Jon Fansmith: Welcome to the January edition of dotEDU Live, a pretty timely one. We’re coming to you just a couple days after the inauguration of President Trump. Thanks so much for joining us today. I am Jon Fansmith, senior vice president for Government Relations and National engagement here at ACE, and I’m joined by my colleague and fellow GR compatriot, Sarah Spreitzer, as well as our regular podcast co-host and fan of a team that didn’t win a football game this weekend, Mushtaq Gunja. So Sarah, Mushtaq, how are you doing?
Sarah Spreitzer: You know, you said no sports talk. I thought this podcast was about the executive orders, everything going on.
Jon Fansmith: This is purely a Philadelphia Eagles podcast from now on.
Sarah Spreitzer: Oh no.
Jon Fansmith: I’m going for a very specific market.
Sarah Spreitzer: No, no.
Mushtaq Gunja: It’s funny. I sort of expected you to say something to me, Jon—I’m a Rams fan, audience. I expected to hear something on Tuesday. I expected to hear something on Monday. I should have known. You were just waiting to spring it on me here, so thanks Jon. Appreciate it.
Jon Fansmith: Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. We have a lot to talk about. I think just the interest we’ve seen, certainly the questions submitted, there is a lot people want to know about certainly the new administration, their priorities, some of the executive orders we’ve seen coming out, but also touching... Congress has been sworn in since the 3rd, right, Sarah?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yep.
Jon Fansmith: And legislation is moving. There are priorities and certainly things like reconciliation to pay attention to as well, so we have a lot to talk about. Appreciating all of the, well now there’s a lot of Bills comments in the chat. The Bills are good by me too. Where should we start, Mushtaq? What is the best way to kick us off with all the things we have to talk about?
Mushtaq Gunja: I wonder, Jon, maybe at the highest level, I know both of you have been following the news of this first week very closely, I wonder what’s the biggest surprise over the last 48 hours. We’ve had, of course a flurry of executive orders. We’ll get into all of that, but what, if anything, has been the thing that struck you the most?
Sarah Spreitzer: I’d say I am a bit surprised that some of the executive orders that were in place in the last Trump administration were not just dusted off and reissued. So what we’ve seen is this flurry of executive orders. I think we have a total of 28 right now, and then we have, he rescinded a whole bunch of Biden executive orders. I think what we were expecting were things around immigration, but we were thinking like a travel ban because that was in the first Trump administration. We were thinking there would be an executive order on combating race and sex stereotyping, which we saw in the last Trump administration. Those two things have not been reissued. There’s still been a focus on DEI, gender policies, immigration obviously, but it’s not the same things that they had issued in the first Trump administration.
Jon Fansmith: I think my answer would be kind of a variation of what Sarah said. In some ways, the biggest surprise has been the lack of surprises. And to me at least that speaks to a really big difference between the first Trump term and the second Trump term. We really, especially in higher education, didn’t know what to expect from a Trump administration first round. President Trump in that campaign never talked about higher education; higher education issues weren’t particularly front and center in any part of the election, especially at the presidential level.
It’s a very different environment now. I mean both President Trump and Vice President Vance talked extensively and often very critically about higher education. There were speeches around accreditation, around certainly campus protests and free speech. There’s lots of campaign rhetoric and advertising around DEI and transgender students participating in athletics, and so to a certain extent, seeing the executive orders we’ve seen come out, they mirror almost exactly what we expected.
I mean, we have been talking for weeks about here are the things we might see, and so far it’s almost like checking off the boxes right down the list. We saw last night or this morning, I don’t know exactly when it was issued, the big DEI piece that targeted institutions with endowments of a billion dollars or more, which reflects a lot of the rhetoric we’ve seen around the endowment tax in other areas. We’ve seen proposals around the definition of gender, which not specific to colleges and universities, but certainly gets at some of that rhetoric we’ve seen.
