I wrote a post about this case a week ago. A scientist at Harvard, who left Russia as an anti-war dissenter, was detained at Logan Airport in Boston on her return from France because she had scientific samples that she did not declare. The samples–frog embryos on slides–posed no danger to anyone. She was immediately stripped of her visa, arrested, and sent to Louisiana to await deportation. A federal judge just granted her bail.
I recall that Trump campaigned on a pledge to deport rapists, murderers, “the worst of the worst.” This young woman is a scientist who is working to find the causes of cancer. Why does he want to deport her?
“There does not seem to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officer’s actions” in stripping Ms. Petrova of her visa on Feb. 16, Christina Reiss, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Vermont, said in a court hearing.
The judge said the available evidence suggested that the samples Ms. Petrova carried into the country were “wholly non-hazardous, non-toxic, non-living, and posed a threat to no one.” She also said that “Ms. Petrova’s life and well-being are in peril if she is deported to Russia,” as the government has said it intends to do.
Unlike other high-profile deportation cases involving academics, Ms. Petrova’s began with a customs violation. Returning to Boston from a vacation in France, she agreed to carry back samples of frog embryos from an affiliate laboratory at the request of her supervisor at Harvard Medical School.
When the samples were discovered during an inspection of Ms. Petrova’s baggage at Logan Airport, the customs official canceled her visa on the spot and started deportation proceedings. She was transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Louisiana, where she remained for more than three months.
“This is kind of a circular process, because it was the government that revoked her visa,” Judge Reiss said on Wednesday. “And it’s essentially saying, ‘We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.’”
She concluded that “what happened in this case was extraordinary and novel,” and that if she did not take action in the case “there will be no determination” that Ms. Petrova’s constitutional rights had been violated.
“Bail is necessary to make the habeas remedy effective in this case,” she said.
However, it is unclear when the government will allow Ms. Petrova’s release on bail, or whether it will pursue its plan to deport her to Russia. The case has attracted high-level attention from officials in the Trump administration, who took an unusual step earlier this month, after Judge Reiss indicated she planned to release Ms. Petrova.
Hours after that hearing, the Department of Justice unsealed felony smuggling charges against Ms. Petrova based on her failure to declare the scientific samples, and Ms. Petrova was arrested and transferred to the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana, where she remains.
Ms. Petrova’s next opportunity for release will come after she is transferred to Massachusetts to face the smuggling charges. But the government also issued a detainer on immigration charges, raising the possibility that, if a judge grants her bail in the criminal case, the government could ask ICE to detain her once again.
Judge Reiss asked Jeffrey M. Hartman, the attorney representing the Department of Justice at the bail hearing, whether that would happen.
He said he did not think so, citing the recent releases of Mohsen Mahdawi, a student organizer at Columbia University, and Rumeysa Ozturk, a doctoral student at Tufts University.
“My understanding of the Ozturk and Mahdawi cases is that the government has not re-detained those noncitizens, and I would expect the government to adhere to the same course of action,” Mr. Hartman said.
Ms. Petrova, 31, the graduate of an elite Russian physics and technology institute, was recruited in 2023 to work at a laboratory at Harvard Medical School studying the earliest stages of cell development. The Kirschner Lab, where she worked, is exploring ways to repair damage to cells that lead to diseases like cancer.
Ms. Petrova has admitted that she failed to declare the samples. Her lawyer has argued that this would ordinarily be treated as a minor infraction, punishable with a fine.
When Ms. Petrova told the customs officer that she had fled Russia for political reasons and faced arrest if she returned there, she was transferred to ICE custody to wait for an asylum hearing, a process that can take months or years.
Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel speaks before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on May 8, 2024.
Credit: YouTube
This story was updated on May 8 to include hearing testimony and additional reporting.
The Office of Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education informed Berkeley Unified Tuesday that it will investigate charges that the district has failed to respond properly to rising incidents of antisemitism in its schools.
Berkeley Unified Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel acknowledged receiving the notification letter during a grilling on Capitol Hill Wednesday during which she said the district investigated nine formal complaints by parents of antisemitism against students.
“However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley Unified,” she told members of a subcommittee of the House Education and Workforce Committee. “When investigations show that an antisemitic event has occurred, we take action to teach correct and redirect our students.” She declined to specify what those actions were, citing state and federal confidentiality laws.
Berkeley Unified School District Superintendent Enikia Ford Morthel speaks before the House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on May 8, 2024.
The Office of Civil Rights is responding to a Feb. 28 complaint by two Jewish civil rights organizations urging an investigation into the “virulent wave of antisemitism” aimed at Israeli and Jewish students in Berkeley Unified schools. The “bullying and harassment” started after the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas of Israelis and the brutal retaliation by the Israeli army in Gaza.
In its letter, the Office of Civil Rights said it would investigate two issues. One is whether the alleged harassment by students and teachers violated Jewish students’ protections based on national origin (shared national ancestry) under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The second issue is whether students and teachers threatened to retaliate against two parents who had complained about harassment.
The complaint cites an instance in which an elementary school teacher threatened a parent who complained about her pro-Palestinian instruction. The name and alleged specific threat were redacted.
This week, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League expanded its 41-page complaint on May 6. It amplified its request for an investigation, stating that “the already-hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students” has worsened. It said that recent school board meetings “have devolved into vicious attacks on Berkeley Jewish parents by (Berkeley Unified) faculty members shouting defamatory lies and anti-Semitic tropes about Jews.”
“Jew hatred is escalating at an alarming level,” the updated complaint said.
The complaint asserts that the district has “created a hostile environment that leaves Jewish and Israeli students feeling marginalized, attacked, frightened, and alienated to the point where many feel compelled to hide their Jewish or Israeli identity.” It cited the hostile atmosphere at school board meetings where Jewish parents were taunted, including one mother who said her son and other students were called “dirty Jews” and “kikes,” an epithet for a Jew.
“Non-Jewish students are led by their teachers’ example to believe that they can freely denigrate their Jewish and Israeli classmates, telling them, e.g., that ‘it is excellent what Hamas did to Israel’ and ‘you have a big nose because you are a stupid Jew,’” the complaint said.
Berkeley, synonymous with decades of protests, from the Free Speech Movement and the Vietnam War through Black Lives Matter protests, is now a flash point of acrimony over how the Palestinian and Israeli conflict is being taught in its schools, including a district-adopted Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum that views Israel and Zionists as oppressors.
