Harvard, Stanford, Yale under scanner: Trump expands fight against elite colleges with focus on 'the diversity problem'

The Trump administration is revitalizing its moribund college pressure campaign with an aggressive turn toward rooting out campus diversity programs.

Pivoting away from the antisemitism probes that yielded massive cash settlements early in President Donald Trump’s term, the Justice Department has launched a sweeping new effort against more than 100 elite universities. The goal is to root out race-based admission and hiring practices, reduce foreign influence on campus, and permanently rewire how federal funding flows to top schools. Officials hope the push will reinvigorate an initiative that became mired in lawsuits and political setbacks despite early concessions from some universities.

Premier medical schools are squarely in the crosshairs. Their low acceptance rates and heavy reliance on federal research dollars make them highly vulnerable targets. But the DOJ is also revving up new investigations into international donors, looking to both reduce the proportion of global students studying at US colleges and other nations’ ability to shape research and curriculum.


The offensive is already roiling campuses, paralyzing critical research and leaving visiting students in legal limbo. Recent DOJ probes include race-based admissions at Yale University’s medical school and Chinese student scholarships at Harvard University, with Stanford University potentially next. The agency has also recently branched into top-ranked law schools at Duke University and the University of California Berkeley.

Administration officials argue the brute-force approach is the only way to bring defiant campuses to heel.

“It’s a hostage situation,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s civil rights chief, in an interview with Bloomberg. “Faculty are like petulant children. They view it as a jihad to protect their turf.”

Still, it’s not clear the administration chose this new battlefield as much as retreated to it.

After notching several high-profile deals with top colleges like Columbia University and Northwestern University, the White House’s war on higher ed seemed to reach a stalemate last fall. Talks with Harvard University and the University of California stalled after the administration lost a series of court battles. Other attempts to goad institutions into broad policy changes, like offering priority treatment for research funding, fell flat.

In came Dhillon, with a far more combative strategy and a wider range of targets. She had helped guide the settlement talks over alleged antisemitism, but after taking the reins from White House policy advisors late last year she turned her agency’s focus from litigating a handful of campus protests to enacting a far-reaching enforcement campaign for her stringent vision of school civil rights law.

“There's only a subset of institutions that have the anti-Semitism problem,” she said. “Almost every institution of higher learning in the United States has the DEI problem.”

Schools seen as protecting racial diversity initiatives in defiance of the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative action ban drew immediate attention. So too did those with low acceptance rates and a high proportion of international students.

“American students are being shut out of opportunities that are being given to foreign students who can pay more money,” Dhillon said. “That’s certainly the case at Harvard and Columbia.”

Federal agencies are laying the groundwork to radically alter their relationship with universities. The administration is overhauling standard practices around research funding, financial aid, and student visas, threatening to reroute money away from elite traditional breadwinners toward schools that demonstrate willingness, or eagerness, to comply with their demands. The federal government is one of the primary sources of funding for universities, providing $121 billion in student aid and $65 billion in research grants across the sector in fiscal year 2024.

‘Systemic problem’

In some cases, Dhillon’s brash approach has generated controversy and questions about its efficacy. Some officials in the administration blame her, in part, for the dissolution last fall of a nearly final settlement deal with Harvard, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

But the Justice Department appears less eager to declare one-off political victories, even against Harvard. The government is still engaging in settlement talks, but officials say they’re not as amenable to splashy payouts that would allow universities to continue operating in a similar manner. Instead, they’re pursuing agreements that enshrine lasting changes to school policies and rewriting the rules around coveted research grants.

The administration is also tearing up the system undergirding all federal support for higher ed, unveiling a broad new plan that would require university accreditors to remove standards asking colleges to “provide any preferences on the basis of race.” Under the new rules, the accreditors would also examine intellectual diversity among faculty and consider students’ post-graduate earnings, which critics have said could disfavor liberal arts colleges in particular.

Ken Marcus, who led the Education Department’s civil rights office during Trump’s first term, described the new enforcement strategy as “the approach of an administration that sees the problems on campuses not as isolated managerial issues, but as part of a more systemic problem.”

Dhillon, in sometimes polarizing language, said the effort has made college leaders more pliant as they scramble to head off public showdowns that threaten billions of dollars in federal funding. More than a dozen have met with her in person, she said, many traveling to her office in Washington, D.C., to entreat the administration to ease off.

“I have universities come to me proactively and say, ‘don’t sue us, here’s our homework, here’s our lawyer, we’re happy to give you whatever you want,’” she said. “They’re opening their books. They’re opening their kimonos.”

Sometimes that’s enough to appease administration officials; Dhillon said most campus investigations are resolved quickly and privately.

Others escalate, like at the College of William & Mary, where last month the DOJ launched a probe into several scholarship programs; or at Yale University, where the agency’s finding of admissions discrimination forced campus leaders into talks that sparked backlash from students and faculty.

The consequences for refusing to comply, or at least engage, could be devastating. Even the wealthiest universities are already feeling the pinch.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology reported a 20% drop in federal research funding this year; Harvard’s is reportedly down 18%. Johns Hopkins University, historically the top federal grant recipient, has seen a 45% plunge.