It’s kind of an unfun answer, but I’ve been most surprised by how consistent they are with expectations and what they’ve said they’ve come to do. And maybe we shouldn’t, right? It’s early stages for an administration. This is when you expect them to be most on message, before events overtake them. But in a lot of ways this is exactly what we were anticipating.
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, but also though the speed at which it’s being carried out. I think we all knew that that was going to happen. We knew that they were going to come in with very specific plans, but we are already seeing the executive orders being implemented.
And I guess, Mushtaq, I would turn to you as the lawyer in the room. I mean a lot of these seem like they’re going to be tested in the courts, so I don’t know if they’re waiting for them to start to be implemented or what’s going to happen, but it seems much more organized than in the first Trump administration where things were issued, stopped by the courts, and then kind of abandoned. These executive orders seem very well thought-out. There’s severability clauses, which means a part of it could be thrown out by the courts, but the other part of the executive order might still stand. Do you think any of these are going to be stopped by the courts?
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, I think we should probably tackle them substantively, talk about what each of the executive orders is and then maybe we can talk about the legal challenges to the extent there might be some, but I think the TLDR, Sarah, is that I think there will be lawsuits. I think it will be hard for us to know exactly how some of those will play out. I think some of them will be successful; some of them maybe will not.
Why don’t we just start with the executive orders? Because there has been a flurry of them. We’ve received dozens of questions in advance. Please feel free to throw more questions in the Q&A. I’ll try to field them as we can. But I think there are two big buckets at least of questions about these original, these first set of executive orders: some around immigration and then some around... let me call it questions of DEI and diversity. Let’s talk about immigration first. Sarah, Jon, what are the most important questions around executive orders around immigration?
Sarah Spreitzer: So there’s a lot on immigration, Mushtaq. I think out of the 26 EOs that were issued on the first day, maybe half of them were immigration-related and really focused on securing the border, the southern border, really pausing the processes in place to accept those coming into the country on immigration visas like a refugee visa or perhaps somebody applying for asylum. All of that being paused under these executive orders.
I think there’s three that I would actually flag for higher education that would be important to keep an eye on, especially with how they’re going to be implemented. Former Senator Rubio was actually confirmed on Monday by the Senate and became the secretary of state. He was actually in the office on Tuesday. There is an executive order that’s a “America First Policy Directive to the Secretary of State,” and that says, as soon as possible, “the Secretary of State shall issue guidance bringing the Department of State’s policies, programs, personnel and operations in line with an America First foreign policy.”
“America First foreign policy” is not defined, but in conversations with other immigration advocates, they’re talking about how it’s so broad, it could be used for a lot of things. There was also similar language introduced regarding USAID programs, which are funds that the United States usually provides to developing countries, that they’re really going to be examining those programs, especially the grants that are running through those programs, and making sure that they’re aligning with the White House policy and the overriding White House foreign policy.
The second one I would flag is one called “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists.” And that one has to do with more vetting of any visa application. So that will definitely impact our F-1 and our J-1 student visas. And really they’re looking at, I think that it will likely be implemented where they’re rescinding some of the guidance that was put in place by the Biden Department of State to make it easier for students to apply for their visas. So think like interview waivers, less requests for evidence coming back. All of those things will likely be put into Department of State guidance.
There’s also language in that executive order that says, “The United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the U.S. do not bear hostile attitudes towards its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.” That’s also very broad, but reading that, coming out of some of the hearings last year around antisemitism and campus protests and questions about international students participating in those protests, there is a provision in your visa agreement that says you cannot provide support for a designated foreign terrorist organization. Hamas is one of those designated organizations, and so it looks like at least the State Department and DHS will take more actions around those provisions in visas.
