Turning Civil Rights Against Civil Rights: Compact 2.0 and the New IRS Threat to Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Sept. 14, 2026

Turning Civil Rights Against Civil Rights: Compact 2.0 and the New IRS Threat to Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 14, 2026

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 8 to 1 that Bob Jones University could not hold a federal tax exemption while prohibiting interracial dating and marriage among its students. The reasoning was compact enough to state in a sentence: An institution may not claim a public subsidy while maintaining a policy that violates a fundamental public policy of the United States.

On September 3, 2026, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a rule that keeps that sentence intact and changes what it points at.

Under the proposal, a private school would lose its exempt status under section 501(c)(3) if it "adopts, maintains, or enforces a policy or practice that discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin"—in admissions, scholarships, financial aid, athletics, facilities, or any other school-supported program. 

In the interest of clarity, the new IRS proposal concerns private, tax-exempt colleges and universities and not public institutions such as UT Austin. 

It thusly makes 501(c)(3) tax-exempt private college or university status contingent on a new interpretation of racial nondiscrimination that could affect admissions, scholarships, financial aid, and other race-conscious programs at private institutions. The IRS estimates that as many as 18,000 private educational institutions could be affected (Internal Revenue Service [IRS], 2026).

A rule against racial exclusion has become a rule against race-conscious inclusion. The doctrine built to keep a segregated university from drawing on the public purse is now aimed at universities trying to widen who gets in.

The hinge is the word "fundamental"

The Bob Jones holding depended on a prior determination: That opposition to racial discrimination in education was a fundamental public policy, settled, national, and not seriously contested. Justice Powell, concurring separately, was uneasy about precisely this. He worried about an arrangement in which the IRS decides which policies are fundamental without clear direction from Congress.

That concern has aged into the present tense. Whoever supplies the content of "fundamental public policy" controls the exemption. In 1983 the content came from Brown, from the Civil Rights Act, from two decades of national struggle. In 2026 the content comes from an administration that reads Students for Fair Admissions as having settled not just what universities may do in admissions but what the nation fundamentally believes about race.

The image we are invited to see here is the ouroboros—the serpent swallowing its own tail, the civil rights movement's own logic arriving at last at its conclusion, the circle closing itself. That is the entire argument for colorblindness compressed into a picture, and it is a seductive one, because it asks us to understand what is happening as completion rather than reversal. 

But an ouroboros is a closed system. The snake acts on itself. This circle, however, is not closed at all; someone reached in and intervened. The doctrine did not turn on itself: It was turned, by an administration that did not write it, did not win it, and does not share its purpose.

The proposal would delete sections 3.02 and 4.05 of Revenue Procedure 75-50 and modify Revenue Ruling 71-447—the provisions that, for half a century, allowed schools to run programs favoring racial minority groups where the purpose was to create or maintain a racially nondiscriminatory educational environment. Schools may still consider income, geography, first-generation status, individual hardship, military-family status, or academic achievement. What they may not do is act on race, color, or national or ethnic origin.

So a university rule forbidding interracial relationships and a scholarship intended to increase the number of Black physicians are to be treated as the same kind of thing, because both notice race. One was built to preserve separation. The other exists because separation worked. Collapsing them requires ignoring purpose, history, and effect—which is to say, requires ignoring everything that made the original rule make sense.

Comments are due November 3, 2026. The regulations would apply to taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027. And in a dispute, the school would carry the burden of establishing its own compliance.

That last detail deserves more attention than it has received. Burden-shifting is not an administrative technicality: It is the mechanism by which a proposed rule starts operating before it exists.

The part nobody is discussing: national origin

Source: HACU

The proposal does not stop at race. It reaches national or ethnic origin, and that distinction has barely registered in the coverage.

In 2024-25, there were 645 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States, enrolling 68.2 % of all Hispanic undergraduates. Roughly 200 of them are private (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities [HACU], 2026). The private nonprofits among those are 501(c)(3) organizations, and the rule reaches them directly.

I want to be careful here, because the precise claim matters. HSI status is not a preference. It is a federal designation based on enrollment composition—an institution qualifies at 25 percent Hispanic undergraduate full-time-equivalent enrollment. My own institution, the University of Texas at Austin, is an HSI. The IRS proposal targets what a school does, not what its enrollment happens to look like.

