On Tuesday, a former Justice Department civil rights attorney told Congress what many university leaders have suspected since the first funding freeze hit their inboxes: the outcomes of the Trump Administration’s recent investigations into U.S. colleges and universities were decided before the investigators finished their work.
Haley Van Erem, a veteran of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, alleges that the administration's antisemitism task force pursued findings against Harvard, Columbia, and Brown that were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence,” part of what her complaint calls a “politically mandated effort” to squeeze settlement money out of elite universities under the banner of civil rights enforcement. Hundreds of millions of dollars were frozen before the Title VI investigations that supposedly justified the freezes were even complete. A former HHS acting general counsel reportedly said the quiet part out loud, predicting Harvard would fold because the school was “over a barrel.”
Van Erem's disclosure landed days after a federal judge threw out the DOJ's own lawsuit against Harvard, ruling that the antisemitic incidents cited were "too isolated and episodic" to sustain a Title VI claim — the same judge who, in an earlier ruling on Harvard's funding cuts, said the government had used antisemitism as “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country's premier universities.” Columbia paid $200 million. Brown committed $50 million to Rhode Island workforce programs. Both settled before their investigations were finished. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Ranking Member on the House Committee on the Judiciary, has now opened a formal inquiry.
The picture emerging is not one of civil rights enforcement gone slightly overzealous; it is a machine built to produce a predetermined result, with the investigation itself functioning as leverage rather than fact-finding.
The same week the whistleblower complaint became public, the DOJ opened a new Title VI probe into the College of William & Mary, demanding student records by early September to determine whether the school's scholarships and financial aid “favor applicants of certain races.” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon framed it in the now-familiar language of colorblindness: “Awarding scholarships or offering coveted opportunities to students based on the color of their skin is illegal.” W&M joins George Mason and the University of Virginia — where the pressure campaign was severe enough to force President Jim Ryan's resignation — on the list of Virginia public universities absorbing this scrutiny. Notably, some of the flagged programs at William & Mary were created specifically to address the university's own documented ties to slavery. In going after these scholarship programs, the administration is not simply asking whether race played an improper role in awarding aid, but how and if a university may account for its own history.
And then there is the National Science Foundation, where the DEI purge has moved past universities and into the machinery of scientific research itself. Since last spring, NSF has terminated more than 1,750 grants, canceling roughly $1.1 billion in funding under a new agency directive holding that “research projects with more narrow impact limited to subgroups of people based on protected class” no longer “effectuate NSF priorities.” An Urban Institute analysis found that 90 percent of the canceled grants contained DEI-associated language — “diverse,” “underrepresented,” “equitable” — and that projects aimed at bringing women, minorities, and people with disabilities into STEM fields were disproportionately targeted, despite decades of congressional mandates directing NSF to do exactly that. Sixteen states sued to block the cuts, and a federal judge found the terminations likely discriminated against racial, gender, and LGBT minorities, though the judge declined to force NSF to restore the money, ruling that relief for already-canceled grants belongs in a different court entirely.
Across three different funding mechanisms, the emerging pattern is that the Trump administration’s approach is to decide the outcome then investigate, ignoring the evidence even as the machinery of federal funding advances its agenda. The courts catch up months or years later, but what does that even mean, in an administration that has repeatedly ignored and defied the checks and balances of the judiciary? Judges have now told this administration, in three separate rulings, that its antisemitism claims against Harvard didn't hold up, that its NSF cuts likely discriminate against the very groups equal protection law exists to shield, and — through the whistleblower's own account — the investigators inside the process knew the conclusions were written before the inquiry began. None of that has slowed the administration’s aggressive pursuit of its anti-DEI campaign.
There is a version of this story where the facts matter — where an investigation opens, runs its course, and closes with a finding the evidence actually supports. That is not the story unfolding across American higher education under the Trump administration.