And then the third one that I would flag is the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” And there’s two EOs that are looking at what states and localities may be doing to perhaps resist some of these federal efforts towards deportation. But in this EO, the “Protecting The American People Against Invasion,” there’s actually language that calls on the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security to “review and, if appropriate, audit all contracts, grants, or other agreements for federal funding to nongovernmental organizations,” such as our institutions of higher education, “supporting or providing services, either directly or indirectly, to removable or illegal aliens.” I’m concerned that that could capture institutions of higher education that are enrolling undocumented students, or perhaps running a law clinic to provide support to those students, or even perhaps providing in-state tuition to undocumented students. And so, again, we’ll have to see how that one is implemented. But those were the three that really spoke to me on higher education.
The other thing I will flag is, it’s not an executive order, but the Department of Homeland Security took the action which we suspected they would take to rescind the guidance around sensitive locations. So that guidance had been put in place so that ICE was aware of sensitive locations such as schools, hospitals, and churches, that they wouldn’t carry out deportation orders in those locations. That guidance has now been rescinded, and so ICE has the guidance that they can enter schools, hospitals, churches to carry out deportation orders. So that’s just in the first two days.
Mushtaq Gunja: So just maybe to flag one thing, in the early days of the first Trump administration, we saw a move for a version of a travel ban from folks entering from certain Muslim-majority countries and a couple of others as well. We haven’t seen that, right, Sarah? I mean to the extent that we’re talking about making the immigration process maybe potentially a little bit harder, the application process, it’s not targeted at certain countries. Are we anticipating that it might just be a problem across the board?
Sarah Spreitzer: So there is no travel ban currently in place, Mushtaq, but it definitely leaves the door open for future travel bans. And I say that because what was actually held up in the courts was not the first travel ban or the second travel ban; it was the third travel ban. And one of the reasons for that is that it was issued based on national security concerns, and it was because the U.S. government had not gotten sufficient information back from that country or from those countries for the travel ban to ensure the information that the U.S. was taking in regarding visa applications. So they’re saying we don’t trust your system of sharing information with the United States.
What we see in a lot of these executive orders is language about whether or not the U.S. government can stop issuing visas to a country that perhaps is not accepting its citizens that may be deported from the United States, or is not providing sufficient information to the United States for their visa applications, or perhaps is causing a national security concern. So no travel ban yet, but lots of language in there that I think would support a travel ban based on those various issues.
Mushtaq Gunja: Jon, this is just the first couple of days. We have to see of course how this stuff plays out. But do you have advice for our institutions vis-à-vis immigration, how they should be thinking about their foreign students and potentially their undocumented students? I mean, what should we be doing now?
Jon Fansmith: Yeah. And I think hopefully, and the three of us have talked about this in this format before too, going back to when we had Ted on right after the election and since as well, and in various, not just here, but in various venues, and I think one of the things is hopefully institutions have been thinking about this for a while.
I would say a couple things. First is it’s important to go back to what you said about an executive order is not a law, right? There are legal challenges that will inevitably come to many of these executive orders. In fact, executive orders can’t countervail existing laws and statutes. So there’s a lot of gray area in exactly not just how the administration would seek to enforce some of these things but whether they would have the authority if challenged to actually carry it out. So it’s worth keeping in mind—The administration knows this too. Every administration knows this when they come in—There’s a lot of executive orders that are really meant more rhetorically to signal to their supporters they’re taking action on day one or day two to implement their priorities. So keep that in the back of your head. This is a shifting and uncertain environment. The things we are talking about are not now absolutes necessarily.
That said, you know your students; you know your mission; you know your communities. You know the values you have as an institution, as the people who work there, and the role that students, undocumented or of uncertain immigration status, play in that community. And there are lots of things you can do to support them that are fully within the laws of the United States. And those laws haven’t changed as of Monday. Even if we’re not talking about a legal environment, there are ways you can support those students, whether it’s access to legal support, whether it’s simply affirming the rights that they do have, whether it’s simply identifying that this is a climate where that uncertainty causes a lot of fear and concern. And that’s not just for students and staff; that’s for the families and others within their community. So being thoughtful to that, making sure you’re staying true to your values, making sure that your community understands those values and sees you standing up for them.
