The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
In May of 2016, the Obama administration threatened to take away federal aid from colleges that restricted people from using bathrooms corresponding to their preferred gender identity.
“When a school provides sex-segregated activities and facilities,” the administration’s letter at the time stated, “transgender students must be allowed to participate in such activities and access such facilities consistent with their gender identity.”
The Lt. Gov. of Texas, Dan Patrick, said then, “President Obama, in the dark of the night – without consulting Congress, without consulting educators, without consulting parents – decides to issue an executive order … forcing transgender policies on schools.”
Many conservative campuses over the last decade petitioned for exceptions to federal mandates like this on religious liberty grounds, most tried to decrease their reliance on federal grants, and some ultimately decided to opt out of federal funding entirely.
Now with political pressure coming from the Trump administration to take away federal funding from major universities, an entirely new set of campuses is having to ask hard questions and make difficult decisions. Among other things, this highlights a unique moment when campuses across the political spectrum share common concerns about preserving intellectual independence and freedom to direct their own educational missions.
Federal pressure switches sides
“Much of this higher-ed funding behavior is not new. It’s just coming from a different political direction,” University of Texas at Austin law professor Steven T. Collis told the Deseret News. “There’s no question, under the Obama and Biden administrations, the federal government had been engaging in similar behavior for some time and threatening to pull funding from schools with policies that reflected ideologies that they didn’t like.”
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