Dhillon said some of that money may flow toward public universities more willing to abide by the government’s demands. She said a few, like Arizona State University and the University of North Carolina, had reached out to assure her they were dismantling DEI programs. Federal research funding at UNC’s Chapel Hill campus dipped just 2.5% in 2026 from 2025.

“Those institutions raised their hand and said, hey, if Harvard doesn’t want to cooperate, we’ll be more than happy to take their funding and their researchers,” she said.

The point, Dhillon said, is to make colleges tread lightly.

“I view it as kind of like speeding tickets,” she said. “If no one is ever checking people’s speed, then there will be more speeding.”

‘Abundance of caution’

The impact of the recent broadside is already being felt across campuses, from the Ivies to small liberal arts schools and public research powerhouses.

Fear of a DOJ probe is prompting some schools to do away with scholarships intended for minority groups or eliminate campus support services for identity-based student communities. And as Dhillon threatens to ramp up the agency’s investigations into foreign influence, colleges are cutting ties with international donors and research partners; the University of North Carolina ended its relationship with Fudan University in China last month “out of an abundance of caution.”

If the Trump administration succeeds in establishing political prerequisites for future federal research funding, it could result in a tectonic shift in the business of higher education, destabilizing universities that serve as economic engines and sending struggling colleges off a financial cliff. Further research cuts could also undermine initiatives to improve public health, mitigate the effects of climate change or boost US economic innovation.

Critics — including former Justice Department officials — say the crackdown on diversity efforts comes at the expense of genuine civil rights protections. They worry students have lost their primary means of redress for harassment and discrimination in the classroom, a role the agency has played since the Supreme Court’s 1954 integration order in Brown v. Board of Education.

Shaheena Simons, who led the agency’s education section until she resigned last April, said her former team “stopped investigating and talking about discrimination against Black students and students of color.” Instead, she said, the order came from on high to prioritize President Trump’s executive orders, like those declaring war on DEI or promising retribution for antisemitic student protests.

“That’s a real departure, even from the first Trump administration,” she said.

Harvard hang-up

Even as the government’s crackdown is reshaping some campuses, other universities are resisting. Harvard has refused some of the administration’s more onerous demands, buoyed by legal victories and a more than $55 billion endowment, the largest of any US college.

Last August, a settlement with Harvard appeared imminent, which would have required the university to invest half a billion dollars in workforce training. Not long after Dhillon took on a more leading role, the deal fell apart acrimoniously. Since then Harvard has won multiple court cases, including one pushing back on the accusations of antisemitism that served as the catalyst for the entire conflict; the administration has since appealed that decision.

Some in the administration blame her aggressive, uncompromising approach for the impasse, according to a person familiar with the talks.

Dhillon faulted constituencies within Harvard for stymying her agency’s efforts, particularly faculty and lawyers, who “have a perverse incentive sometimes when they're in litigation not to want to settle a case.”

Despite setbacks, she said talks have continued and “there is a willingness to move on.” But she said the administration would only settle on its own terms — and the White House had plenty more leverage to use.

“The idea that they’re going to ultimately win a war of attrition, where they get to continue to be funded by the federal government to the tune of billions of dollars without consequence, is actually silly,” she said. “At some point, their runway is going to run out.”

Dhillon’s multi-front war on universities has also strained the federal civil rights bureaucracy. Her division’s staff of seasoned attorneys dwindled from roughly 400 to just over 100 within months of her confirmation. And critics say she has largely eschewed her division’s traditional role as a backstop against discrimination toward minorities in favor of action against diversity programs.

“The administration publicly shut down some desegregation cases,” said Laura Tayloe, a former DOJ lawyer focusing on education who resigned last summer. “The switch to admissions cases was a double shift.”

Tayloe said that by the time she left the education opportunities section, the 45-person team had dwindled to less than five employees. Most left voluntarily, an exodus that some former staffers say was driven by Dhillon’s agenda.

Ejaz Baluch, a lawyer who formerly worked in the DOJ’s employment discrimination section, doesn’t think the agency’s methods will hold up should colleges refuse to settle and counter-sue instead.

“It’s almost offensive how rudimentary their current approach is,” he said.

Lifelong crusade

Dhillon described the departures as a natural result of her shakeup, but acknowledged the shortage had been a challenge. She’s undertaken mass hiring in a bid to reinforce the ranks, swearing in more than 100 attorneys in July alone. Still, there are more challenges on the horizon, with the Justice Department preparing to take on the duties of the civil rights office at the Education Department, which Trump has promised to dismantle.

The Justice Department says that even with limited resources, the push has yielded results. During the investigation into Duke’s law school, Dhillon said her staff found admissions officers were using essay responses as a “workaround” to boost diversity and tracking applicants’ identities in spreadsheets.

A spokesperson for Duke said the school was “committed to complying with the law and will continue to do so in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission.”

If defending these policies was what Dhillon called a “jihad” for some faculty, dismantling them has also been a lifelong crusade for her. A product of elite higher education herself, Dhillon has been a passionate opponent of affirmative action since her days as an undergraduate at Dartmouth College.

“The kids who were getting admitted under these programs were kids from Park Avenue, who are definitely more privileged than me, an immigrant from the Deep South,” she said.

“Now,” she continued, “it's going to be different.”