Again, somebody comes to your campus with a warrant, you can’t say no, but that doesn’t mean you can stay entirely away from the issue or you should stay entirely away from the issue. You should be supporting your community and standing up for the values that you and your community collectively agree on. So I think those are important things to keep in mind as we think about this. There is a lot of understandable concern based on the sort of rapid-fire drumbeat of what we’re hearing and as we come to understand and explain those, but some things haven’t changed that significantly from where we were last Friday.
Sarah Spreitzer: And Jon, I’ll also put in a plug for our new immigration memo that we put out last week, and I’ll ask our producers to put it in the chat. It really is seeking to answer questions for campuses like what is a sanctuary city? Can my campus be a sanctuary campus? What happens if ICE agents do come to campus? Could I lose federal funding by refusing to cooperate? Those types of questions. And so it really is, it’s not the answer to all of the questions, but it at least gives you a start to have those conversations on your campus.
Mushtaq Gunja: Yeah, thanks Sarah. And I think that immigration brief is now in the chat. Can we talk, speaking of difficult issues for our campuses, there were a set of executive orders around, as I noted, let’s just say diversity sort of broadly. There’s some questions. So there’s an executive order around gender identity, one around affirmative action in federal contracting. There’s a whole set of executive orders in that space. Jon, let me start with you. What are these orders? What impact do they have for our institutions?
Jon Fansmith: There’s been a few of them as you highlighted, Mushtaq, and I think, again, this reflects the Trump campaign’s messaging on a lot of these issues, right? They were very, very clear that they see diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and—set the words aside for a moment— programs that focus on providing support and resources to individuals based at least in part on race, ethnicity, common ancestry as discriminatory. And they have made a priority from day one of pushing back, not just in terms of how the federal government may implement, and I’m just going to use DEI as the shorthand for sort of a broader category. They’re looking at DEI policies, whether that informs hiring practices within the federal government or it’s being used along the lines like Sarah identified with, are there program requirements for instance? Is grant eligibility conditioned in part on serving a diverse population?
The two big DEI ones, the first one was really, you talked about, targeted the federal workforce and a little bit about contractors to the federal agencies. That came out very early. It essentially said all federal agencies need to immediately stop doing DEI and environmental justice practices as well, sort of related but distinct series of issues there. And that any offices that were focused in this area, it rescinded a number of Biden obligations. It was a pretty exhaustive attempt to say the federal government will no longer not only employ these practices but will actively discourage any references to them, including among contractors.
The second one, frankly, the much more directly impactful for higher education, which we had thought we would see early on, is one that specifically targets a range of actors, but higher education is included. And that goes to federal contractors and subcontractors, and they explicitly define the relationship colleges and universities may have as participants in the Title IV student financial aid programs as qualifying you as a subcontractor to the government. That is enough of a relationship that they report that you fall under the requirements of the executive order.
What those requirements are are a little bit difficult at this stage to say exactly what the impact will be. There’s a couple that are very clear; I’ll get to them in a second. But the big one is essentially that if you are a federal contractor or subcontractor, which all Title IV-eligible institutions would be under this, certain requirements will be made of you, first and foremost that you do not have DEI practices in place; that you do not use it as part of your hiring, staffing, promotion; that you do not require that as part of the curriculum. Other things.
All of those are, and this is going back to what I said about Sarah’s point too, caveated with in contrast to federal civil rights laws. So there right off the top, there is a big gray arrow where you could say there is nothing in federal civil rights laws on the books that says I can’t do, in fact, institutions are doing these programs. Now, consideration of race in admissions, the Supreme Court has spoken specifically to that. They have not spoken specifically to do you have an equity program for incoming freshmen? Do you look at boosting enrollment among underserved populations in your incoming class by looking at certain communities? Those things are not clearly prohibited in federal civil rights laws. And so there will be a gray area. This administration interprets those as discriminatory practices. It’s not clear that the law supports that interpretation. So they will ask this of everyone. It is not abundantly clear at this point that they will be able to enforce that. And that means as of today, your DEI program, if your campus has one, is illegal. That’s not what we’re talking about. I want to be clear.