The resulting antisemitism is why district Ford Morthel was summoned to for questioning at a Republican-led House hearing titled “Confronting Pervasive Antisemitism in K-12 Schools.”
At a recent Berkeley Unified board meeting, Ford Morthel said she viewed the civil rights complaint as “an opportunity to further examine our practices, procedures and policies and to ensure compliance with federal laws and to make sure that we are truly advancing towards our mission and our values for all of our students.”
In the complaint, the civil rights organizations charged that district has not responded to “scores of complaints” by parents, and neither the school board, which has regularly heard evidence from parents at meetings, nor has Ford Morthel intervened or indicated concern, the complaint said.
With names redacted, the complaint and follow-up cited dozens of instances of antisemitic behavior based on firsthand observations and students’ accounts to their parents.
“In every case and every incident that we listed, there was notification, and sometimes parents begged for help with certain things, and there was either not an adequate response or no response,” said Marci Miller, a California-based attorney with the Brandeis Center.
During the hearing Wednesday, Ford Morthel cautioned that personnel actions are also private and legally protected in California. “So non-disclosure can again be confused with inaction. We work proactively to cultivate respect, understanding, and love in our diverse district, modeling how to uplift and honor each individual that makes up the beautiful fabrics of our schools.”
But Miller said after the hearing that parents notified teachers and administrators many more times than the nine formal complaints that Ford Morthel cited and rarely heard back. “The district certainly did not do enough to address the problem,” she said.
The complaint details the following:
On Oct. 18, Berkeley teachers promoted an unauthorized walkout of school without parental permission in support of Gaza. Students from Berkeley High chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a phrase that implies the elimination of Jews from Israel. Students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School also walked out. Parents said they heard students say “Kill the Jews”, “F— Israel” and “Kill Israel.” A second walkout occurred on March 20.
A ninth-grade art teacher at Berkeley High showed violent pro-Hamas videos and papered his classroom walls with anti-Israel and antisemitic images, including a fist holding a Palestinian flag pushing through a Star of David. A girl in the class ran from the class “shaking and crying”; her parents complained about the hostile environment. She was transferred to another class, where the teacher began wearing a “Free Palestine” patch on her clothing. After CNN and other media cited the first art teacher in reports on antisemitism in the district, the district put the teacher, identified as Eric Norberg, on paid administrative leave.
Right after Oct. 7, a second-grade teacher at Malcolm X Elementary displayed a large Palestinian flag facing students and teachers walking to school in the classroom window. She had her class write “anti-hate” messages on sticky notes, including “Stop Bombing Babies,” which the teacher posted outside the classroom of the only Jewish teacher in the school, the complaint alleged.
The complaint said that in all cases where Jewish parents complained, the district’s response has been to transfer students to other classes but not to discipline or confront the teacher. Shuttling students between classes to separate them from hostile teachers does not comply with federal civil rights laws, which require training and intervention for the offending teachers and for the larger school community as well.
The complaint said that the district has disregarded its own policy on teaching controversial issues by allowing teachers to impose one-sided views of the Gaza conflict. The district’s rules restrict a teacher from using “his/her position to forward his/her own religious, political, economic or social bias” and require that “all sides of the issue are given a proper hearing, using established facts as primary evidence.”
Jewish parents in Berkeley are also opposing the renewal of a contract for developing an ethnic studies curriculum in partnership with the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium. It’s offering a version of ethnic studies that the California School Board rejected and that Gov. Gavin Newsom has criticized.
This proposed curriculum, which is under development and has not been publicly released, is scheduled to be taught throughout K-12 starting next fall. In their letter to the school board, the parents called it “a non-inclusive, biased, divisive, and one-sided ideological world view.”
After teachers this year developed lessons on the Israel-Palestine conflict for ninth graders, parent Yossi Fendel sued the district for the lesson plans he charged were denied to him. The lawsuit also claims that the lessons he was allowed to view were biased against Israel and violated the district’s policy on teaching controversial issues, the publication Berkleyside reported.
Matt Meyer, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers, had declined to comment about the complaint. But in a comment at the April 10 school board meeting, he said, “Never have I seen such personal attacks or the attempt to micromanage our educators.”
“I’m not claiming that teaching controversial topics in a community that has starkly different opinions is an easy task, but our teachers should be able to do this without the threat of a district complaint being outed in the media or threatened in random emails,” he said. “If something is not exactly right, it will be corrected. But the tactic of an attempted wholesale silencing of valid perspectives about a global conflict does not serve the goal of educating our students and preparing them for the wider world.”
In a joint statement Wednesday, Meyer and California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas said they were confident Ford Morthell and district staff would conduct appropriate investigations into allegations of antisemitism. They said they were concerned that the current corrosive political climate “is having a chilling effect on our classrooms, where some teachers are deciding not to teach age-appropriate, factual lessons about a global conflict for fear of being harassed.”
In comments during school board meetings, some teachers also said parents’ complaints were an effort to squelch discussion of what they described as the Israeli genocide in Gaza. At a recent meeting, Christina Harb, a Palestinian American teacher, said, “A small group of very entitled parents who are uncomfortable with the reality of what’s happening are trying to conflate the issue of Palestine with the issue of antisemitism, undermining the seriousness of both issues.”
But Ilana Pearlman, an outspoken Jewish parent of two Berkeley Unified students , dismissed that criticism, and said that Berkeley children have been the victims of their peers and teachers acting badly. She says she keeps hoping it will end.
“When I’ve spoken at school board meetings, I’ve made a very important distinction to only discuss overt cases of antisemitism. So nobody can come at me with wild accusations of suppressing anti-war voices,” she said. “I’ve stuck to just the bare-bones facts of Jews being called stupid at elementary schools, of another parent of a second grader who told me students are calling Jewish students baby killers.
“What I’m really finding troubling is not only are we not being believed, but there’s this approach of digging heels in further to say that we’re making up bogus lies,” she said. “I want for our kids to be safe, and I want for the classrooms to stop being politicized. And what that looks like is leaders leading and denouncing antisemitism in its tracks as it’s happening.”
