Education advocates are afraid that the administration’s getting hold of admissions racial data could make colleges a more hostile place for students of color.
“The student data could be used to challenge the admission of Black students in particular under assumptions that they are presumptively unqualified because of their race,” Janel George, a law professor at Georgetown University, told HuffPost.
“Woke is officially DEAD at Brown. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Donald Trump declared in a Truth Social post last week.
He was celebrating the fact that the prestigious Providence, Rhode Island, university had just agreed to a settlement with him. In order to restore its federal funding, the school agreed to implement anti-transgender policies and hand over its race and admissions data.
It was similar to a deal the federal government had struck with Columbia University in New York after Trump relentlessly attacked the school in the wake of on-campus pro-Palestinian protests.
And then on Thursday, Trump went further: He signed an executive order demanding that every college in the country hand over its admissions data, citing a 2023 Supreme Court decision prohibiting the use of race as a factor in college admissions. “Greater transparency is essential to exposing unlawful practices and ultimately ridding society of shameful, dangerous racial hierarchies,” the order reads.
Already, there is growing fear from legal experts and higher education advocates that he could weaponize this data in order to get higher education institutions to fall in line with his administration’s goals.
“They can misuse the data, they can interpret it in any way they want,” said Mariam Rashid, the associate director for the Center for American Progress’ racial equity and justice program. “And they can misuse it in order to misinform the public, too.”
For example, the Trump administration could use the racial data to claim a university is discriminating against a certain race, or infer that not enough Trump supporters are being admitted because the freshman class doesn’t have a high enough percentage of students from red states.
Trump’s latest strike on American institutions connects his war on diversity and his administration’s assault on colleges across the country in a way that could turbocharge both. It’s not just that Trump will have an extraordinary amount of information about colleges; it’s how he’s likely to use it to further his false narrative about both race and higher education. And it’s students who will bear the brunt of the consequences.
“Given the administration’s flawed interpretation of our civil rights law, they might use this data to accuse schools of discrimination and threaten universities,” Donya Khadem, an attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, told HuffPost.
“It’s unprecedented scrutiny by the federal government.”
– Donya Khadem, attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund
Some schools refused to play the game. In April, Harvard University wrote a letter to Trump saying that his demands flew in the face of free speech laws and would stifle the kind of learning and research that happens at a place of higher education. But other schools, like Columbia and Brown, bent the knee and gave Trump what he wanted.
“It’s very concerning because it’s unprecedented scrutiny by the federal government,” Khadem said.
This time, the administration is taking aim at an aspect of educational life that has long been a bugbear for conservatives. There is a widespread belief among conservatives that colleges and universities have given advantages to students of color at the expense of white students.
By allowing race to be a factor in admissions, the claim goes, schools are taking spots away from certain groups of students and instead admitting students they claim are less qualified, based solely on their race. (In reality, race has been one of many factors admissions officers consider when choosing between fully qualified applicants.)
“This is all motivated by a racist myth that Black people don’t deserve to be in these elite spaces,” Khadem said.
And now that Trump is back in office, getting his hands on this data is likely just the beginning of his attempt to turn back the clock on admitting students of color.
Asked for comment about how it intends to use the admissions data, the Department of Education directed HuffPost to a press release about the new executive order Trump signed on Thursday.
“We will not allow institutions to blight the dreams of students by presuming that their skin color matters more than their hard work and accomplishments,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.
Students pass the statue of John Harvard in Harvard Yard on their way to baccalaureate services ahead of commencement at Harvard University on June 17, 1951.
Photo by Sam Hammat/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
Conservatives celebrated when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions processes in Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard in 2023, saying that schools can not use race as a factor in college admissions.
Harvard, together with fellow defendant the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had argued that schools needed to be able to consider race as one factor among many to ensure the educational benefits of a diverse student body. The high court disagreed, saying the schools did not have a “compelling interest” in considering race as a factor and thus violated the 14th Amendment.
But education law experts say that the federal government is using that ruling and expanding it far beyond its original intent.
In the same ruling, the court expressly said that “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”
Now, Trump’s order undermines that.
“They’re using the Students For Fair Admissions [decision] in ways that are not what the justices meant when they wrote it,” Khadem said.
Education advocates are afraid that the administration’s getting hold of admissions racial data could make colleges a more hostile place for students of color.
“The student data could be used to challenge the admission of Black students in particular under assumptions that they are presumptively unqualified because of their race,” Janel George, a law professor at Georgetown University, told HuffPost.
