The Right Is Winning the Battle Over Higher Education
After mounting a successful fight against DEI, the political Right has come to accept that if there must be a civil-rights regime, it should be one of its own making. Rather than continue to defer to left-wing interpretations of civil-rights law, the Right can now advance a framework grounded in colorblind equality, not racialist ideology.
The first field of battle is higher education. The Trump administration has set its sights on the Ivy League universities, which have not only advanced the ideologies of left-wing racialism but made them administrative policy.
Many Ivy League presidents see themselves as heirs to the civil-rights movement. In fact, they are among the most active practitioners of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and segregation in America today. Shielded by a virtuous public image, elite universities have institutionalized discrimination against disfavored racial groups, implemented DEI policies based on racial rewards and penalties, hired and promoted faculty according to skin color rather than merit, and overseen racially segregated student programs, dormitories, and graduation ceremonies.
The Trump administration has ruptured this illusion. In a series of letters to Ivy League presidents, it has threatened to withhold billions in federal funding, citing violations of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other non-discrimination policies.
The argument is straightforward: racial discrimination is wrong whether it targets whites, Asians, and Jews or blacks and Hispanics. Any institution that continues to discriminate based on race is ineligible for federal support.
Christopher Rufo.