There are a couple other things that they will do. One of them is that they will require executive agencies, Department of Education within 120 days to produce a report saying what the implications of the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision was in terms of these practices and then send it out to institutions, essentially saying, we’ll now delineate our understanding of what that Supreme Court rule means for institutions and the consideration of race. Supreme Court was very clear that they were applying it to admissions only. That was the issue that was before them.
We reasonably expect that this administration effort will expand that definition to say, while the court may have only been talking about admissions, what they really meant is any type of policy or program that’s predicated on race as a determining factor for eligibility or benefits. That is the kind of thing that would also be barred. So that will be an effort to say the law actually allows us to do this, not the more narrow interpretation that I think most people accept at this moment.
The final thing, and this one’s a little bit odd, but it is wholly within the authority of the executive branch. They’re asking federal agencies to compile a list, and I forget the exact terminology, but up to nine cases in which they feel that those actors are significantly violating federal civil rights laws in these areas through their employment of DEI. For higher education institutions, they’re restricting the field for those nine examples to be found from institutions of higher education that have endowments of a billion dollars or more. That’s not public institutions or private institutions. That’s any institution that has a billion dollar or more endowment. It’s not institutions subject to the endowment tax. It’s actually a broader field than the endowment tax institutions.
And really this is sort of a blame and shame move. They’re going to have the Department of Education identify nine schools they think are the worst actors in this area, so long as they have a billion dollars in endowment, and subject them to public scrutiny, possibility of an OCR investigation into discriminatory behavior. It’s unclear necessarily what the next steps would be beyond the public shaming aspect of this. But that, again, is something they can do without the necessity of statute. That is a true executive authority action they can take.
So I’ve spent a lot of time on DEI. We can get into the federal workforce. As somebody whose partner is employed by the federal government, it’s an issue of great relevance to me as well, and I think another one where especially a lot of the legal challenges have already been filed. I read in some of these cases, within minutes of Trump being sworn in, multiple suits had been filed. But the clear effort is to reduce the size of the federal workforce and put limitations on the ability of professional career staff within executive agencies to interpret laws and statutes in ways that aren’t directly reflective of the administration’s priorities. But obviously-
Mushtaq Gunja: Hold on, just one second, Sarah. Just so that folks know that are putting questions in the chat. Great questions. We’re going to try to get to a bunch of them. We’re going to have to do quick hits because there’s so many good questions there. But Sarah, do you have a response to Jon quickly?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I was just going to say the EO that Jon was discussing is called the “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” and I believe the producers are going to put a link to that one. It was just issued today.
Mushtaq Gunja: On this, Jon, thank you for the detail in your answer because there’s a lot going on there and a lot of questions in the chat about this. So let me just give you a couple of quick hits. How might these executive orders impact HBCUs and then other MSIs, HSIs, the other sets of institutions that are minority-serving?
Jon Fansmith: I think this administration, I’ll say specifically to HBCUs, seems to be pretty publicly supportive of those institutions. In fact, among the early executive orders that impacted institutions of higher education, they moved or eliminated offices specifically around tribal colleges and universities from being under the White House’s purview, efforts to support Hispanic-Serving Institutions, others while maintaining the office for HBCU excellence at the White House. So I think HBCUs are in somewhat of a different category than other MSIs. The areas in which those institutions get direct federal support, Title III and Title V, those are in statute. Congress needs to change the laws. The administration can’t simply interpret this like well, they serve these populations, therefore it’s based on race, therefore it’s discriminatory. They would need changes to law to overrule that. So at least for the time being, I think those institutions should rightfully be worried about what the funding environment looks like, but at least coming out of the executive orders, I don’t think those are immediate concerns.