But consider what HSIs actually build: recruitment pipelines into predominantly Latino high schools; scholarship funds established by donors for students of Mexican American or Puerto Rican descent; bilingual advising; culturally sustaining curricula; mentoring programs; and summer bridge initiatives—many of them described, funded, and evaluated in explicitly ethnic terms because that is what they were designed to address. These are "school-supported programs." Under the proposed language, the relevant question becomes whether a private institution can defend each of them without reference to national origin.

And this is not the only pressure point. In June 2025, the State of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions sued the Department of Education over Title V grants to HSIs, arguing the 25 percent threshold is unconstitutional. The Department declined to defend the statutory provisions establishing the programs. Two of the three challenged Title V programs have since been defunded, and the case remains pending in the Eastern District of Tennessee (Meltzer Center, 2026).

Two tracks, then. One through the tax code, one through the grant programs. Neither requires Congress to pass anything.

Where Compact 2.0 comes in

The original Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, circulated October 1, 2025, opened by naming what institutions receive from the federal government: "(i) access to student loans, grant programs, and federal contracts; (ii) funding for research directly or indirectly; (iii) approval of student and other visas in connection with university matriculation and instruction; and (iv) preferential treatment under the tax code." Institutions remained free to develop other models, the document said, "if the institution elects to forego federal benefits" (Trump administration, 2025).

Eleven months later, the fourth item has a proposed mechanism.

I am not claiming these are the same initiative or that they were coordinated. The IRS proposal has its own legal rationale and its own administrative track. What I am saying is narrower and, I think, harder to dismiss: an inventory of leverage was published, and we are now watching items on that inventory acquire operational form.

Against that backdrop, read Secretary McMahon's August 3 letter. It asks institutions to publish, by the end of 2026, a clear public statement of commitment across seven areas—admissions transparency, free speech, intellectual pluralism, affordability, academic rigor in the age of AI, research security, and American workforce priorities (U.S. Department of Education, 2026). University leaders were reportedly told there would be "no carrots and no sticks," even as a Department official described the goal as "radical reform" and suggested the government might prefer to work with institutions that share its priorities (Diep, 2026).

Francie Diep asked whether this is an olive branch or a gloved fist. I would suggest the distinction matters less than it appears. The letter arrives at boards that have just watched the fourth item on the Compact's list acquire a proposed rule. Whatever the letter intends, that is the room it is read in.

The governance of knowledge

This is what I mean when I talk about the governance of knowledge.

The state does not need to walk into a classroom and tell a professor what to teach. It instead adjusts the conditions under which knowledge-producing institutions survive, and lets the institutions do the rest. Three features make this work.

It aggregates the following: Research funding, Title IV aid, accreditation, visas, federal contracts, civil-rights enforcement, and tax status. Each of these is individually defensible, and each is litigated, analyzed, and debated on its own terms. But no provost experiences them one at a time. Legal analysis proceeds lever by lever. Governance is felt as a weight, anchored in accumulated experience—in what these institutions have already watched happen to others.

It anticipates. The comment period is open. The rule would not apply until taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027. Yet the scholarship reviews are happening now, in general counsel offices, this fall. When the burden of proof sits with the institution, preemptive retreat is not cowardice—it is the rational response to uncertainty. 

The chilling effect is not a side effect of the policy. Under these conditions it is the policy, and it operates whether or not the rule is ever finalized.

It launders attribution. Because the university acts, the university is the actor of record. No one is ordered to close a program. The program simply becomes too risky to defend, and its closing appears in the minutes as institutional prudence. This is what makes the arrangement so difficult to contest politically. There is no defendant. There is only a series of ostensibly reasonable decisions made by people trying to protect their institutions.

None of this means federal oversight is illegitimate. Universities that accept public benefits are properly subject to law and to public accountability, and there are real questions about admissions, cost, and governance that higher education has been slow to answer for itself.

But there is a difference between the government enforcing a rule and the government making certain commitments feel too expensive to hold. The first is accountable. The second is practically invisible.

The public policy doctrine was built to stop an institution from claiming public support while practicing exclusion. If that same doctrine can be turned around to stop an institution from widening access, then it was never a protection. It was an instrument, and it belongs to whoever holds the pen.

