Democratic senators said in a Thursday hearing that the Trump administration is undermining its own goal of addressing antisemitism on college campuses by firing the federal staffers who investigate civil rights issues in schools.
In recent weeks, the Trump administration has opened dozens of investigations into colleges as part of an effort to wipe out antisemitism at universities. It also took the unprecedented step of canceling $400 million in research funding for Columbia University on the grounds that it had not done enough to combat discrimination against Jewish students; after that, the school agreed to change some of its policies.
At the same time, however, the Department of Education terminated half the staff in its Office for Civil Rights, the congressionally mandated arm of the agency that investigates failures by schools to address discrimination. As of mid-January, the office had 12,000 open investigations but recently stopped updating its list of pending cases.
During a hearing about campus antisemitism held by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said slashing staff at the Office for Civil Rights while trying to crack down on discrimination is like axing the fire department while trying to fight fires.
“You can’t just cut an agency in half and pretend everything’s fine,” Murray said.
Rabbi David Saperstein, one of the hearing witnesses and a former United States ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, agreed that downsizing the civil rights office harms Jewish students, particularly because it will increase caseloads for investigators.
“They’re grinding it to a halt,” Saperstein said, “and it is the students of America of all kinds who are facing discriminations that are going to suffer.”
Catherine Lhamon, the head of the Office for Civil Rights under the Biden administration, told NBC News earlier this month that investigators were averaging around 50 cases per person when she left the government in January. With the office now slashed in half, it’s expected that caseloads would significantly increase.
The Department of Education and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Two weeks ago, the Department of Education initiated mass layoffs, and last week, Trump signed an executive order calling on Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin dismantling the department. The agency can only be shut down by an act of Congress.
All schools that receive federal funding must abide by civil rights laws, including those protecting students from discrimination based on ancestry, race and sex. When the Office for Civil Rights receives a complaint alleging violations of those laws within the past 180 days, it is required by its own regulations to investigate. If it finds evidence that the law was violated, the agency will typically lay out steps that a school must take to fix the problem, and can initiate a process to pull federal funding if the school refuses.
Three other Democratic senators also brought up the Office for Civil Rights firings during the hearing, as did witnesses who called for the federal government to put more funding, not less, into the office so it could tackle its backlog of cases.
Carly Gammill, director of legal policy at the nonprofit StandWithUs Center for Combating Antisemitism, a nonprofit, said schools need to be held accountable by the government when civil rights laws are violated.
“There are often not people who are well qualified and equipped to address these things on the campuses themselves," she said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, was quick to respond and, like her Senate colleagues, highlighted the role of the Office for Civil Rights. “That is why we need to make sure that office continues to be adequately resourced,” she said.
