Newyorkbeacon.com
On Aug. 7, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to further dictate how universities conduct their admissions processes. Although the Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that universities could not use affirmative action to admit students, the court left room for race to be considered via admission essays if the applicant’s race shaped their lives in significant ways. Trump’s new executive order requires colleges to turn over race-related admissions data to the government.
According to The Associated Press, Trump’s executive order takes aim at that loophole, arguing that allowing essays to consider race is just another way of implementing affirmative action, which conservatives consider an unfair disadvantage to white people, particularly white men.
“The persistent lack of available data — paired with the rampant use of ‘diversity statements’ and other overt and hidden racial proxies — continues to raise concerns about whether race is actually used in admissions decisions in practice,” Trump’s memorandum stated.
The Trump administration has been engaged in proxy battles with higher education since his inauguration in January. Conservatives have long held that higher education and elite universities are hostile to their particular worldview. In addition, the Trump administration has consistently used the idea that universities like Harvard, Brown, and Columbia have allowed antisemitism to flourish on their campuses to cut funding and manipulate those universities into allowing unprecedented federal control.
The latter pair of universities agreed to pay hundreds of millions in fines to the federal government. In exchange for access to the substantial research funds it had previously frozen, the universities agreed to furnish the government with data on the race and ethnicity, grade point averages, and standardized test scores of applicants, admitted students and enrolled students at those institutions.
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