That is bigger than DEI. It is a question about who governs knowledge in the United States, and by what means—and about whether the answer is now determined less by law than by the accumulated weight of what universities decide they can no longer afford to defend.

References

Diep, F. (2026, August 3). For higher ed, Trump's Compact 2.0 is either an olive branch or a gloved fist. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/for-higher-ed-trumps-compact-2-0-is-either-an-olive-branch-or-a-gloved-fist

Duehren, A., & Bender, M. C. (2026, September 3). Trump moves to strip tax exemption from schools that aid minority students. The New York Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-moves-to-strip-tax-exemption-from-schools-that-aid-minority-students/

Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. (2026). Hispanic-Serving Institutions across the nation total 645. https://hacu.net/hispanic-serving-institutions-across-the-nation-total-645/

Internal Revenue Service. (2026, September 3). Treasury, IRS move to end tax-exempt status for discriminatory practices in private schools (IR-2026-103). https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-move-to-end-tax-exempt-status-for-discriminatory-practices-in-private-schools

Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. (2026). State of Tennessee et al. v. United States Department of Education et al. Advancing DEI Litigation Tracker, New York University School of Law. https://advancingdei.meltzercenter.org/cases/state-of-tennessee-et-al-v-united-states-department-of-education-et-al-district/

Trump administration. (2025, October 1). Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Compact-for-Academic-Excellence-in-Higher-Education-10.1.pdf

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, August 3). U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issues national call to action to university presidents and governing boards. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-secretary-of-education-linda-mcmahon-issues-national-call-action-university-presidents-and-governing-boards

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, August 3). A national call to action to university presidents and governing boards. https://www.ed.gov/media/document/national-call-action-university-presidents-and-governing-boards-114351.pdf

U.S. Department of the Treasury & Internal Revenue Service. (2026, September 4). Racial nondiscrimination in private schools. Federal Register, 91, 56811–56819. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/04/2026-18127/racial-nondiscrimination-in-private-schools

After Colleges Reject ‘Compact,’ Trump Officials Try a Letter, by Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder, New York Times

Friends,

As covered by New York Times columnists, Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder this letter from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon has to be understood in context.

The U.S. Department of Education's recent open letter inviting colleges and universities to restore public confidence through greater transparency, public commitments, and institutional self-assessment arrives wrapped in the language of partnership. On its face, few would object to these aspirations. Public universities exist to serve the public, and they should always be prepared to explain how they fulfill that mission.

The difficulty lies not in the request but in the vexed history that precedes it.

Trust is built through consistency between words and actions. Over the past several years, colleges and universities have confronted an unprecedented campaign of political intervention into higher education. 

Institutions have faced investigations, funding suspensions, threats to academic programs, restrictions on faculty governance, and efforts to influence what may be taught, researched, or discussed. Most notably, the administration's earlier proposal for a "Compact" with higher education sought to link federal research funding to ideological commitments that many universities concluded would compromise their independence. The overwhelming rejection of that proposal reflected a broad consensus that public accountability must never become political allegiance.

Against this backdrop, an open letter requesting voluntary declarations of institutional commitments cannot be viewed in isolation. It inevitably raises questions about purpose and intent. When trust has already been weakened by repeated attempts to expand political oversight of higher education, requests for public affirmations may reasonably be viewed with caution rather than confidence.

The issue extends beyond any single administration. It concerns the fundamental relationship between democratic government and institutions of higher learning. Universities are accountable to the public, but they are not extensions of the state. Their legitimacy depends upon their capacity to pursue knowledge wherever the evidence leads, to cultivate intellectual diversity rather than ideological conformity, and to protect inquiry from political pressure regardless of its source.

This distinction is especially important today. Throughout American history, periods of political polarization have often produced demands that universities align themselves with prevailing political agendas. Yet higher education serves democracy best when it maintains sufficient independence to question prevailing orthodoxies—including those advanced by government itself. Academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and shared governance were developed precisely to preserve that independence.

None of this suggests that universities are beyond criticism. Higher education has legitimate shortcomings that deserve serious public discussion, including affordability, student debt, public accessibility, governance, and the need to strengthen public confidence. Universities should welcome thoughtful critique and remain open to reform. 

