Anxiety is radiating through the higher ed sector as colleges have mere days to make difficult decisions about how to respond to a federal directive to ax race-conscious practices and programming.

On Valentine’s Day, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights issued a scathing Dear Colleague letter that offered a sweeping interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision against race-conscious admissions. The letter argued that any consideration of race in campus policies and practices is “illegal,” including in “hiring,” “administrative support” and “all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.” It also took aim at a host of campus strategies adopted in recent years to reach more diverse applicants and retain minority students, including race-based scholarships, affinity group housing and graduation ceremonies, and optional standardized testing policies. The letter gave higher ed leaders two weeks to slash services or policies that fly in the face of the administration’s interpretation of the law; otherwise, they risk losing federal funding.

Scholars argue the letter doesn’t have the force of law, but the move nonetheless leaves higher ed institutions with a high-stakes dilemma.

Colleges and universities have spent years ramping up student success services, diversifying curricula, training faculty in culturally responsive practices and employing other strategies to close racial gaps in academic outcomes, a process that accelerated after the 2020 killing of George Floyd and the national racial reckoning that followed. Some institutions have already shed hard-won diversity centers, initiatives and personnel, spooked by state-level DEI bans and Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders.

But now all higher ed institutions are pressed to ask: What parts of their once-touted progress are they prepared to lose? And what strategies, programs and practices will they fight to keep?

‘An Affront to Every American’

Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors, described the letter as “a deep political intrusion into the operations of higher education institutions” that “must be responded to with absolute conviction and force.” The AAUP seeks to challenge the directive in court and secure an injunction, and Wolfson hopes higher ed institutions do the same.

“I would stand with every inch of my soul against every one of these intrusions and bring all my members with me and put our bodies on the line to stop it,” he said.

But he’s most alarmed by the possible limits the Dear Colleague letter could impose on universities’ research and curricula. He believes government interference into those core aspects of academic life should be fought at all costs.

He’s particularly worried that the Trump administration could stymie research “for the collective good” on topics like child literacy or infant mortality rates in communities of color. He sees such studies as not just enlightening for students but also critical to solving wider societal problems. An attack on this type of research would be “an affront to every single American,” he said.

He doesn’t want to see the Trump administration dictating what’s taught in the classroom, either.

“We cannot have Big Brother standing over us saying, ‘You’re not allowed to read that book,’” he said. “There’s no such thing as higher education if that’s happening.”

Tawnya Lubbes, director of the Oregon Teacher Pathway Program and the Center for Culturally Responsive Practices at Eastern Oregon University, worries that both K-12 and higher ed institutions could shed culturally responsive teaching practices, like diversifying curricula to include books that reflect students’ communities. (She emphasized she was speaking on her own behalf, not the university’s.)

These pedagogy practices aren’t just about race but about “putting the student first,” understanding “who they are, where they come from, what their assets are, how do we serve their needs, what do they provide to the educational setting?” said Lubbes, who is also an associate professor of education. “If we don’t consider those factors, then we know that it’s not going to create a learning environment for success for students.”

As an instructor at a rural-serving university, she said she believes culturally responsive teaching approaches are important for her students, too. Nonetheless, she believes such pedagogy practices could get swept up in the Trump administration’s attack on DEI, just because they involve talking about “equity and access for students and identity development and making connections to their cultures.”

The letter seems to send an “underlying message that we can’t talk about culture, inclusiveness, equity, equality, life experience at all” when “we know that these are factors that are critical to student performance and outcomes,” she said.

Defending Student Supports

Other professors and higher ed leaders said multicultural programming and sources of community for students of color should be a top priority for defense.

Kaleb L. Briscoe, assistant professor of adult and higher education at the University of Oklahoma, said higher ed shouldn’t comply with the letter at all because it’s unlikely to hold up in court. But she emphasized that universities should especially fight to keep programming that encourages “cross-racial interactions,” which have educational benefits for students.