Sarah Spreitzer: And I think how they’re going to be implemented. I think that we also need to wait for that because, like you were talking about, Jon, Congress would have to take action. There was a question about the impact on TRIO grants. We know TRIO has incredible bipartisan support. I don’t think people immediately think of it as a DEI program, and so we’re going to have to wait to see how some of this plays out.
Mushtaq Gunja: I think just one thing for our institution to note, we can’t emphasize it enough. Executive orders cannot trump statute. They certainly can’t trump the Constitution. And so for the time being, until Congress is going to act on things that are in statute, we should assume that the statute prevails. Now, I mean, will this administration try to put pressure on, try to take some executive action that’s in contravention to the statute? Possibly. I think we’ll have to see how that plays out. But for now, I think we should assume that things that are in statute are in statute.
Now one of the things that struck me yesterday was, I think I saw this yesterday, but Jon, Sarah, you’ll correct me. I think I saw one of the executive orders make reference to DEIA and a ban on the A part, which I think means accessibility. How might these orders impact the ADA, any of the physical limitations that might be covered by the accessibility part?
Jon Fansmith: It’s a good one in terms of following up on your previous point because I saw that too. They rescinded Biden administration guidance where they talked about DEIA, and, again, that figures into their attacks basically on DEI, the idea of serving populations based on certain characteristics. That said, the ADA is a longstanding statute that’s been much revisited by Congress and has pretty explicit requirements on institutions. Simply rescinding the Biden administration’s emphasis on prioritizing inclusion and equity for individuals based on either race or disability status or other things, again, that doesn’t trump the existing civil rights protections encoded in the law that individuals with disabilities enjoy under those laws. So I was actually honestly a little bit surprised that this administration would make that move, other than they saw it as part and parcel with the existing Biden executive orders and regulations.
Mushtaq Gunja: I think about grants, NSF and others, that are specifically targeted at underserved populations, especially underserved racial populations. Does it fall under the same bucket? I mean, does this feel quasi-executive? What do you think is the future of all of that?
Sarah Spreitzer: I think one of the executive orders asks every federal agency to do some sort of report back to the White House about what they may have in the DEI bucket. I’ve been thinking a lot about programs at perhaps the National Science Foundation that have broader impacts, may not have DEI in the name, but they are there to kind of push NSF’s reach out beyond just the labs that are performing the NSF research. We also have programs like EPSCoR at NSF, which give money to states that don’t receive their fair share of NSF funding.
And I think Congress is always going to support those types of programs that are about diversifying who receives the funding. And so they may have to close down DEI programs or things that are looking at things with a DEI lens. But again, they’re going to have to figure out, and this may be the White House deciding what’s a DEI program and perhaps what’s a program that’s looking at diversifying who’s receiving the funding.
I also think that some of this goes back to, as Jon was saying, their efforts to shrink the overall federal workforce. They’re going to try to end a lot of these grant programs based on these executive orders, which could shrink the overall spending for a federal agency, but also just shrinking the overall size of the federal agency.
Mushtaq Gunja: On that point, Jon, Sarah, I mean in shifting away from the executive orders just for a quick second, have you seen anything in the negotiations around future budgets that would impact these sorts of funds being directed for causes to serve underrepresented students, TRIO or some of these grant programs that Sarah was just talking about?
Jon Fansmith: I’ll start. The one thing, and I’ve said this before, really kudos to the Council for Opportunity in Education, the group that really leads efforts and advocacy for TRIO, because they have done an amazing job positioning those programs as really strong bipartisan support. And even over the last four or five years where we’ve seen proposals for big cuts in other areas of higher ed support and appropriations cuts, the TRIO programs have done relatively well, seeing increases not maybe as big as the need is, but certainly in a tough fiscal environment doing pretty well.
There might be some shifting in that. I think certainly there was some concern over the Biden administration’s proposals to allow undocumented individuals to participate in TRIO programs, but the Biden administration never finalized those rules. In fact, they pulled them back. So that might mitigate some of the concern about TRIO.