But reform, my friends, loses its legitimacy when it becomes inseparable from efforts to centralize political authority over curriculum, research, hiring, admissions, or campus life.

Trust, therefore, cannot be restored through carefully worded letters or symbolic gestures. It emerges gradually through reciprocal respect. Government demonstrates its trustworthiness by honoring constitutional principles, protecting due process, respecting institutional independence, and refraining from using public resources to reward political compliance or punish dissent. Universities demonstrate theirs through openness, accountability, rigorous scholarship, and faithful service to the public.

Trust must move in both directions. Until governmental actions consistently reflect respect for the autonomy of America's colleges and universities, skepticism is not evidence of institutional obstinacy. It is a rational response born of recent experience and a necessary safeguard for the democratic—and democratizing—purposes that higher education was created to serve.

-Angela Valenzuela

After Colleges Reject ‘Compact,’ Trump Officials Try a Letter

By Michael C. Bender and Alan Blinder

August 3, 2026 | New York Times

The open letter from Education Secretary Linda McMahon fell far short of the attempt at a compact last year that dangled research money in return for embracing the Trump administration’s agenda.
Linda McMahon, the education secretary, signed the letter that asks every postsecondary institution in the nation to publicly state its commitments and planned changes “before the end of 2026.”Credit...
Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times

The Trump administration is making another push to persuade university leaders to address policies that it says have eroded trust with the American public, sending an open letter on Monday to college leaders asking them to respond to concerns over academic standards, admissions procedures and tuition costs.

The letter, signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon, is a significant departure from an attempt last year to incentivize universities with a so-called compact that dangled easier access to research funding for schools that embraced the administration’s agenda. That proposal was widely rejected.

This time, the administration is not proposing any new legal or regulatory mandates and avoids any specific requests for eliminating protections for transgender students. Instead, Ms. McMahon asks every postsecondary institution in the nation to publicly state its commitments and planned changes “before the end of 2026.”

University presidents and governing boards are asked to address seven subjects — including free speech, foreign influence, artificial intelligence and academic rigor — and post the statements prominently on their websites.

Ms. McMahon’s letter, which does not include any funding threats, suggests that changes will improve academia’s reputation among American parents and students.

“The dilution of academic standards, opaque admissions policies and a domineering monoculture have badly eroded public trust,” she wrote, adding that “only full candor and transparency can begin to strengthen the bonds between higher education and the American people.”

It was not immediately clear how the nation’s thousands of colleges and universities would respond to Ms. McMahon’s letter. But Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, which was not involved in talks with the government before the letter’s release, said he regarded the missive as “a tentative handshake” between the administration and academic institutions. He predicted a significant response.

“For many institutions, this is kind of a no-brainer — it’s a fill-in-the-blanks kind of thing if they want to do it,” said Dr. Mitchell, who noted that many of the topics Ms. McMahon asked schools to discuss had already been subjects of immense debate among education leaders.

Barbara R. Snyder, the president of the Association of American Universities, said she had engaged with administration officials before the missive’s release on Monday. She was joined in the discussions by the chairman of the group’s board, Chancellor Douglas A. Girod of the University of Kansas, and the board’s vice chairman, President Ronald J. Daniels of Johns Hopkins University.

In an interview, Ms. Snyder said that the three had “approached this opportunity in good faith” and that she believed the discussions could advance “a working relationship with the government.”

Ms. Snyder said she had communicated a four-word mantra to administration officials: “No carrots, no sticks.”

The new push comes about 10 months after administration officials, including Ms. McMahon, proposed a compact to try to pull schools into ideological alignment. The document called for, among other conditions, a cap on international enrollment; a tuition freeze; and consideration of “transforming or abolishing institutional units that purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”

It also called for institutions to pledge to adhere to the administration’s preferred definitions around biological sex. And it encouraged policies to “recognize that academic freedom is not absolute, and universities shall adopt policies that prevent discriminatory, threatening, harassing or other behaviors that abridge the rights of other members of the university community.”

But the effort collapsed after many of the schools the White House handpicked for feedback on the idea condemned the proposal in scathing terms.

A central grievance was the administration’s suggestion that it would give schools preferential treatment for federal funding in exchange for backing the compact’s ideas. That proposal collided with generations of history, practice and competition among universities to secure funding on the basis of merit. And since the idea emerged months after the administration sought to choke off billions in money to schools it disfavored, it deepened fears that the White House was eager to trade largess for loyalty.