Ford Mortel was joined at the hearing by superintendents of New York City, the nation’s largest school district, and Montgomery County, Maryland. Both experienced highly publicized incidents of antisemitism since the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews in Israel by Hamas and the ongoing Israeli military response that has led to an estimated 35,000 deaths in Gaza. Rep. Aaron Bean, R-FL, chaired the hearing before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education.
The Education and Workforce Committee has previously interrogated college presidents over their responses to campus antisemitism, leading to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania. Columbia University’s president recently also faced tough questioning.
Noé C. Crespo, a professor of Health Promotion & Behavioral Science, poses outside the School of Public Health at San Diego State University.
EdSource
Noé Crespo, a professor of public health at San Diego State University, was on the verge of cracking a question he had spent years trying to answer.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Crespo and his colleagues applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study ways to boost vaccination rates among Latinos. They designed a community outreach plan, paid a team to implement it, and collected results. All that remained this spring was to analyze their hard-earned data.
But in April, Crespo’s grant was terminated by the Trump administration as part of a controversial pullback on research funding in both the sciences and humanities nationwide.
Crespo has all the data he could want,but no money to pay a statistician to analyze it.
“We invest so much — time, energy, resources — to implement a project that is meant to help the public,” he said, “and so it does feel discouraging that we’re put in a position where we can’t continue that work.”
Around the country this spring,many faculty members who rely on federal funding for research have received similarlyabrupt termination notices. The moment is particularly poignant for Crespo’s institution, San Diego State, which this year accomplished the long-awaited goal of joining a prestigious club of top-tier research universities known as R1s.
While a dip in federal support is unlikely to jeopardize that coveted recognition, it has disrupted research at San Diego State into subjects like mental health care and HIV/AIDS. The university’s research and development spending hit $158 million in the year ending June 2023, much of it fueled by federal dollars.
The cancellations are part of efforts under President Donald Trump to cut federal funding and align it more closely with the president’s political objectives. The White House has targeted grants related to a wide range of areas, from climate change to gender and sexuality. Critically for Crespo, Trump’s NIH has also axed research related to racial inequities in health, vaccine hesitancy and Covid.
California’s colleges and universities have much at stake when it comes to federal research funding. The state’s higher education institutions notched $7.2 billion in federal research and development (R&D) spending in 2023, according to the Higher Education Research and Development (HERD) Survey.
That figure includes more than $250 million spent at California State University campuses like San Diego State and more than $4.6 billion across the University of California system. The state’s private universities, including Stanford University and the University of Southern California, spent a combined $2.3 billion in federal R&D.
Fear of ‘losing a whole generation of scientists’
Putting an exact figure on grant cancellations nationwide has proven elusive, in part because the federal spending databases that track such spending sometimes contradict each other.
One recent analysis by researchers at Harvard, Yale and associated teaching hospitals estimated that $1.8 billion in NIH grants were terminated in a one-month period. Meanwhile, as selected grants get reinstated — and as attempts to block terminations advance through the courts — the number of canceled grants has become a moving target.
The impact on California could be substantial, even counting terminations at NIH alone. Grant Watch, a project tracking the cancellation of federal scientific research grants since Trump returned to office in 2025, estimates that California researchers have lost $273 million in NIH grants, counting funding that was not paid out because of terminations.
At San Diego State, Hala Madanat, the university’s vice president for research and innovation, estimates that the university typically receives about 70% of its research funding from the federal government, though that can vary from year to year. The university has so far identified 50 terminated federal grants with about $26 million remaining to be spent, she said, many of them related to climate change, LGBTQ communities and workforce pipeline programs.
“If we halt doctoral education because there’s no funding for three to four years, you are losing a whole generation of scientists,” Madanat said.
San Diego State has appealed virtually every grant termination, Madanat said. So far, none have been restored, though two subcontracts were reinstated outside the formal appeal process.
With appeals still pending, two federal grant recipients reached while reporting this story declined to comment, saying they are worried speaking out could endanger their chance of having funding reinstated. That potential risk is on Crespo’s mind, too.
“Do I have concerns? Yes,” he said. “At the same time, I was trained in public health to speak the truth, and that’s what scientists do.”
A poster on the campus of San Diego State University advertises the university’s new status as an R1 research institution.EdSource
A ‘soul-crushing’ loss of federal funding
As Trump took office in January, San Diego State was capping off an ambitious campaign to become an R1, a distinction requiring it to spend at least $50 million on R&D and confer at least 70 doctoral research degrees.
The university saw research funding rise 64% in just three years. It conferred 123 doctoral degrees in 2022-23. And to cement its R1 bona fides, it plans to invest in a multiuse “innovation district” with technology and research facilities.
But funding for some of the university’s vaunted research projects is starting to vanish as the White House slashes selected grants and contracts.
In 2023, for example,the university celebrated the establishment of the SDSU Center for Community Energy and Environmental Justice. Equipped with $10 million in federal funding from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), San Diego State would guide historically underserved communities to apply for grants that could help them weather environmental threats like droughts and pollution.
“What we were doing was sort of the ‘teaching to fish,’” said Rebecca Lewison, a professor of biology at San Diego State who led the center, one of more than a dozen EPA Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centersnationwide.
But then came some bad news. In February, EPA terminated the center’s funding, citing an obligation to ensure its grants do not support diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. The center is likely to lose an estimated $8 million it left unspent.
The funding reversal came as the White House has moved to roll back environmental justice-related initiatives. An EPA spokesperson said in an email that the San Diego State grant had given “radical [non-governmental organizations] millions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars” and that those groups were“forcing their agenda of wasteful DEI programs and ‘environmental justice’ preferencing on the EPA’s core mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
For Lewison, the loss of federal support for San Diego State’s center has been “soul-crushing.” She said such technical assistance is “really a bipartisan initiative” and that the EPA statement appears to misunderstand the nature of the center’s work.
“I appreciate that we were in the environmental justice sort of program umbrella and that that’s become a word that is associated with something negative,” Lewison said. “But honestly, ‘Thriving Communities’ is really what it sounds like: it’s wanting communities all over to thrive.”
Lewison is now exploring options to keep the center alive. San Diego State has set aside $1 million to sunset certain projects, Madanat said, and is also turning to private philanthropy.
‘I would love to know that answer’
At the time that Crespo filed a project summary for his vaccine grant, Covid had taken a dire toll on Latinos in California. UCLA researchers would later confirm that Latinos had experienced a disproportionate rate of Covid cases and deaths during the pandemic’s first year.
