In an OpEd for The Atlantic, Dr. Phillip Atiba Solomon, CPE Co-Founder and CEO, discusses the increasing threats to academic freedom following a new directive from the Trump administration’s Department of Education (DOE). In a “Dear Colleague” letter, the DOE has prohibited race-conscious policies at universities across the country, using their interpretation of the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard as justification. This approach, argues Dr. Solomon, is a strategy to promote ignorance in education. It is up to universities to resist these pressures and continue to uphold scholarship and the truth:
The letter comes amid a flurry of executive orders that, taken together, will shape not only individual programs but national memory. These orders have limited how history is taught in K–12, ending what one order calls “racial indoctrination”; banned funding for programs at the Smithsonian Institution that promote “improper ideology”; and directed the Department of Education to cease all funding for programs that “advance DEI or gender ideology” while requiring state education officials at public schools to verify that they have ended DEI programs. This collection of restrictions is not without precedent.
Read the full OpEd on The Atlantic (subscription required).