It’s not a news flash that college campuses go through turbulent periods, including vigorous and sometimes disruptive protests. But until the second Trump Administration arrived in January 2025, it would have been a news flash for the federal government to be the lead national disruptor. Yet the administration’s rapid-fire changes to policy, communications, and legal obligations have reshaped the higher education operating environment, with implications for free expression and inclusive education at colleges and universities throughout the United States.

Actions against research universities have received much of the major media attention—including for cuts in research funding and international student visas; immigration-related arrests and detention; endowment tax increases and foreign-gifts scrutiny; accreditation changes; and demands for changes in admissions, athletics, bathroom access, hiring, and programming via executive orders, warning letters, civil rights law enforcement, and hefty “fines.” But the administration’s targeting of higher education reaches far more broadly. Community colleges, for example, are threatened with cuts to longstanding workforce-development programs, and minority-serving institutions have lost millions of dollars in discretionary funds that previously supported their work.

Protecting vibrant campuses, whether from this administration or others in the future, requires recognizing that the federal government has a vast array of mechanisms that are mostly designed to support schools but also include oversight and other authority that can be repurposed for punitive purposes. These levers function like Whac-A-Mole: Whenever a court limits the government’s use of one lever, another pops up. (This dynamic can also be seen in state efforts to control higher education.) A meaningful strategy thus requires attention not only to constraining misuse of specific mechanisms but also to shoring up colleges and universities’ capacity to protect themselves in an environment with myriad entry points for government pressure. 

The web of federal levers

A full review of the government’s authorities that can be turned into pressure points against higher education institutions is far beyond a blog post’s scope, but a few examples of less well-known levers may help illustrate the challenge just described and give context for the observations that follow.

One of these levers, little known outside of expert circles, is the administration’s campaign to stop colleges and universities from partnering with the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE). Founded in 2013, NSLVE is the largest national study designed to inform schools’ student-voter engagement efforts. In February 2026, the Department of Education warned thousands of higher education presidents that using NSLVE data would put them “at risk of being found in violation” of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), with penalties including withholding and recovery of Department funds. Adding fuel to the fire, the Department announced it was investigating Tufts University, which houses the nonpartisan study, and asked the university to pause release of its next report while the investigation is pending, which the university agreed to do. (On its website, NSLVE explains that it complies with FERPA “by design.”) Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said that “American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research – not influencing elections,” but the real result is that postsecondary institutions, which have a legal obligation to help students register to vote, have less information to guide their civic-participation efforts.

Another can be seen in how the Trump administration’s pressure on schools to end support for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs shifted to technical regulatory channels after losing in litigation. The campaign began with high visibility—a day-one executive order titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” followed by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ much-criticized guidance on how it would implement the Supreme Court’s SFFA v. Harvard ruling that rejected consideration of race in college admissions. Declaring that “under the banner of [DEI],” schools are “smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into everyday training, programming, and discipline,” OCR threatened enforcement action against any school receiving federal financial assistance that did not abandon DEI programming contrary to the Trump administration’s expansive view.

A federal district court invalidated the guidance on vagueness and other grounds, writing that the guidance’s failure to “even define what a DEI practice is” risked chilling “the lawful and societally beneficial speech of regulated persons who do not understand what DEI- or race-related speech might be allowed.” Multiple federal courts had earlier put the guidance and related requirements on hold. But the chill had already taken effect as colleges around the country, fearing they would become investigation targets, “closed offices related to diversity, equity and inclusion; scrubbed websites; and cut other programming.” A similar Department of Justice memo warning all federal funding recipients about DEI programs likewise prompted colleges to “close[] campus centers and publications cater[ing] to certain racial or ethnic groups.” (Federal funding conditions based on the DOJ memo have also been invalidated.)

The administration quickly found a workaround by turning to a different source of authority to achieve its goals. Rather than defending the OCR DEI guidance on appeal, it has sought to implement similar restrictions even more broadly by proposing interrelated changes to the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Guidance for Federal Financial Assistance and the General Service Administration’s (GSA) information-collection system for awards management. The proposals seek to add government-wide funding restrictions and compliance requirements for recipients of federal financial assistance, which currently number roughly 212,000, including schools. OMB’s proposes to add an “[u]nlawful DEI Provision,” among numerous other provisions. GSA’s proposal would require recipients to verify compliance not only with federal law, as has been a longstanding obligation, but also with “relevant executive orders prohibiting unlawful discrimination based on race or color,” including “programs or initiatives that involve discriminatory practices,” including “those labeled as DEI.” (OMB’s proposal also would prohibit federal funding related to “gender ideology,” as defined in an executive order that bars federal recognition of transgender people.)