“If there’s a wildfire in a particular part of town, we would want to send the firefighters over there to put out that fire,” Crespo said. “And that’s what we do also in public health and in research: we identify where there are problems, and in some cases, there are subgroups of people that are disproportionately affected.”
NIH awarded Crespo and his colleagues a grant of $1.8 million in 2022, as highly transmissible subvariants of the Covid virus circulated. The team finally could put in motion the study they had planned at 10 San Diego-area health clinics.
There was still $314,690 remaining in the grant at the time it was canceled, according to data on grant terminations published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Without the ability to use those funds, the team will have to seek other ways to pay collaborators with data analysis expertise.
In the meantime, Crespo is left wondering: What worked and what didn’t?
“The data are there,” he said, “so I would love to know that answer.”
On May 10, Dana Goldstein wrote a long article in The New York Times about how education disappeared as a national or federal issue. Why, she wondered, did the two major parties ignore education in the 2024 campaign? Kamala Harris supported public schools and welcomed the support of the two big teachers’ unions, but she did not offer a flashy new program to raise test scores. Trump campaigned on a promise to privatize public funding, promote vouchers, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling–anything but public schools, which he regularly attacked as dens of iniquity, indoctrination, and DEI.
Goldstein is the best education writer at The Times, and her reflections are worth considering.
She started:
What happened to learning as a national priority?
For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy.
At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even a single major political figure, is vying to claim that mantle.
President Trump has been fixated in his second term on imposing ideological obedience on schools.
On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”Since taking office, he has pursued this goal with startling energy — assaulting higher education while adopting a strategy of neglect toward the federal government’s traditional role in primary and secondary schools. He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress, and ended efforts to share knowledge with schools about which teaching strategies lead to the best results. A spokeswoman for the administration said that low test scores justify cuts in federal spending. “What we are doing right now with education is clearly not working,” she said.
Mr. Trump has begun a bevy of investigations into how schools handle race and transgender issues, and has demanded that the curriculum be “patriotic” — a priority he does not have the power to enact, since curriculum is set by states and school districts.
Actually, federal law explicitly forbids any federal official from attempting to influence the curriculum or textbooks in schools.
Of course, Trump never worries about the limits imposed by laws. He does what he wants and leaves the courts to decide whether he went too far.
Goldstein continued:
Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one. Governors and congressional leaders are defending the Department of Education as Mr. Trump has threatened to abolish it. Liberal groups are suing to block funding cuts. When Kamala Harris was running for president last year, she spoke about student loan forgiveness and resisting right-wing book bans. But none of that amounts to an agenda on learning, either.
All of this is true despite the fact that reading scores are the lowest they have been in decades, after a pandemic that devastated children by shuttering their schools and sending them deeper and deeper into the realm of screens and social media. And it is no wonder Americans are increasingly cynical about higher education. Forty percent of students who start college do not graduate, often leaving with debt and few concrete skills.
“Right now, there are no education goals for the country,” said Arne Duncan, who served as President Barack Obama’s first secretary of education after running Chicago’s public school system. “There are no metrics to measure goals, there are no strategies to achieve those goals and there is no public transparency.”
I have been writing about federal education policy for almost fifty years. There are things we have learned since Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act in 1965. That law was part of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s agenda. Its purpose was to send federal funds to the schools enrolling the poorest students. Its purpose was not to raise test scores but to provide greater equity of resources.
Over time, the federal government took on an assertive role in defending the rights of students to an education: students with disabilities; students who did not speak English; and students attending illegally segregated schools.
In 1983, a commission appointed by President Reagan’s Secretary of Education Terrell Bell declared that American schools were in crisis because of low academic standards. Many states began implementing state tests and raising standards for promotion and graduation.
President George H.W. Bush convened a meeting of the nation’s governors, and they endorsed an ambitious set of “national goals” for the year 2000. E.g., the U.S. will be first in the world by the year 2000; all children will start school ready to learn by 2000. None of the goals–other than the rise of the high school graduation rate to 90%–was met.
The Clinton administration endorsed the national goals and passed legislation (“Goals 2000”) to encourages states to create their own standards and tests. President Clinton made clear, however, that he hoped for national standards and tests.
President George W. Bush came to office with a far-reaching, unprecedented plan called “No Child Left Behind” to reform education by a heavy emphasis on annual testing of reading and math. He claimed that because of his test-based policy, there had been a “Texas Miracle,” which could be replicated on a national scale. NCLB set unreachable goals, saying that every school would have 100% of their students reach proficiency by the year 2014. And if they were not on track to meet that impossible goals, the schools would face increasingly harsh punishments.
In no nation in the world have 100% of all students ever reached proficiency.
Scores rose, as did test-prep. Many untested subjects lost time in the curriculum or disappeared. Reading and math were tested every year from grades 3-8, as the law prescribed. What didn’t matter were science, history, civics, the arts, even recess.
Some schools were sanctioned or even closed for falling behind. Schools were dominated by the all-important reading and math tests. Some districts cheated. Some superintendents were jailed.
In 2001, there were scholars who warned that the “Texas Miracle” was a hoax. Congress didn’t listen. In time the nation learned that there was no Texas Miracle, never had been. But Congress clung to NCLB because they had no other ideas.
When Obama took office in 2009, educators hoped for relief from the annual testing mandates but they were soon disappointed. Obama chose Arne Duncan, who had led the Chicago schools but had never been a teacher. Duncan worked with consultants from the Gates and Broad Foundations and created a national competition for the states called Race to the Top. Duncan had a pot of $5 billion that Congress had given him for education reform.
Race to the Top offered big rewards to states that applied and won. To be eligible, states had to authorize the creation of charter schools (almost every state did); they had to agree to adopt common national standards (that meant the Common Core standards, funded wholly by the Gates Foundation and not yet completed); sign up for one of two federally funded standardized tests (PARCC or Smarter Balanced) ; and agree to evaluate their teachers by the test scores of their students. Eighteen states won huge rewards. There were other conditions but these were the most consequential.