The compact envisioned stiff financial penalties, such as the reimbursement of “all monies advanced by the U.S. government during the year of any violation,” for any participating university that the Justice Department alone deemed out of compliance.

Although a handful of small institutions volunteered to sign, only one of the name-brand schools that the government initially asked for feedback — the University of Texas — was sweepingly enthusiastic. Most others, in public and in private, sounded notes like Sally Kornbluth, M.I.T.’s president, who warned that the proposal included ideas “that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.”

Confronted with rare, largely united resistance from higher education leaders, the administration backed down, and its ambitions for a celebratory event in the autumn faded. Administration officials insisted at the time that they were not surrendering on the idea of a reworked compact.

They also began inserting some ideas into policy. The State Department, for example, started prioritizing visa requests for students at schools that were under a 15 percent cap on international students enrolled in undergraduate classes that the compact had envisioned.

But Dr. Mitchell said he was pleased by “the change in tone” that Monday’s letter seemed to suggest. “It’s much less pugilistic than many things that have come out of this administration,” he said. “I think that it identifies several important positive principles — and it calls out a couple of things that we know we need to do better.”


Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.


Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.

What You Need to Know about the US Department of Education as Linda McMahon Goes Before Congress

Trump is aiming to shut down the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE)—a long-standing conservative goal—but everyone should know that doing so would require congressional approval (also read "Trump wants to shut education department heres why what that means") Sometime soon, Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing the future secretary of education to carry this out with the idea of transferring education responsibilities to the 50 states, with the presumptive nominee, Linda McMahon, developing a plan for closing the USDOE

The Chronicle of Higher Education article below raises a lot of important questions should this dismantling occur. Where would its essential functions like student financial aid be transferred—to the Treasury or Justice department? How is Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) involved in overseeing budget cuts? Why are universities concerned about funding cuts, and what legal challenges have arisen regarding unauthorized access to student data?

How are House Democrats and college leaders opposing the move, especially as related to research funding and institutional stability? What federal agency or mechanism would Trump's administration use to enforce education-related policies such as bans on DEI programs and transgender athletes in women's sports?

It's incredible to learn that 20 House Democrats were recently locked out of the USDOE building after demanding a meeting with the acting secretary to protest Trump's closure plans.

-Angela Valenzuela

What You Need to Know as Linda McMahon Goes Before Congress

By Alissa Gary February 12, 2025

Linda McMahonTom Williams, AP

Linda McMahon, President Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, will testify before the U.S. Senate’s education committee on Thursday.

If she’s confirmed, Trump has said her first task would be to “put herself out of a job.”

Trump has promised to shut down the department in favor of reducing federal spending and putting education in the hands of the states — a sentiment embraced by conservatives since the department’s founding 45 years ago.

A president can’t unilaterally eliminate the department without congressional approval.

But the Trump administration has already tried to shutter an agency — directing mass budget and staffing cuts at the United States Agency for International Development — and pause billions in federal funding, including for higher-ed research. Courts have ordered the administration to unfreeze funding; news reports indicate that some parts of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, have not fully complied.

What the Department Does

In higher education, the Education Department distributes grants for minority-serving institutions and student success, manages the federal work-study program, argues civil-rights cases, and awards more than $120 billion a year in federal student aid.

It’s unclear what exactly Trump plans to do with essential functions, such as financial aid, if he closes the department. Some Trump allies have floated moving financial matters, like grants and loans, to the Treasury Department. Civil-rights cases could fall under the Department of Justice, said Kenneth L. Marcus, a lawyer who served as an assistant education secretary for civil rights during the first Trump administration.

Marcus believes some shifts could be beneficial: Integrating education with other departments could result in more staffers with certain skill sets — like accountants and lawyers — handling non-policy matters like finances and investigations, as opposed to former educators and school administrators.

“That could facilitate a smoother function and greater efficiency and possibly a shift from administrative approaches,” Marcus said.

Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist and trustee at New College of Florida, a small public institution that’s seen its curriculum and culture reshaped by Republicans, laid out his own vision for the shutdown in an article on Tuesday.