For example, she cited research by education scholar Lori Patton Davis that shows multicultural centers help students build “multicultural knowledge” and better understand other experiences and identities. So, Briscoe believes universities “should be absolutely retaining their multicultural centers.”

“Students should be around individuals who are different from them” and should be exposed to “broader conversations around difference: difference of ideology, difference of race, gender, sexuality,” she said.

She feels just as strongly about preserving student organizations like Black student unions and historically Black fraternities and sororities because of the supports they offer underrepresented students—and their role in attracting students. She pointed out that removing such groups would make it harder for universities to enroll and retain out-of-state and international students of color, as well as student athletes from underrepresented backgrounds.

“You’re going to harm your enrollment significantly by overcomplying,” Briscoe said, “because parents are not going to feel comfortable with their children going there.”

Charles H. F. Davis III, assistant professor of education at the University of Michigan, expects a “slide effect” in admissions, where students of color who previously would have attended more selective universities, supported by targeted resources, enroll at more accessible institutions where they face fewer hurdles—similar to what happened at some institutions after the affirmative action decision.

“Sense of belonging and sense of community are deeply important to their ability to matriculate successfully and then to persist from semester to semester, year to year and also towards graduation,” Davis said.

Community colleges aren’t at risk of losing their student diversity because they accept all applicants, said Delta College president Mike Gavin, founder of Education for All, a grassroots group of community college leaders that is fighting anti-DEI legislation. But he worries for students’ sense of belonging.

He believes the letter signals to students “who already think they may not belong” that “potentially, they actually are not college material.” To him, “that’s the moralistic mountain to die on.” The letter shows the Trump administration is willing to tie federal dollars to “requiring a … higher ed space that is going to marginalize the people who’ve already been marginalized,” he said.

‘I Cannot Ignore the Data’

Some higher ed leaders say they won’t give up on gleaning student success insights from disaggregated data and striving to close gaps in academic outcomes.

Keith Curry, president of Compton College, plans to continue working toward the goals in his college’s strategic master plan for 2035, based on institutional data, including increasing faculty diversity and improving enrollment rates for male applicants of color.

The community college offers supports and services toward those goals, including the Black and Males of Color Success program and a new program to train community college alumni to return to these institutions as professors. But in a message to employees about the Dear Colleague letter, Curry emphasized that the programs are, and always have been, open to anyone.

“We were in compliance before the ‘Dear Colleague Letter’ was issued, and we continue to be in compliance today,” he wrote. “As an open-enrollment institution, we accept all students who apply. Our programs and services are designed to help all students achieve and are not discriminatory under existing or new definitions.”

Curry told Inside Higher Ed he’ll ensure the college complies with the law, but he believes it can’t be legally out of bounds to look at institutional data for different student populations to figure out how best to support Compton’s student body.

“If you look at our data, males of color and Black students have struggled,” he said. “If people want me to sit back and ignore the data and the outcomes of this student population—with our focus at Compton on student completion, with a focus on equity and success—I can’t. If someone wants to come after Compton College or Keith Curry for this work, so be it. But at the end of the day, I cannot ignore the data.”

To Negotiate or Fight?

Some scholars say there’s no choosing; all policies, practices and strategies potentially targeted by the Dear Colleague letter need to be defended on principle.

“You can’t negotiate with fascism,” Davis, of the University of Michigan, said. “It’s a ‘give an inch, they take a mile’ sort of situation.”

Wolfson agreed there’s no ground to cede. He’s not opposed to higher ed leaders, staff and policymakers dialoguing about ways higher ed can improve, including how colleges approach DEI work, but he said the Trump administration took an “authoritarian” approach and attacked academic freedom.

“If folks with good intention want to sit down together from the executive branch, from the legislative branch, from higher ed … and then talk about how we have a better sector, I’m ready,” he said. But “under these terms, no, we don’t comply. We fight.”