Tennessee won $500 million. It is hard to see what, if anything, is better in Tennessee because of that audacious prize. The state put $100 million into an “Achievement School District,” which gathered the state’s lowest performing schools into a new district and turned them into charters. Chris Barbic, leader of the YES Prep charter chain in Houston was hired to run it. He pledged that within five years, the lowest-performing schools in the state would rank among the top 20% in the state. None of them did. The ASD was ultimately closed down.
Duncan had a great fondness for charter schools because they were the latest thing in Chicago; while superintendent, he had launched a program he called Renaissance 2010, in which he pledged to close 80 public schools and open 100 charter schools. Duncan viewed charters as miraculous. Ultimately Chicago’s charter sector produced numerous scandals but no miracles.
I have written a lot about Race to the Top over the years. It was layered on top of Bush’s NCLB, but it was even more punitive. It targeted teachers and blamed them if students got low scores. Its requirement that states evaluate teachers by student test scores was a dismal failure. The American Statistical Association warned against it from the outset, pointing out that students’ home life affected test scores more than their teachers.
Race to the Top failed. The proliferation of charter schools, aided by a hefty federal subsidy, drained students and resources from public schools. Charter schools close their doors at a rapid pace: 26% are gone in their first five years; 39% in their first ten years. In addition, due to lax accountability, charters have demonstrated egregious examples of waste, fraud, and abuse.
The Common Core was supposed to lift test scores and reduce achievement gaps, but it did neither. Conservative commentator Mike Petrilli referred to 2007-2017 as “the lost decade.” Scores stagnated and achievement gaps barely budged.
So what have we learned?
This is what I have learned: politicians are not good at telling educators how to teach. The Department of Education (which barely exists as of now) is not made up of educators. It was not in a position to lead school reform. Nor is the Secretary of Education. Nor is the President. Would you want the State legislature or Congress telling surgeons how to do their job?
The most important thing that the national government can do is to ensure that schools have the funding they need to pay their staff, reduce class sizes, and update their facilities.
The federal government should have a robust program of data collection, so we have accurate information about students, teachers, and schools.
The federal government should not replicate its past failures.
What Congress can do very effectively is to ensure that the nation’s schools have the resources they need; that children have access to nutrition and medical care; and that pregnant women get prenatal care so that their babies are born healthy.
When Trump promised to shut down the U.S. Department of Education during his campaign, he must have known that he couldn’t close down a department without Congressional approval. Everyone else knew it. He brought in wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon as Secretary of Education to preside over the Department’s demise. He never sought Congressional approval.
Elon Musk’s DOGS team did the dirty work, laying off half the Department’s employees, some 1300 people.
The most severely affected offices were the Federal Student Aid office, the Office for Civil Rights, and the Institute for Education Sciences (which oversees federal research and NAEP). The IES was eliminated, leaving future administrations of NAEP in doubt and disemboweling the government’s essential historic role in compiling data about education.
But today a federal judge ruled that the shuttering of ED was wrong and that everyone laid off should be rehired. Bottom line: a President can’t close a Congressionally authorized department by executive order.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s executive order to shut down the Education Department and ordered the agency to reinstate employees who were fired in mass layoffs.
U.S. District Judge Myong Joun in Boston granted a preliminary injunction stopping the Trump administration from carrying out two plans announced in March that sought to work toward Trump’s goal to dismantle the department. It marks a setback to one of the Republican president’s campaign promises.
The injunction was requested in a lawsuit filed by the Somerville and Easthampton school districts in Massachusetts and the American Federation of Teachers, along with other education groups.
In their lawsuit, the groups said the layoffs amounted to an illegal shutdown of the Education Department. They said it left the department unable to carry out responsibilities required by Congress, including duties to support special education, distribute financial aid and enforce civil rights laws.
In his order, Joun said the plaintiffs painted a “stark picture of the irreparable harm that will result from financial uncertainty and delay, impeded access to vital knowledge on which students and educators rely, and loss of essential services for America’s most vulnerable student populations.”
Layoffs of that scale, he added, “will likely cripple the Department.”
Joun ordered the Education Department to reinstate federal workers who were terminated as part of the March 11 layoff announcement.
The Trump administration says the layoffs are aimed at efficiency, not a department shutdown. Trump has called for the closure of the agency but recognizes it must be carried out by Congress, the government said.
The administration said restructuring the agency “may impact certain services until the reorganization is finished” but it’s committed to fulfilling its statutory requirements.
How might federal funding to colleges change under the current federal administration? What to tell students who are worried their financial aid packages might be impacted by proposed changes to federal education funding? Is it possible to find common ground with President Donald Trump?
A panel of education experts on Tuesday provided few definitive answers to those questions, leaving several unanswered, reflecting the uncertainty facing many in education today as they examine how the Trump administration’s approach to higher education may impact them.
The panelists on an EdSource roundtable, “The future of California higher education under Trump,” described a barrage of executive actions — banning diversity efforts, withdrawing already budgeted funds, blacklisting colleges, canceling visas of international students and threatening college leaders — actions that Dominique J. Baker, associate professor at the University of Delaware, described as “antagonistic.”
Baker stated that while many of the funding threats and proposed changes to education come from the executive branch of government, it’s important to consider the role of “the entirety of our federal apparatus” when discussing the future of higher education in this country, including Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.
Panelists agreed that proposed changes to student loan repayment options and to the federal Pell Grants, which are awarded to students with exceptional financial need, would be detrimental to many students.
“If all of these policies went into place the way that they are currently written out, we would expect to see a stark drop in low-income students enrolling in higher education, whether that’s for the first time or students who had previously enrolled leaving higher education before they can earn any sort of credential or degree,” said Baker, in a blunt assessment of what could occur if the proposed changes to those programs are approved.
Panelist Cristian Ulisses Reyes, a master’s candidate in higher education counseling and student affairs at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo who received the Pell Grant, said that threats to such funding are instilling fear in his peers.
“Students aren’t just numbers and policy debates,” Reyes said. “We’re the ones that are being directly impacted.”
Potential scenarios in case of cuts
Gregory A. Smith, chancellor of the San Diego Community College District, said that of around $64 million in annual federal funds, about $43 million goes toward financial aid for students, much in the form of Pell Grants.
The rest of the funds go to programming — about $3.5 million in yearly Title III grants from the federal Department of Education are geared toward the enrollment and retention of Hispanic students in STEM fields; the community college district is a Hispanic-serving institution.