As one commentator wrote, the proposal, if finalized, “will likely impose many of the same certification requirements [as the invalidated OCR guidance] on colleges and universities that want to receive federal funds, whether that is discretionary grants, formula grants or Title IV student aid” as well as on almost all other recipients of federal-agency funding. The new requirements are pending as each goes through the notice and comment process (see GSA and OMB comments), and many higher education organizations have expressed strong opposition.

Numerous other lesser-known federal pressure points remain available as the administration seeks to restrict campus communications and activities related to diversity and other issues. In February 2026, for example, OCR announced that 31 schools under investigation had ended or agreed to end their partnerships with the PhD Project, an effort that, for several decades, has supported diverse candidates for business doctorates. The Department of Housing and Urban Development found its own entry point into restricting higher education’s DEI efforts, warning schools in June 2026 that it would ensure “maximum accountability” for affinity housing that violates the Fair Housing Act. The Act prohibits discrimination based on race and other characteristics in housing rentals, but the guidance tells schools that “words and phrases, such as ‘diversity,’ ‘multiculturalism,’ ‘safe spaces,’ and ‘intersectional allyship,’ … encourage neo-segregationist schemes” and are “jargonistic words … designed to immunize universities that engage in these potentially unlawful discriminatory practices.”

In addition, changes to the public service loan forgiveness program would let the Secretary of Education disqualify employers that engage in a broad set of ill-defined “illegal activities” related to immigration and transgender people and therefore deny forgiveness eligibility to their employees. The breadth and substantial discretion embedded in these changes drew extensive objections from commenters as well as litigation. Two federal courts blocked the new rule just before its July 1, 2026, effective date, but the administration may continue to defend the rule in court or find other ways to leverage the program to serve its aims. Another government-wide proposed regulation would, amidst its many provisions, put similar restrictions on federal grants, including prohibiting the use of funds for DEI, “gender ideology,” and voter-registration activities as defined by the administration, as well as “[a]ny other initiatives that … promote anti-American values.” Yet another Department of Education proposed regulation would require accreditors to review institutions for whether they appropriately promote and prioritize “intellectual diversity,” a term that is not defined but presumably would be implemented consistent with the administration’s views. And on July 3, 2026, the Department of Education issued its regulatory agenda, which lists 19 ongoing and future plans for regulatory changes.

Three takeaways about the levers and their consequences

Three observations about the government’s multifaceted relationship with schools and its implications for free expression and pluralist campuses are worth noting, even if obvious, because they define the landscape in which any strategies to protect colleges and universities will be implemented.

First, the entwinement is extensive, and we oversimplify the environment at our peril. Many faculty and students think of the institution where they teach or study as “theirs,” albeit subject to decisions of the institution’s leadership. But as just illustrated, the executive branch can choose to exercise substantial authority over an institution’s conduct and operations. Even Project 2025’s 42-page education chapter, which sets out many ways an administration might exploit its sources of authority, is not comprehensive.

Second, the entwinement enables the executive branch to use an assortment of carrots and sticks—funding opportunities, oversight strategy, and the bully pulpit, among others—to shape campus speech environments. These, too, warrant attention in any future-planning efforts.

On the carrot side, for example, the Secretary of Education has authority to establish annual priorities for the agency’s millions of dollars in discretionary funding. Not surprisingly, while secretaries share some very high-level priorities about how to enhance education across the United States (compare DeVos and Cardona), their lead principles (e.g., deregulation vs. equity) and operational plans vary substantially. Until recently, science, health, and technology funding had been less susceptible to partisan shifts, in part because of peer review and other research norms, but recent events reinforce the broad, even if not unlimited, discretion of the executive branch in this domain as well.

The result is that administrations regularly redirect discretionary funds in ways that encourage certain conversations and discourage others. The Trump administration has done this by, for example, dangling benefits for institutions that sign its Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education and repeatedly canceling spending it characterizes as “woke.” The Biden administration did this by taking actions to advance racial and educational equity. More broadly, administrations can shape the campus speech environment by who they place on the federal accreditation and other advisory committees, funding boards, and education research bodies that perform additional oversight, grantmaking, and information-generating functions. On the bully pulpit side, administrations (and Congress) can likewise spotlight institutions for praise or condemnation, setting off a ripple effect of benefits or challenges on campus and beyond.

On the stick side, as illustrated above, an administration can use its high-profile legal authorities to pursue its priorities, as the Trump administration has done in its “crackdown” on higher education, but also can ramp up enforcement of seemingly unrelated laws, such as federal privacy and foreign-gifts restrictions, to exert further pressure. It can likewise shape the landscape by not investigating discrimination claims that do not fit its policy priorities. The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, for example, resolved only one percent of its pending cases in 2025, including no resolutions in discrimination cases involving sexual or racial harassment or sexual violence, while bringing numerous actions related to antisemitism, transgender students, and diversity considerations in college admissions.

