The Department of Education has opened a civil rights investigation into Duke University as part of the Trump administration’s broader push to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
The probe follows a joint letter from the Education and Health and Human Services departments raising concerns over Duke’s use of race in hiring, admissions, and scholarships.
“If Duke illegally gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants based on those students’ immutable characteristics, that is an affront not only to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic character of academic excellence,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Blatantly discriminatory practices that are illegal under the Constitution, anti-discrimination law and Supreme Court precedent have become all too common in our education institutions. The Trump administration will not allow them to continue.”
Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is a loose framework promoting equal opportunity and participation, but it has drawn criticism from conservatives who argue it undermines merit by emphasizing race and gender. Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has moved to eliminate DEI from federal agencies and threatened to pull funding from schools like Harvard over their DEI practices.
The Trump administration has launched civil rights investigations into dozens of schools over DEI policies, transgender athletes in women’s sports, failure to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestine protests, and migrant scholarships not offered to out-of-state Americans. Some schools, like Columbia, have settled—agreeing to multimillion-dollar payments and ending DEI programs.
The joint letter from the Department of Education and HHS accused Duke University School of Medicine of using illegal racial preferences and discriminatory practices in admissions, scholarships, hiring, mentoring, and more:
“The immediate request is simple: Review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages and provide clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke’s new policies will be implemented faithfully going forward.”