If threats to funding continue, Smith said the San Diego Community College District needs to be prepared for these scenarios:
The funding could be withheld altogether.
The funding may remain intact, but the staff who process the payments may have been laid off during recent staff terminations at the federal Department of Education, which could lead to funding delays.
“The most catastrophic version” of events, he said, would be if Congress amended Title III of the Higher Education Act, which would eliminate the Hispanic-serving institution’s STEM program.
And if any of these scenarios were to occur, “[the program] may need to look different, it may need to be funded differently, but we’re certainly committed to continuing the work in any of those three scenarios,” Smith said.
“Especially for a lot of the populations that we’ve listed — like low-income students, first-generation students — the administration’s attacks on student protections feel personal for many of us,” said Reyes, the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo master’s student.
Reyes urged colleges and universities to be more transparent with their students about discussions and involve them in decisions being made. “Institutions shouldn’t be making decisions about us, without us,” he said.
Relying on long-standing California policies
California has decades of practice in implementing anti-affirmative action policies after approving Proposition 209 in 1996, the panelists noted, as a reminder that the state is protected from some of the changes being made at the federal level.
“Legally, we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out what that looks like to not consider race in hiring, race in admissions, while still being equity-minded,” said Gina Ann Garcia, professor in the School of Education at UC Berkeley.
Garcia, however, not only recently attended a cultural graduation, but said she feels supported by her university to say such graduations will not be canceled.
“We’re talking about a state that’s been anti-affirmative action for 30 years, so we’ve had 30 years to get in compliance,” she said. “We’re not really the state you want to come for, if they’re smart.”
Smith, from San Diego community colleges, echoed Garcia’s sentiments about feeling no fear when the federal Department of Education issued a “Dear Colleague” letter in February, threatening cuts in federal funding if schools did not eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
The letter has not changed their DEI programming, Smith said, but it has led to fear in their school community, and they are afraid about the security of these programs.
Smith also shared strategies his district has implemented to keep their students and staff informed, including:
Discussions on what DEI activities are offered and why.
Communicating that campus policies on civility, academic freedom, freedom of expression, and freedom of speech remain intact.
Proactive action by their board in adopting resolutions related to institutional protection from certain government threats.
“It is really important in this moment that we say these are lines around which there is no negotiation, they are fundamental to higher education in America, they’re at the core of a free democratic society, and so there is no negotiation,” Smith said, echoing what Baker and others noted during their discussion. “We can’t give up any margin on it whatsoever at all without crumbling the entire foundation of our institutions.”
While the panelists agreed on this point, they also warned of a future in which the state’s present-day policies on education may change. Upcoming state elections, they said, will determine the direction California heads in regardless of who is in power at the federal level.
“We could swing in a few years … there are many red districts in California,” said Garcia. “It changes what happens as far as funding and commitments to education when we change political leanings.”
May 19, 2025, by Dean Hoke: In my recent blog series and podcast, Small College America, I’ve highlighted the essential role small colleges play in the fabric of U.S. higher education. These institutions serve as academic homes to students who often desire alternatives to larger universities, and as cultural and economic anchors, especially in rural and small-town America, where, according to IPEDS, 324 private nonprofit colleges operate. Many are deeply embedded in the towns they serve, providing jobs, educational access, cultural life, and long-term economic opportunity.
Unfortunately, a wave of proposed federal budget cuts may further severely compromise these institutions’ ability to function—and in some cases, survive. Without intervention, the ripple effects could devastate entire communities.
Understanding the DOE and USDA Budget Cuts
The proposed reductions to the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) budgets present a two-pronged threat to small colleges, particularly those in rural areas or serving low-income student populations.
Department of Education (DOE)
The most significant concerns center on proposed changes to Pell Grants, a vital financial resource for low-income students. One House proposal would redefine full-time enrollment from 12 to 15 credit hours per semester. If enacted, this change would reduce the average Pell Grant by approximately $1,479 for students taking 12 credits. Students enrolled less than half-time could become ineligible entirely.
Additionally, the Federal Work-Study (FWS) and Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants (SEOG) programs face serious threats. The House Appropriations Subcommittee has proposed eliminating both programs, which together provide over $2 billion annually in aid to low-income students.
Programs like TRIO and GEAR UP, which support first-generation, low-income, and underrepresented students, have been targeted in previous proposals; however, current budget drafts maintain level funding. Nonetheless, their future remains uncertain as negotiations continue.
The Title III Strengthening Institutions Program, which funds academic support services, infrastructure, and student retention efforts at under-resourced colleges, received a proposed funding increase in the FY 2024 President’s Budget, though congressional appropriations may differ.
Department of Agriculture (USDA)
The USDA’s impact on small colleges, while less direct, is nonetheless critical. Discretionary funding was reduced by more than $380 million in FY 2024, reflecting a general pullback in rural investment.
Programs like the Community Facilities Direct Loan & Grant Program, which supports broadband access, healthcare facilities, and community infrastructure, were level-funded at $2.8 billion. These investments often benefit rural colleges directly or indirectly by enhancing the communities in which they operate.
While some funding has been maintained, the broader trend suggests tighter resources for rural development in the years ahead. For small colleges embedded in these communities, the consequences could be substantial: delayed infrastructure upgrades, reduced student access to services, and weakened town-gown partnerships.
Why Small Colleges Are Particularly Vulnerable
Small private nonprofit colleges—typically enrolling fewer than 3,000 students—operate on thin margins. Many are tuition-dependent, with over 80% of their operating revenue derived from tuition and fees. They lack the substantial endowments or large alumni donor bases that buoy more prominent institutions during hard times.
What exacerbates their vulnerability is the student profile they serve. Small colleges disproportionately enroll Pell-eligible, first-generation, and minority students. Reductions in federal financial aid and student support programs have a direct impact on student enrollment and retention. If students can’t afford to enroll—or stay enrolled—colleges see revenue declines, leading to cuts in academic offerings, faculty, and student services.
Additionally, small colleges are often located in areas experiencing population decline. The so-called “demographic cliff”—a projected 13% drop in the number of high school graduates from 2025 to 2041 will affect 38 states and is expected to hit rural and non-urban regions the hardest. This compounds the enrollment challenges many small colleges are already facing.
