The effort by the Trump administration to stamp out Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) marches on this week at another woke institution of higher learning.
As we previously wrote, two Tennessee educational institutions were caught trying to mess around, then they found out, for trying to get away with DEI under a different name, after their campuses came under the microscope recently, as my colleague Becky Noble wrote.
READ MORE: EXCLUSIVE: University of Tennessee Gets Caught Sneaking DEI Under the Radar
Busted! Vanderbilt University Employee Tells Camera DEI is Alive and Well (Updated)
As readers likely have read in these pages, these moves follow Harvard's filing suit after the administration froze federal funding over what it alleges is the university's inability or unwillingness to abide by civil rights laws, in addition to discriminatory admissions and hiring policies.
Columbia worked out a stunning deal, meanwhile, promising to clean up its act by way of getting its funding restored by the WH.
RELATED: DOJ Civil Rights Div. Head Harmeet Dhillon Details Her First 100 Days Fighting DEI
This week, as I mentioned at the beginning, the Trump 47 Departments of Education (ED) and Health and Human Services (HHS) moved forward with one of the president's big-ticket priorities--this time, at Duke University.
As the Washington Free Beacon reported exclusively earlier this week, the Trump administration began an investigation on Monday into the potentially illegal, race-based policies in several departments at the elite, Durham, NC-based university, including at its law school-connected "Duke Law Journal":
The Department of Education on Monday launched an investigation into Duke University and its flagship law review, citing a Washington Free Beacon report on the journal’s use of racial preferences to select editors.
The department will investigate the Duke Law Journal’s 2024 decision to award extra points to applicants who mentioned race and gender in their personal statements. Candidates could earn up to 10 points for discussing their "membership in an underrepresented group," according to the grading rubric for the essays, and an additional 3-5 points for holding "a leadership position in an affinity group."
Such criteria likely violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the department said in a press release. The rubric was included in a packet sent to the law school’s affinity groups, which were told not to share the materials with other students. Duke has not commented publicly on whether the criteria were ever shared with the whole law school.
But that wasn't all the Trump administration found:
The department also sent a separate letter to the university expressing concern about the use of racial preferences at Duke Medical School, whose promotion guidelines for faculty reward doctors for recruiting and mentoring "BIPOC" trainees. The letter, sent jointly with the Department of Health and Human Services, asks Duke to create a "Merit and Civil Rights Committee" that will work with the government to resolve alleged civil rights violations.
If no resolution is reached after six months, the letter warns, "the federal government will commence enforcement proceedings as appropriate." A separate HHS press release says that the agency’s office of civil rights has already begun an investigation into Duke Health.
In an X post sharing the letter, co-signed by ED Sec. Linda McMahon and HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., McMahon said:
"Blatantly discriminatory practices that are illegal under the Constitution, antidiscrimination law, and Supreme Court precedent have become all too common in our educational institutions
"If Duke illegally gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants based on those students’ immutable characteristics, that is an affront not only to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic character of academic excellence."
On Wednesday, according to the Hill, the administration took things a step further, freezing over $100 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding for the university's School of Medicine:
The Trump administration has frozen $108 million to Duke University just days after it launched an investigation into alleged race-based discrimination at the institution.
The frozen funds from the National Institutes of Health will affect the Duke University School of Medicine, according to a senior administration official.
It's unclear at this time whether this is separate from/unaffected by an announcement by the White House on Tuesday that it will nix plans on holding back research and other federal funds from NIH that were being discussed internally. We'll keep you posted.
Editor's Note: The Democrat Party has never been less popular as voters reject its globalist agenda.
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