Trump guts Department of Education, slashing office handling antisemitism complaints

Just this week, the office sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them that they could face consequences if they did not fulfill their responsibility to protect Jewish students.

By Philissa Cramer, JTA

Acting on decades of Republican ambitions, the Trump administration is dramatically scaling back the federal education department, including its civil rights office— which has gone into high gear addressing antisemitism allegations at colleges and public schools.

Staffing at the Office of Civil Rights, which handles complaints filed under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, is among the casualties of the administration’s mass firings.

According to Chalkbeat, an education news site, half of the 12 regional civil rights offices are being eliminated. The New York Times reports that only “a skeleton crew” remains in major offices in New York City, Boston and San Francisco.

The Office of Civil Rights handles discrimination claims against schools and has been a central source of recourse for Jewish and pro-Israel students who believed their rights were infringed upon by pro-Palestinian campus protests since Oct. 7, 2023.

The office has opened dozens of Israel-related civil rights investigations since then, including several since President Donald Trump’s inauguration, amid vows by both the Biden and Trump administrations to protect Jewish students on campus.

Just this week, the office sent letters to 60 colleges and universities warning them that they could face consequences if they did not fulfill their responsibility to protect Jewish students.

Critics of the civil rights office have charged that its investigations take too long and result in inadequate changes.

As Trump prepared to take over, watchdogs said they expected that the Department of Justice could be a likely new home for campus civil rights issues including Title VI if the education department shrank or closed.

Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, has vowed a hard-line approach against campus pro-Palestinian protesters.

The education department’s announcement of the overhaul said it would “continue to deliver on all statutory programs that fall under the agency’s purview” but did not mention the civil rights office. The department administers federal funding for schools serving students from low-income families and for students with special needs.

(The vast majority of funding for public schools comes from local and state budgets.) It also manages federal student loans for college students.

Republicans have long argued that the department, elevated to the Cabinet level by Congress in 1980, represents an inappropriate assertion of federal power in a matter of local authority.

As culture wars have deepened in the decades since, conservatives have pilloried the department, which does not decide what is taught locally, as advancing progressive ideas in schools.

The New York Times reported that a draft executive order that would fully dismantle the department was circulating in Washington last week. Its only clear instruction to Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the newspaper reported, was to “terminate any remaining diversity, equity and inclusion programs.”