The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California (UC) system, the latest instance of his feud with higher education.
The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it would investigate efforts by the UC system to increase the diversity of staff, accusing the school of employing practices that “openly measure new hires by their race and sex”.
The Trump administration has previously depicted diversity initiatives as a form of discrimination.
“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” Harmeet Dhillion, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
“Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.”
In a letter of notice to the University of California, the Justice Department noted that it had “reason to believe” unlawful actions occurred on some of the school’s campuses. But it added that it had not “reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation”.
The University of California system is one of the most prominent public university systems in the US, with 10 campuses and more than 299,000 enrolled students.
The school defended its hiring practices on Thursday in response to the investigation announcement.
“The University of California is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,” a spokesperson for the UC system said in a statement. “The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported.”
President Trump has yet to weigh in on the investigation, but his administration has repeatedly clashed with US universities during his second term in the White House.
Prestigious universities, such as Harvard and Columbia, have had federal grants and contracts cancelled over allegations that they have not done enough to crack down on campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The Trump administration said those protests were anti-Semitic and created an unsafe environment for Jews on college campuses.
Trump and his allies have also portrayed universities as hotbeds of left-wing ideas and political dissent. In the case of Harvard University, the Trump administration sent a letter on April 11 with a list of demands for changes.
One required Harvard to submit to an external audit of its enrollment and staff, to evaluate “viewpoint diversity” with the aim of implementing “reforms” to its admissions and hiring practices. The external party, the letter noted, would have to “satisfy the federal government”.
Harvard has resisted those demands, citing the need to protect academic freedom. The Trump administration has since threatened its tax-exempt status and sought to restrict its ability to enrol foreign students.
In response, Harvard has filed lawsuits to restore its federal funding and block the Trump administration’s attempts to bar foreign students.
On Thursday, the school also unveiled an agreement with the University of Toronto that would allow foreign students to continue their Harvard studies in Canada if Trump’s visa restrictions affected their ability to attend classes.
Critics have described Trump’s actions as an effort to pressure schools into greater conformity with the political views and priorities of the White House.
One particular flashpoint for the Trump administration has been efforts to promote diversity in university hiring and enrolment.
Proponents say those initiatives help counter the legacy of discrimination in higher education, but the Trump administration has said they are a form of discrimination themselves.
In a news conference on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not weigh in on the specifics of the UC investigation, but reaffirmed Trump’s commitment to dismantling diversity initiatives.
“It’s the position of this president that we want to restore a merit-based society and culture in the United States of America where people are not hired, nor are they promoted, based on the colour of their skin or their gender,” she said.
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order ending “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programming in the federal government. He called those programmes a source of “immense public waste and shameful discrimination”.
But critics have argued that Trump’s efforts have served as their own form of discrimination, violating the constitutional rights of those he disagrees with.
The government, for instance, has sought to deport several foreign students who took part in pro-Palestine activities on college campuses, raising free speech questions.
They include a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested by immigration agents for co-authoring an article in the school newspaper calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
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