Posted on 06/30/2025 4:40:29 PM PDT by Twotone
Progressives have long wished that the federal government would more aggressively enforce civil-rights law in higher education. Did they wish upon a monkey’s paw? Since Donald Trump retook the White House, his administration has used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to trap dozens of colleges in the federal equivalent of a headlock, forcing them to submit to sweeping demands or else have their federal funds frozen or foreign students banned.
According to Team Trump, it is targeting academics who violate civil-rights laws—by discriminating against Asian Americans in admissions, allowing biological males to compete with females in athletics, tolerating a hostile climate for Jews, or sponsoring DEI programs that malign straight, white, and male students. Critics of Trump’s approach counter that he has ulterior motives. “I consider the Trump administration’s recent use of civil rights law either a pretext or a sick joke—or both,” Richard Delgado, a Seattle University law professor and pioneer of critical race theory, emailed me. “The Administration’s real objective is to intimidate institutions of higher education into doing their bidding.”
Whatever the intentions, these moves represent a clear shift. Not long ago, it was Democrats who stood accused of overzealous and punitive enforcement. The Department of Education under Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden put forth sweeping new interpretations of decades-old civil-rights laws, particularly Title IX. At the time, classical liberals on the left and right (myself among them) warned that, although no one ought to face discrimination, the government’s expansive approach had serious costs: for academic freedom, free speech, free association, the ability of private colleges to self-govern, and the maintenance of a limited federal government. Nevertheless, colleges all over the country began to police the speech of professors and students as never before. Even a tiny, unintentional slight could trigger a months-long ordeal.
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I would argue just the opposite: The Right is doing what they’ve always done while the democrats are doing what they’ve always done.
It’s been the democrats that trample on civil rights at every turn. The only thing they’ve learned is how to twist their words around to brand violating civil rights as “civil rights and equity.”
Traditionally it was Republicans that have stood for true civil rights and freedom down through the years.
Poor leftist pukes! They’ve got to put up with the laws they selectively enforced on the right. The horror!
The braindead lefties are just reaping what they sowed.
Correct.
Both sides do it, it’s just when the right brings in their religious, national security or public safety arguments, they see that as somehow different.
True conservatism (limited government) is not the norm today even among Republicans, voters and politicians.
I make this point repeatedly - be careful what you wish for, because eventually you will be in the minority. What goes around comes around.
Principles aside, it is certainly satisfying to see the campus libtards getting a taste of their own medicine. I am concerned that things will snap back in 4 years, but at least we can save a few years worth of students.
These are the arguments that the Dims used to justify the Jim Crow laws.
“Since Donald Trump retook the White House, his administration has used the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to trap dozens of colleges in the federal equivalent of a headlock, forcing them to submit to sweeping demands or else have their federal funds frozen or foreign students banned.
I don’t know what the Leftists were thinking in 1964, but their Civil Rights Act was written in a COLOR-BLIND manner...and therefore could be used against the REAL racists in this country.
...but, for 60 years, Republicans didn’t dare do that. Unfortunately for the Left, in Year 61, Trump is in power.
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