Third, the mere threat of federal enforcement often prompts change, as illustrated in the DEI examples above. A rational general counsel seeking to avoid conflict with the federal government might advise their institution to steer clear of actions that agencies have flagged as potentially unlawful, even when those agencies have overstepped their authority. Given the bottom-line importance of federal funds for nearly every higher education institution, vanishingly few can afford to face executive-branch hostility. To be clear, this sense of pressure is not unique to the second Trump administration; some commentators have argued that OCR under the Obama administration put undue pressure on colleges and universities to resolve Title IX sexual assault cases and that the Biden administration did the same under Title VI in response to campus protests following October 7, 2023. But what is different, both in degree and kind, is the punitive and sweeping nature of government efforts to demonize and constrict higher education institutions; these are unprecedented by any measure.

The upshot

The upshot, when it comes to government pressure on higher education institutions, is that the power imbalance is real and consequential. Why push back against the government’s overreach in a specific instance if the government can seek the same result by other means?

The answer is not that litigation and law reform are futile but instead that a realistic landscape analysis requires us to think broadly about how to achieve institutional resilience. That analysis makes clear that 1) many federal government mechanisms for interacting with higher education institutions can be implemented in ways that negatively affect campus speech and pluralism, even when administered lawfully; and 2) apart from exceptional cases, most schools are unlikely to risk litigating against the government, even when claims are available, although some occasionally express concerns about proposed regulations, as did several universities (e.g., Columbia, Boston University, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, University of Washington) by submitting comments on the OMB proposed regulations. (Faculty organizations like the American Association of University Professors and unions like the American Federation of Teachers do not face the same constraints and risks as their members’ institutions and have been willing to pursue a more confrontational course toward the Trump administration, including through numerous lawsuits.)

A few suggestions

Against this backdrop, it may seem that school leaders have little meaningful protection against current and future targeting—but there is actually much that can be done, including efforts related to student acculturation, campus-rules communication, legal compliance, and refining a school’s institutional compass. I’ll describe each briefly below, drawing in part from my experience serving on Columbia University’s leadership team, and flagging why they matter for institutional self-defense as well as for the educational mission.

• Acculturation to contestation of ideas and inclusive education: Many students arrive on campus without understanding why contestation of ideas and an inclusive environment are so integral to higher education. The same is true for some faculty and staff. As a result, a robust free-expression environment that gives all students an opportunity to thrive is not a given. But it can happen when the institution explicitly recognizes contestation and inclusion as mission-driven values and reinforces them with ongoing support, training, and campus-community engagement. (Professor Olatunde C.A. Johnson and I have developed this point at greater length in Campus Crises and the Limits of Title VI.) These efforts do double-duty: They benefit the campus community directly and serve as an institutional resource for showing external audiences, including government and the public, that diverse expression and a pluralist student body must coexist for higher education to succeed.
• Clear and well-communicated campus rules: These are important not only for building internal trust and running effective campus operations but also for defending against federal attacks related to protest management. When rules clearly explain to community members what conduct is prohibited and why, those same explanations can serve as a foundation for defending against external pressures, whether from government or other stakeholders, especially in high-conflict periods.
• Periodic internal compliance reviews: It seems obvious, but schools are better positioned to fend off attacks if they have strong systems in place to ensure and track compliance with their myriad federal obligations as well as internal clarity about where their decisions may draw federal opposition. Periodic internal compliance reviews, akin to the compliance reviews occasionally conducted by some federal agencies, may be helpful for some institutions to proactively identify points of vulnerability and either make changes or develop strategies for defending their positions.
• Institutional compass: The mission of most, if not all, colleges and universities is to enable students to thrive and to participate in the contestation of ideas that defines higher education. By definition, this requires attention and resources attuned to differences as well as similarities among students. Clarity for institutional leaders and the campus community about how and why a school seeks to fulfill this mission can serve as a foundation and institutional compass to guide line-drawing and communications when federal or other pressure mounts. Support from higher education membership networks and organizations, like the American Council on Education, may be especially helpful for prompting cross-school conversations on these issues.

In short, work that aims to enhance campus life for students and other community members can also create a bit of a bulwark against government efforts to penalize and demonize individual schools and higher education more generally. By recognizing the broader impact of this work, colleges and universities, along with the organizations that support them, may be able to take concrete steps toward a stronger, more resilient future even in the midst of the extraordinary challenges of the present.