Social Justice Meets the Guillotine

Once upon a time, a man could walk into a schoolhouse, tip his hat, and expect to be judged by his wits, not by the color of his britches. Alas, such quaint notions have fallen under suspicion, as more than 50 universities—including the University of Nevada, Las Vegas

—find themselves in a pickle jar of federal scrutiny for what the Department of Education calls “race-exclusionary practices.”

President Donald Trump, in his second tenure, has taken the broom to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs, a breed of institutional contraptions designed, in theory, to uplift the downtrodden but, in practice, have turned the table against white and Asian students. In a memo as direct as a Missouri mule, the administration gave colleges two weeks to dismantle anything hinting at racial favoritism or risk a cut-off from the federal trough.

The department has also fashioned itself a contraption called the “End DEI” portal, where students, faculty, and concerned parties can report instances of discrimination, or at the very least, its heavy whiff. This modern-day complaint box, one imagines, will soon be filled to the brim with grievances, some worthy and some no more substantial than a summer breeze.

At the heart of the investigation sits the PhD Project, a well-intended initiative that assists underrepresented students in business programs but which officials say crosses the line into outright exclusion. If true, it suggests that in the pursuit of fairness, some schools have sorted applicants as a farmer might sort apples—keeping some for market and tossing others aside, not based on taste, but on the shade of their skins.

The Department of Education, led by Secretary Linda McMahon, now finds itself on the warpath against such practices, declaring that “students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment.” What was a clumsy attempt at social engineering has now collided with the unwavering principle that a young person’s future should be determined by hard work rather than by their ancestry.

Of course, not everyone is taking this lying down. Teachers’ unions have already filed lawsuits, claiming the administration’s order is as vague as a fortune teller’s predictions and a direct affront to free speech. Whether the courts will uphold the administration’s iron grip or throw its memo into the dustbin of unenforceable policy remains to be seen.

College administrators, once the lords of their leafy domains, must now answer to a federal authority that has turned its skeptical gaze upon them. When the government comes knocking, universities tend to do a mighty quick reappraisal of their priorities.