“This is all motivated by a racist myth that Black people don’t deserve to be in these elite spaces.”
– Khadem
It could also turn off otherwise qualified students from attending some of these colleges. “I think it’s a big deterrent,” Khadem said. “Columbia’s campus has become and will continue to become less welcoming to Black students.”
Columbia and Brown did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
Systemic racism and inequality are already significant barriers to college attendance. Research shows that Black students and other people of color are more likely to be from low-income families and struggle to afford college. Then there’s the fact that standardized tests frequently used in college admissions are biased toward white students and those from wealthier families.
Studies have shown that race-neutral admissions processes lead to a drop in diversity. In 1996, after California voters approved a measure that would ban affirmative action at the state’s public universities, the state’s most prestigious schools saw a drastic drop in diversity. Indeed, one of the arguments made by Harvard during its legal fight was that no race-neutral admissions process offers the same diversity benefits.
The first college classes to be enrolled after the Students for Fair Admissions ruling varied in their diversity. Some schools, like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, saw a decrease in Black and Hispanic enrollment, while other schools’ racial compositions stayed roughly the same.
Not only could these changes further hinder access to higher education for nonwhite students, but there’s a question of how making this data public could harm students. If the Trump administration publicly calls out a school for having a certain number of nonwhite students, that could become a problem for people on campus.
“I do think it’s harmful,” Rashid said. “[The data] is not going to be attached to a name, but they can make up whatever narrative they want.”
Experts warn that it could create a hostile environment on campuses, where nonwhite students feel as if their peers believe that they’re unqualified to be there. “At schools with higher admissions of Black students or faculty, some people are going to feel a certain way about how they’re perceived at school,” Khadem said.
There is a direct line from Trump’s attacks on colleges to his administration’s larger anti-diversity campaign.
In an attempt to begin removing people of color from public life, Trump signed an executive order in January that sought to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs at different institutions, including nonprofit organizations receiving federal grants, law enforcement agencies and institutions of higher education. The penalty for not ending DEI, though vague, was the loss of crucial federal funding.
The Department of Education followed up with guidance for educational institutions, telling them they must end “racial preferences” and restore “merit.”
The Department of Justice joined the crusade too, launching investigations of colleges and universities it alleged were not complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling on using race in college admissions under the pretense of combating “illegal discrimination.”
“The [DOJ] will put an end to a shameful system in which someone’s race matters more than their ability,” acting Associate Attorney General Chad Mizelle said in a press release in March.
To the Trump administration, American society, and colleges in particular, have been beset by a racial regime that disfavors white conservatives — and this executive order was intended to combat that. Others, though, see a very different agenda.
“What they want to do is make everything race-neutral,” Rashid said. “In other words, make everything white.”
August 11, 1894 Federal troops forced some 1,200 jobless workers across the Potomac River and out of Washington, D.C. Jack London Led by an unemployed activist, “General” Charles “Hobo” Kelly, the jobless group’s “soldiers” included young journalist Jack London, known for writing about social issues, and miner/cowboy William ”Big Bill” Haywood who later organized western miners and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). “Big Bill” Haywood Read about “Big Bill”
August 11, 1958 A drugstore chain in Wichita, Kansas, agreed to serve all its customers after weeks of sit-ins at Dockum’s lunch counter by local African-Americans who wanted an end to segregation. On this day, as several black Wichitans were sitting at the counter even though the store refused to serve them, a white man around 40 walked in and looked at them for several minutes. Then he looked at the store manager and said, simply, “Serve them. I’m losing too much money.” He was the owner, Robert Dockum. That day the lawyer for the local NAACP branch called the company and was told by the a vice president ”he had instructed all of his managers, clerks, etc., to serve all people without regard to race, creed or color,” statewide. This was the first success of the sit-in movement which soon spread to Oklahoma City and other towns in Kansas, but is often thought to have started in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960.
August 11, 1984 Prior to his weekly radio address, unaware that the microphone was open and he was broadcasting, President Ronald Reagan joked, “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” Many Americans and others throughout the world were concerned about the President’s apparently flippant attitude towards nuclear war at a time of increasing tension between the two major nuclear powers. Among other things, the U.S. had begun a major strategic arms buildup, adding many thousands of additional nuclear warheads along with a broad range of new delivery systems: long-range bombers including 100 B-1B stealth bombers and MX (10-warhead) ICBMs, considered first-strike weapons; intermediate-range missiles to be deployed in Europe; 3000 cruise missiles; and Trident nuclear submarines with sea-launched cruise missiles. Additionally, Reagan had proposed building the space-based Strategic Defense Initiative of anti-ballistic missiles, a destabilizing influence on the nuclear balance. The Nuclear Arms Control Legacy of Ronald Reagan
“Rep. Rob Bresnahan, a multimillionaire who recently sold control of his family’s company and now represents one of Pennsylvania’s poorest congressional districts, appears to have taken steps to hide one whirling aspect of his wealth: his new personal helicopter.” #PA08pic.twitter.com/k6IqcD0LmN
MAGA Republican Rep. Rob Breshnahan represents the second poorest congressional district in the nation (#PA08) and is a prolific stock trader.