Economic and Social Impact on Rural Towns
The closure of a small college doesn’t just mean the loss of a school; it signifies a seismic shift in a community’s economic and social structure. Colleges often rank among the top employers in their towns. When a college closes, hundreds of jobs disappear—faculty, staff, groundskeepers, maintenance, food services, IT professionals, and more.
Consider Mount Pleasant, Iowa, where the closure of Iowa Wesleyan University in 2023 cost the local economy an estimated $55 million annually. Businesses that relied on student and faculty patronage—restaurants, barbershops, bookstores, and even landlords—felt the immediate impact. Community organizations lost vital volunteers. Town officials were left scrambling to figure out what to do with a sprawling, empty campus in the heart of their city.
Colleges also provide cultural enrichment that is often otherwise absent in small towns. Lectures, concerts, art exhibitions, and sporting events bring together diverse groups and add vibrancy to the local culture. Many offer healthcare clinics, counseling centers, or continuing education for adults—services that disappear with a campus closure.
USDA investments in these communities are often tied to colleges, whether in the form of shared infrastructure, grant-funded development projects, or broadband expansions to support online learning. As these federal investments diminish, so too does a town’s ability to attract and retain both residents and employers.
Real-Life Implications and Stories
The headlines tell one story, but the real impact is felt in the lives of students, faculty, and the surrounding communities.
Presentation College in Aberdeen, South Dakota, ceased operations on October 31, 2023, after citing unsustainable financial and enrollment challenges. Hundreds of students, many drawn to its affordability, rural location, and nursing programs, were forced to reconsider their futures. The college quickly arranged teach-out agreements with over 30 institutions, including Northern State University and St. Ambrose University, which offered pathways for students to complete their degrees. The Presentation Sisters, the founding order, are now seeking a buyer for the campus aligned with their values, while local officials explore transforming the site into a technical education hub to continue serving the community.
Birmingham-Southern College in Alabama, a 168-year-old institution, closed its doors on May 31, 2024, after a $30 million state-backed loan request was ultimately rejected despite initial legislative support. The college had a $128 million annual economic impact on Birmingham and maintained partnerships with K–12 schools, correctional institutions, and nonprofits. The closure triggered the transfer of over 150 students to nearby colleges like Samford University, but left faculty, staff, and the broader community facing economic and cultural losses. A proposed sale of the campus to Miles College fell through, leaving the site’s future in limbo.
Even college leaders who have weathered the past decade worry they’re nearing a breaking point. Rachel Burns of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) has tracked dozens of recent closures and warns that many institutions remain at serious risk, despite their best efforts. “They just can’t rebound enrollment,” she says, noting that pandemic aid only temporarily masked deeper structural vulnerabilities.
Potential Closures and Projections
College closures are accelerating across the United States. According to the State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO), 467 institutions closed between 2004 and 2020—over 20% of them private, nonprofit four-year colleges. Since 2020, at least 75 more nonprofit colleges have shut down, and many experts believe this pace is quickening.
A 2023 analysis by EY-Parthenon warned that 1 in 10 four-year institutions—roughly 200 to 230 colleges—are currently in financial jeopardy. These schools are often small, private, rural, and tuition-dependent, serving large numbers of first-generation and Pell-eligible students. Even a modest drop of 5–10% in tuition revenue can be catastrophic for colleges already operating on razor-thin margins.
Compounding the challenge, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia released a 2024 predictive model forecasting that as many as 80 additional colleges could close by 2034 under sustained enrollment decline driven by demographic shifts. This figure accounts for closures only—not mergers—and spans public, private nonprofit, and for-profit sectors.
Layered onto these economic and demographic vulnerabilities are the potential impacts of proposed federal education funding cuts. The Trump administration’s FY 2026 budget blueprint once again targets student aid programs, proposing the elimination or severe reduction of subsidized student loans, TRIO, GEAR UP, Federal Work-Study, and the Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant (SEOG). Although similar proposals from Trump’s first term (FY 2018–2021) were rejected by Congress, the renewed push signals ongoing political pressure to curtail support for low-income and first-generation students.
To assess the potential impact of these policy shifts, a policy stress test was applied to both the Philadelphia Fed model and the historical closure trend. The analysis suggests that if these cuts were enacted, an additional 50 to 70 closures could occur by 2034.
Philadelphia Fed model baseline: 80 projected closures
With policy cuts: Up to 130 closures
Historical average trend (2020–2024): ~14 closures/year
10-year projection (status quo): ~140 closures
With policy cuts: Up to 210 closures
In short, depending on the scenario, anywhere from 130 to 210 additional college closures may occur by 2034. Institutions most at risk are those that serve the very populations these federal programs are designed to support. Without intervention—through policy, partnerships, or funding—the number of closures could rise sharply in the years ahead.
These scenario-based projections are summarized in the chart below.
Why Should Congress Care
According to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU), a private, nonprofit college or university is located in 395 of the 435 congressional districts. These institutions are not only centers of learning but also powerful economic engines that generate:
$591.5 billion in national economic impact
$77.6 billion in combined local, state, and federal tax revenue
3.4 million jobs supported or sustained
1.1 million people are directly employed in private nonprofit higher education
1.1 million graduates are entering the workforce each year
As such, the fate of small private colleges is not just a higher education issue—it is a national economic and workforce development issue that should command bipartisan attention.
Strategies for Resilience and Policy Recommendations
There are clear, actionable strategies to reduce the risk of widespread college closures:
Consortium and shared governance models: Small colleges can boost efficiency and sustainability by sharing administrative functions, faculty, academic programs, technology infrastructure, and enrollment services. This allows institutions to reduce operational costs while maintaining their distinct missions and brands. In some cases, these arrangements evolve into formal mergers. An emerging example is the Coalition for the Common Good, a new model of mission-aligned institutions that maintain individual identities but operate under shared governance. This structure offers long-term financial stability without sacrificing institutional purpose or community impact.
Strategic partnerships: Collaborations with community colleges, online education providers, regional employers, and nonprofit organizations can expand reach, enhance curricular offerings, and improve student outcomes. These partnerships can support 2+2 transfer pipelines, workforce-aligned certificate programs, and hybrid learning models that meet the needs of adult learners and working professionals, often underserved by traditional residential colleges.
