidance document by Obama’s then Assistant Secretary of Civil Rights, Catherine Lhamon. This was to help schools get tough on sexual assault, a contrived crisis manufactured by power-hungry feminists who see more campus administrators as foot soldiers in their war against men. (Note that masculinity is always “toxic”—never healthy.) The result? An entrenched Title IX industrial complex: well-paid administrators needing sexual misconduct complaints to keep their paychecks coming—and worse. As Northwestern University Professor Laura Kipnis once explained, these administrators became “drunk with power,” setting the stage for campus kangaroo courts that ruined the college careers of many wrongly accused students.
What’s more, a 2020 National Association of Scholars report, Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX, found that over 90% of Title IX staffers were not only women but also those with the most left-wing, politicized degrees—in women’s studies, gender ideology, and gender-based violence, for example. As a group, they were the opposite of impartial professionals, much less legal professionals equipped to deal with weighty matters of civil rights and sexual assault allegations.
Trump and his administration should not be borrowing from this playbook. As serious as the campus situation is, the solution is not to add to its administrative and parasitic bloat.
What about the office of university counsel? Don’t attorneys for colleges and universities already advise these institutions about best practices to avoid law violations? More coordinators just duplicate functions already provided for by university lawyers.
What’s more, why doesn’t the Education Department—or the IRS, for that matter—adopt the audit model along the lines of health and safety inspections?
Federal money is the largest revenue source for most schools. As with any contractual arrangement, these monies have strings attached, as the PPA shows. Why not subject schools to audits or inspections, either unscheduled or in response to complaints, to ensure compliance?
In fact, why not get rid of Title IX coordinators and use university counsel and the inspection model for that as well?
The IRS has used the audit model forever. And while no one likes the IRS or its audits, taxpayer compliance is generally high.
Ideally, laws such as Title IX and Title VI should not be necessary. Cultural norms should suffice to ensure respectful treatment for everyone in a merit-based system. Lest we forget, that should always be America’s goal—not a weaponized jobs program for feminist or left-wing bureaucrats.
But until that time, inspections or audits avoid increasing the ideological managerial class on campus that has caused so much misery.
Teresa R. Manning is Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, President of the Virginia Association of Scholars, and a former law professor at Virginia’s Scalia Law School, George Mason University. She authored the 2020 report, Dear Colleague: The Weaponization of Title IX.