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CATEGORY: EDUCATION (7 MIN)

Princeton Professor: DEI and “Anti-Racism” Rule

The headlines have been filled with the battle between President Donald Trump’s administration and Harvard University over compliance with the Constitution and federal law’s rules about racial discrimination. Earlier this week, Harvard seemed to concede some ground by renaming its DEI office the office of “Community and Campus Life.” 

Harvard is not the only university dealing with its discriminatory policies. In City Journal, Christopher Rufo, the winner of ISI’s 2024 Conservative Book of the Year Award, interviews an anonymous professor at Princeton about anti-Semitism and racism at Princeton University. Five years ago, the school’s president Christopher Eisgruber claimed Princeton was “guilty of systemic racism." Rufo’s interviewee agrees—but just not in the way Eisgruber thinks.

Rufo asked the professor about his experiences at Princeton, and the professor talked about the process by which the school searched for new hires. Apparently, administrators and higher-ups told the professors on search committees that they wanted to change the racial composition of the faculty, which was 70 percent white. And one of the professor’s colleagues was told that, “We can’t hire a white guy.”

Rufo’s interviewee also discusses the anti-Semitic trends on campus, noting that many individuals who joined encampments and anti-Israel protests were being rewarded with consideration for top positions at the school. Rufo asked how white and Jewish male professors were responding to these trends. The reply: “Largely by being quiet and afraid.” The professor hopes that Princeton’s “illegal discrimination” will soon come to light. 

Read more of Rufo’s interview here.​

Weekly Poll

Do you support President Trump’s efforts to enforce university compliance with federal law?

[A] Yes
[B] No
[C] Unsure

RESULTS: 4/24/2025

What kind of pope do you think the Catholic Church needs next?

[A] A traditionalist - 62.5%
[B] A reformer - 0%
[C] A peacemaker - 0%
[D] Unsure - 37.5%

CATEGORY: EDUCATION (10 MIN)

Power of the Purse: Federal Control over Higher Ed

Universities are currently complaining of substantial suffering from the new administration’s decisions reducing federal funding to their coffers. But, of course, the only reason that they are suffering is that they have become significantly dependent on money from the government. And once an institution becomes financially reliant on someone else, the real control is no longer with the heads of that institution.

For Law & Liberty, John O. McGinnis traces the federal control over higher education to the work of progressive activists in the 1980s and before, and he argues that private universities deserve more autonomy from control on the right and left alike. He discusses the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Grove City College v. Bell, which extended the application of Title IX to private colleges that received federal funding for student loans. 

But Grove City only applied Title IX to the financial aid office—not to the entire school. Congress then took matters into its own hands with the Civil Rights Restoration Act, extending Title IX to the whole university (over President Ronald Reagan’s veto). McGinnis says Reagan’s opposition to the Act, and support for collegiate independence, came from his deep connection with Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, which warned of government central planning.

McGinnis then mentions President Barack Obama’s efforts to use the government’s newfound control to police speech and enforce its own view of gender identity. McGinnis says that progressives who now complain of excessive control by the Trump administration over the schools should look back at what caused and exacerbated the problem—and then join with conservatives to reduce the government’s power going forward.

Read McGinnis's article here.​​​​​