Over the past decade, everyday people have watched in horror and disgust as our once-proud public universities have descended into a liberal quagmire of epic proportions. Thankfully, President Donald Trump and his administration have quickly started to put an end to all of this nonsense and, quite frankly, illegal and un-American activities.
Last week, the Education Department fired off two letters to dozens of universities across the country, informing the leaders that these institutions were under investigation for allegations that put them at risk of losing federal funding.
The first was March 24, when the Office for Civil Rights warned 60 universities “of potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus, including uninterrupted access to campus facilities and educational opportunities.” The second was Friday, when OCR again transmitted a communication to a different set of 45 universities reiterating “schools’ civil rights obligations to end the use of racial preferences and stereotypes in education programs and activities.”
Some may chafe at the hard-nosed approach by the Trump administration to ensure that federal dollars are only going to universities that are solely committed to educating our young people rather than indoctrinating students with radical leftist hogwash or allowing antisemitic forces to take root on their campuses.
However, this step was only taken after the Trump administration first sent a letter to universities, warning the schools against “the overt and covert racial discrimination that has become widespread in this nation’s educational institutions” and after Trump signed an executive order titled “Additional Measures to Combat Antisemitism.” The leaders at these universities and their allies in their elitist high towers can complain all they want, but they were given plenty of time to reverse course.
These past-due actions from the federal government follow a letter I sent to the presidents of Arizona’s three public universities just last month, requesting compliance with an executive order issued by Trump to end all discriminatory activities associated with DEI practices and programs. I asked each institution to identify and publicly release a plan for compliance with the federal order. Sadly, my request has thus far been met with silence from the universities. It was not surprising, then, when Arizona State University found itself on not one, but two, of the lists of schools facing federal investigations for their alleged illicit policies.
Arizona’s public universities, like many around the country, have demonstrated a troubling track record of using tax dollars to implement diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Some examples, which surely are not unique to Arizona, include job postings addressing commitments to DEI, required trainings for staff and faculty that push discriminatory ideas of “critiquing whiteness” and “heterosexuality is privileged and going unquestioned,” and requiring students to obtain credits in DEI-related courses such as “Introduction to Queer Studies” and “Multicultural Perspectives of Natural Resource Management.”
The leaders of these universities, their overlords at the Arizona Board of Regents, and their willing participants in the various faculty departments across the campuses have, for too long, been allowed to implement their radical and, in many cases, illegal ideologies without accountability from federal and state officials. These people express the notion that the federal funding they enjoy is a human right with absolutely no strings attached. They believe that they are too elite to follow or even care about our laws, and they arrogantly consider themselves to know better than the public about the values of our great nation.
Tragically, these mindsets have contributed to the rise of horrific and shocking antisemitic behavior on our college campuses, where Jewish people or even friends of our great ally, Israel, have found themselves running from angry mobs of terrorist sympathizers — with few of these individuals facing consequences for their inhumane actions.
In their quest to fundamentally transform the constitutional and moral fabric of the United States from the inside out, these institutions are leading our young people off a cliff.
TAX RECKONING COMING FOR BESIEGED UNIVERSITIES AT HANDS OF GOP
American college students are coming out of our schools less prepared to conquer new and exciting challenges in the world around them, in large part, due to the indoctrination that their exorbitant tuition fees have funded. A growing number of students emerge from these bastions of liberalism with millstones of debt around their necks and un-American propaganda in their hearts. They are seemingly more concerned with righting the wrongs of all humanity throughout history than leaving their world a better, freer, and more prosperous place for their children and grandchildren.
If the U.S. is to survive another 250 years as a world superpower and remain the shining city on a hill for all to see, we must restore our universities and other educational institutions as beacons of learning and excellence. Trump and the members of his administration realize this pressing reality, which is why they have wasted no time in holding these universities accountable. As a father of children who will likely frequent the university system before they spread their wings in this world, I am grateful for the president’s courage in standing up to these universities, and I pledge my assistance in helping to make these reforms permanent. The future of our great nation is at stake.
Warren Petersen is the president of the Arizona Senate.