If the Education Department closes, Rufo wrote, student financial assistance should “spin off” into a different, independent financial entity that would evaluate costs and reduce the total amount of loans. (Federal Student Aid is an office of the Education Department but already operates independently, thanks to a decision made nearly three decades ago by Republican lawmakers.)

Even if the department remains operational, Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, spearheaded by the tech mogul Elon Musk, could severely reduce its size and capabilities. DOGE posted Monday on X that it had ended 89 contracts with the Education Department worth $881 million. Most of those cuts fell within the Institute of Education Sciences.

Trump’s attempt to dismantle the department is another example of “unprecedented governmental overreach and intrusion” into higher education, said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, or AAC&U.

Even if the department’s responsibilities and funds are transferred elsewhere rather than cut, “it’s not clear that there’s capacity to handle these enormous tasks,” she said.

Other Closure Attempts

Trump is far from the first Republican politician to try to eliminate the Education Department. In 1980, Ronald Reagan called the agency a “bureaucratic boondoggle” during his campaign against then-President Jimmy Carter, who had founded the department the previous year. Reagan later said he’d seek to close it as president.

In 1996, conservatives were united behind shuttering the department, but the idea was blocked by then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. More recently, in 2023, a Republican representative from Alabama introduced a bill that aimed to “abolish” the Education Department and transfer responsibility of Pell Grants and federal loans to the Treasury Department. That bill died in committee.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, introduced a bill this year that states simply: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026.” The bill hasn’t advanced further.

Trump in his first term proposed cutting $9.2 billion, or about 13 percent, of total federal funding to K-12 and higher education, but his cuts were not adopted by Congress. His administration also came up with a plan to merge the Education and Labor Departments, but that didn’t go anywhere, either.

This time around, Trump seems more intent on eliminating the department and cutting federal spending, said Patrick McGuinn, an associate professor of political science at Drew University who studies federal education policy.

“The pace and scope of change that we’ve seen in just the first few weeks of Trump’s administration indicates that he’s quite serious about doing some of these things,” McGuinn said.

Closing the department could complicate Trump’s education agenda, McGuinn added. In his first week in office, Trump issued executive orders that aimed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the public and private sectors. Last week, he issued another order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

To ensure those rules are enforced, Trump needs a government agency, McGuinn said.

“Same department,” McGuinn said, “but used for a different purpose.”
Pushback and Privacy

On Friday, about 20 House Democrats were barred from entering the Education Department’s building after gathering to demand an impromptu meeting with the acting secretary, Denise L. Carter, hoping to protest Trump’s plan for closure.

“A year ago, I’d be able to walk into this building and not be locked out,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, in a video posted to his X account. “This is what they’re doing. Elon is allowed in. But not you, not your elected representative, not parents, not students.”

Musk, who owns the social-media platform, responded to Frost by saying the Education Department “doesn’t exist.”

Musk came under fire last week when some of DOGE’s employees received access to Education Department databases containing confidential student data, including Social Security numbers, personal information needed to receive financial aid, and even family members’ immigration status.

That worried the University of California Student Association, a group representing the UC system’s 295,000 students. The association filed a lawsuit on Friday against Carter and the department to block the DOGE employees’ “unlawful ongoing, systematic, and continuous” access to student information.

Amid DOGE’s targeting, analytics data show a spike in downloads for the complaint form used to allege violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.




After a judge intervened, the Education Department agreed to suspend DOGE’s permissions until at least February 17. The Federal Student Aid office published a statement asserting that its staff “have not engaged in any activities that would expose data through unauthorized or unlawful means.”

On Thursday, McMahon could also face questions about Trump’s orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and threatening cuts to grant funding; those moves have prompted lawsuits.

In an email to the campus community last weekend, Jeffrey P. Gold, president of the University of Nebraska system, provided guidance on grant cuts and implored faculty, staff, and students to continue conducting research. “As we work through this time of change, please continue to do what you do so well,” Gold wrote.

Pasquerella, the AAC&U president, advised colleges to keep an eye on executive actions but to focus time and energy on their institutional missions.

“It creates such disruption, chaos, and uncertainty,” Pasquerella said, “that people are spending a good deal of time focusing on putting out fires and how they can respond to the latest executive order, and not being able to focus on the day-to-day work.”


Dan Bauman, a Chronicle senior reporter, contributed reporting.
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