As members of the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights Alumni Collective, a group of former ED-OCR career civil servants, lawyers and managers who served under both Democratic and Republican administrations, we share a common dedication to protecting and advancing the civil and human rights of all persons in the United States, particularly its students. Together, we have hundreds of years of federal administrative experience, as well as expertise in legal and civil rights enforcement.
Over the past 10 months, we have been responding to the Trump administration’s unlawful attacks on our Constitution and the civil rights laws that protect all of us in the United States. However, legal responses and filings have not deterred the administration. It is now becoming appallingly clear that this administration does not simply want to establish new “policy” initiatives; it seeks to abolish our nation’s commitment to our Constitution and the civil rights of all.
At first, this administration focused on dismantling the federal role in enforcing the civil rights laws that protect all of us—our children, our safety, our homes and how we vote. It fired large numbers of civil rights staff in agencies across the government who had as their charge ensuring that entities that receive our federal tax dollars do not discriminate on the bases of race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age. It decimated the Office for Civil Rights in the U.S. Department of Education and the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice—both of which had been on the front lines of ending practices like the forced segregation of children in schools and were instrumental in bringing cases that ensured equal opportunity for all persons.
This administration has done all of this under the guise of promoting “meritocracy” and ending “favoritism.” It launched a targeted assault upon the civil rights acts, which the president has attacked as being unfair to white people. It established as a primary policy objective the elimination of any program related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI. It purposely misled the American public by wrongfully stating that DEI is itself a violation of the civil rights laws and conflating lawful efforts to promote diversity and inclusiveness with prohibited discriminatory practices, throwing all of it into the same basket and tossing it all into the wilderness—along with our constitutional rights. In fact, the prohibition of discriminatory practices and the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion are distinct and are both lawful and go hand in hand. They serve to ensure and promote our individual and equal right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” regardless of our individual race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, age or ability, embracing the individual life experiences that we each bring and that become integrated into the social fabric of our great nation.
This administration has carried out its unconstitutional crusade through intimidation and retaliation. In the education sector, it has threatened universities and school districts that had lawful programs to promote nondiscrimination, diversity of ideas, equity and inclusion with the loss of all federal monies, bullying them into abandoning their programs. It has misused the issue of antisemitism on university campuses to encourage division, curtail free speech and extort money. It has targeted students with disabilities by reducing federal support for special education programs. It has targeted language-minority students and their parents by declaring war on languages other than English and attacking programs and best practices for teaching students English while ensuring they also have an opportunity to learn in other subjects.
It should be clear to all of us who love this country that this administration’s actions put us on a path toward destruction of the American dream. The relentless parade of despicable acts we are witnessing has as its goal the abandonment of our Constitution and the civil rights laws that protect us all, no matter our individual traits. We must realize that the undermining and deterioration of our constitutional civil rights hurts us all. It is past time to acknowledge that we must all unite to wage a wholesale battle for the soul of America. It is time to vote like our lives depend upon it, because they do. It is time to peacefully protest when we are confronted with unlawful and immoral acts. We need to ensure that the promise of liberty and justice for all is not merely a slogan, but a call to action in defense of our democracy and our country.
The authors all served in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and are members of the ED-OCR Alumni Collective. Their former titles and years served in ED-OCR can be found here.