Breshnahan also secretly owns a 2024 Robinson R66 helicopter worth between $1 million and $1.5 million. pic.twitter.com/4JyA7EV8FP
— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) August 8, 2025
While his constituents scrape by, Rep. Rob Bresnahan is literally flying over their struggles in a secret, million-dollar helicopter, then landing just in time to vote to gut their health care and food assistance. #PA08pic.twitter.com/YDy342t747
— American Bridge 21st Century (@American_Bridge) August 8, 2025
August 6, 1890 At Auburn Prison in New York state, William Kemmler became the first person to be executed in the electric chair, developed by the Medico-Legal Society and Harold Brown, a colleague of Thomas Edison. William Kemmler received two applications of 1,300 volts of alternating current. The first lasted for only 17 seconds because a leather belt was about to fall off one of the second-hand Westinghouse generators. Kemmler was still alive. The second jolt lasted until the smell of burning flesh filled the room, about four minutes. As soon as his charred body stopped smoldering, Kemmler was pronounced dead. ——————————————————————————- August 6th, 1945 – 8:15 AM ANNIVERSARY OF HIROSHIMA The United States dropped the first atomic bomb used in warfare on Hiroshima, Japan. Hiroshima ruins An estimated 140,000 died from the immediate effects of this bomb and tens of thousands more died in subsequent years from burns and other injuries, and radiation-related illnesses. President Harry Truman ordered the use of the weapon in hopes of avoiding an invasion of Japan to end the war, and the presumed casualties likely to be suffered by invading American troops. The weapon, “Little Boy,” was delivered by a B-29 Superfortress nicknamed the Enola Gay, based on the island of Tinian, and piloted by Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. Voices of the Hibakusha, those injured in the bombings <Hiroshima survivor Found watch stopped at the time of explosion> Documents related to the decision to drop the atomic bomb On August 6, 1995, up to 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing. —————————————————————————— August 6, 1957 Eleven activists from the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA) were arrested attempting to enter the atomic testing grounds at Camp Mercury, Nevada, the first of what eventually became many thousands of arrests at the Nevada test site. —————————————————————————– August 6, 1965 The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed by President Johnson, making illegal century-old practices aimed at preventing African Americans from exercising their constitutional right to vote. It created federal oversight of election laws in six Southern states (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Virginia) and in many counties of North Carolina where black voter turnout was very low. Black voter registration rates were as low as 7% in Mississippi prior to passage of the law; today voter registration rates are comparable for both blacks and whites in these states. The laws has been re-authorized by Congress four times. Introduction to the Voting Rights Act —————————————————————————— August 6, 1990 George Galloway The U.S. imposed trade sanctions on Iraq. As a result, the lack of much-needed medicines, water purification equipment and other items led to the death of many innocent Iraqis. According to British Member of Parliament George Galloway in his testimony to a committee of the U.S. Congress on May 17, 2005, these sanctions“ . . . killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to be born at that time . . . .” When asked on U.S. television if she thought that the death of half a million Iraqi children (due to sanctions on Iraq) was a price worth paying, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.” -60 Minutes (5/12/96) Were Sanctions Worth the Price? by Christopher Hayes ————————————————————————– August 6, 1998 Nearly 50,000 people attended a memorial service commemorating Hiroshima Peace Day on the 50th anniversary of the first atomic bombing which killed nearly 200,000 Japanese with a single weapon. The headlines when it happened ————————————————————————— August 6, 1998 Calling themselves the Minuteman III Plowshares, two peace activists, Daniel Sicken [pronounced seekin], 56, of Brattleboro, Vermont and Sachio Ko-Yin, 25, of Ridgewood, N.J entered silo N7 in Weld County [near Greeley] in Colorado operated by Warren AFB, Cheyenne, Wyoming. With hammers and their own blood, they symbolically disarmed structures on the launching pad of a Minuteman III nuclear missile silo.
<Hiroshima survivor 