State action: States should establish stabilization grant programs and offer targeted incentive funding to support mergers, consortium participation, and regional collaboration. Policies that protect institutional access in rural and underserved areas are especially urgent, as closures can leave entire regions without viable higher education options. States can also play a role in convening institutions to plan for shared services and long-term viability.
Federal investment: Continued and expanded funding for Pell Grants, TRIO, SEOG, Title III and V, and USDA rural development programs is essential to sustaining the institutions that serve low-income, first-generation, and rural students. These investments should be treated as critical infrastructure, not discretionary spending, given their role in expanding educational equity, enhancing workforce readiness, and promoting rural economic development. Consistent federal support can help stabilize small colleges and enable long-term planning.
College leaders, local governments, and community groups must advocate in unison. The conversation should move beyond institutional survival to one of community survival. As the saying goes, when a college dies, the town begins to die with it.
Conclusion
Small colleges are not expendable. They are vital threads in the educational, economic, and cultural fabric of America, especially in rural and underserved communities. The proposed federal budget cuts across the Departments of Education and Agriculture represent a direct threat not only to these institutions but to the communities that depend on them.
If policymakers fail to act, the consequences will be widespread and enduring. The domino effect is real: reduced funding leads to fewer students, tighter budgets, staff layoffs, program cuts, and eventually, campus closures. And when those campuses close, entire towns are left to absorb the fallout—economically, socially, and spiritually.
We have a choice. We can invest in the future of small colleges and the communities they anchor, or we can stand by as they vanish—along with the promise they hold for millions of students and the towns they call home.
References
U.S. Department of Education, FY 2025 Budget Summary and Justifications
National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), Analysis of Proposed Pell Grant and Campus-Based Aid Reductions
State Higher Education Executive Officers Association (SHEEO) and Higher Ed Dive, Data on College Closures and Institutional Viability Trends
Fitch Ratings, Reports on Financial Pressures in U.S. Higher Education Institutions
Iowa Public Radio and The Hechinger Report, Case Studies on Rural College Closures and Community Impact
Council for Opportunity in Education (COE), Statements and Data on TRIO Program Reach and Effectiveness
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Predictive Modeling of U.S. College Closures (2024)
EY-Parthenon, 2023 Report on Financial Vulnerability Among Four-Year Institutions
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Rural Development and Community Facilities Loan & Grant Program Summaries
Interviews and commentary from institutional leaders, TRIO program directors, and SHEEO policy staff
Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), Data on Enrollment, Institution Type, and Geographic Distribution
Dean Hoke is Managing Partner of Edu Alliance Group, a higher education consultancy. He formerly served as President/CEO of the American Association of University Administrators (AAUA). With decades of experience in higher education leadership, consulting, and institutional strategy, he brings a wealth of knowledge on small colleges’ challenges and opportunities. Dean is the Executive Producer and co-host for the podcast series Small College America.
Secretary of Education Linda McMahon announced an increase of $60 million to the Federal Charter Schools Program, bringing the annual total to $500 million to open new charter schools or expand existing ones.
This decision ignored research produced by the Network for Public Educatuon, showing that $1 billion had been wasted on grants to charter schools that never opened; that 26% of federally funded charter schools had closed within their first five years; and that 39% had closed by year 10.
The charter sector has been riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse.
See the following reports:
Charter failures
The Failure of the Federal Charter Schools Program:
Hundreds of UCLA students protest in support of Palestinians on May 2, 2024.
Credit: Christine Kao
A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that goes into effect Thursday ordering UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students in reaction to the university’s handling of pro-Palestinian encampments last spring.
Three Jewish students in June sued the University of California system, arguing that UCLA allowed protesters to erect an encampment that blocked Jewish students from accessing parts of campus, including classrooms and an undergraduate library.
U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi agreed that UCLA knew students could not enter parts of campus because of their religious beliefs.
“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” he wrote.
“UCLA does not dispute this,” Scarsi wrote. “Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”
The order bars the UC defendants from “knowingly allowing or facilitating the exclusion of Jewish students from ordinarily available portions of UCLA’s programs, activities, and campus areas, whether as a result of a de-escalation strategy or otherwise.” It also gives the campus until Aug. 15 to instruct campus security, police and student affairs “not to aid or participate in any obstruction of access for Jewish students to ordinarily available programs, activities, and campus areas.”
UCLA was one in a wave of campuses where protesters built encampments in solidarity with Palestine as part of a campaign demanding universities sever financial ties with Israel.
The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have reported on incidents in which Jewish students said they were blocked from entering the encampment. An April 30 video of Jewish students being rebuffed by protesters when they attempted to walk through the camp went viral. Pro-Palestinian organizers have said restricting who could enter the camp was a measure meant to protect protesters from harassment and abuse.
Counter protesters attacked the camp on the evening of April 30, attempting to tear down barricades and hurling objects at the protesters. The university was criticized for not doing more to protect the pro-Palestine students.
The university’s police chief was temporarily reassigned in May pending a review of the school’s security processes. UC President Michael Drake has also requested an investigation into how the campus responded to the violent attack on the pro-Palestinian camp.
Attorneys for the UC system seeking to prevent the injunction argued that the university has already taken steps to ensure its students’ safety and access to education, including by creating a new campus safety office that is “empowered to take decisive action in response to protest.”
Mary Osako, UCLA vice chancellor for strategic communications, said in a written statement that the ruling interferes with how the university can react to events on its campus.
“UCLA is committed to fostering a campus culture where everyone feels welcome and free from intimidation, discrimination, and harassment,” Osako said. “The district court’s ruling would improperly hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground and to meet the needs of the Bruin community. We’re closely reviewing the Judge’s ruling and considering all our options moving forward.”
The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and Clement & Murphy PLLC represent the plaintiffs. Becket indicated in a press release about the order that UC defendants are expected to appeal the ruling.
“UCLA is still in charge of its own campus,” Mark Rienzi, president of Becket and an attorney for the students, said in a statement to EdSource. “But the court’s order means that however UCLA decides to manage its campus, allowing the exclusion of Jewish students is not an option on the table.”
The Los Angeles Times reported that UC leaders are working on a systemwide plan regarding how its campuses will respond should protests of the Israel-Hamas war continue in the fall. Drake has until Oct. 1 to issue a report to that effect, according to the Times.
Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).
The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.
The National Education Association explains here:
Block Grant Overview
Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.
Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.
Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently.
Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.