I do think the funding environment is going to be really difficult over the next few years. Again, Democrats have more than enough votes to beat a filibuster in the Senate. There’s going to have to be some amount of compromise, but it’s been abundantly clear that there are a lot of Republican priorities both to cut funding and then to add these kinds of provisions. We’ve seen them time and again, Sarah can actually speak to them really well, because we see them proposed in the funding bills for nothing at the Department of Defense shall be construed, no funds in this bill shall be allowed to be used to promote DEI programs. It gets almost every appropriations bill that moves forward, people try to tack language on, just generally it hasn’t survived in the last Congress. One-party control is a scenario where concessions might be made. Maybe it’s more likely. It’s still tough, but it’s possible.
Sarah Spreitzer: And I would just add to that, Jon, on those, we call them policy riders on these larger bills, what we’ve seen success in is when they’ve restricted DOD funding for DEI efforts within the DOD workforce. But there hasn’t been enough support for putting those restrictions on grant recipients. And again, I think that goes back to every Congress at the end of the day wants to make sure that their congressional district is getting those funds from the federal government, and so they have more authority or more flexibility in making those changes at the federal agencies. I don’t know how much of an appetite there will be to put those restrictions on grants. And look, they’ve come close, right, in a couple of the appropriations bills. But I think when they understand how that might restrict money going to their institutions, then it becomes very problematic, especially if you have state law in direct contradiction with what might be in the federal law.
Mushtaq Gunja: Very quickly about two other types of institutions. We didn’t specifically talk about TCUs, but I’d love to hear what, if any, impact you guys are anticipating on Tribal Colleges and Universities. There’s an executive order mentioned in the chat, just in case you need a look.
And then what about our single-sex institutions? And that might lead into a question about gender, transgender students, and how we think about our single-sex institutions as well. So either of you want to take either of those questions on TCUs and single-sex institutions?
Sarah Spreitzer: I mean, I would just say that the White House did issue an executive order on the first day regarding gender and definitions of gender for the purposes of defining different things. And I think that is also going to play out in the courts. It did not touch on athletics, which is one of the places that we’ve followed transgender rules a lot. It also asks Congress to pass legislation that puts the definitions included in the executive order into statute, which I found really interesting. They’re not sure that the EO is going to stand up or perhaps that then the statute would then be applied to the various federal programs. But in the EO, it asks for changes like, for instance, that your passport can’t have an X on it, or your driver’s license, that has to be male or female. So we will likely see more things on that. I think Jon is especially attuned to what are they going to do around Title IX? The Biden administration had tried to do a rule around gender, especially as it applies to college athletics. They didn’t actually issue a final rule. But what will happen under the Trump administration?
Jon Fansmith: I think this is one of those areas where, and speaking specifically to, say, single-sex institutions, the administration’s rhetoric, and when you look at the EOs they’ve put forward, it doesn’t seem inherently hostile to those institutions. Where they have tended to focus on ideas of defining sex or gender really is intended to reflect the views they have around transgender individuals. And Sarah touched on athletics. That’s been the flashpoint, both with Biden administration proposals and rhetoric on the campaign.
It is logically consistent to see a single-sex institution as being discriminatory to individuals of another sex. If this is an area of focus for you, I don’t think anyone in the incoming administration sees that as an area of concern. I think you are far more likely to see something where they will assert that a civil rights violation, a discriminatory behavior has occurred where an institution has either allowed a transgender student to participate in the sports team of their gender identity or in cases where, for instance, if we’re talking about single-sex institutions where, for instance, a institution may have allowed, say a transgender woman to attend a women’s college, and a student at that college may have felt that that was unfair or changing the nature of the education they had anticipated. So those are the kind of environments in which I think you could see this being asserted. I think the simple existence of men’s and women’s colleges is not something that this administration has a particular focus or interest in addressing.
The other side of that question, Mushtaq? Sorry.
Mushtaq Gunja: Tribal Colleges and Universities.
Jon Fansmith: Tribal colleges, yeah. And I touched on this a little bit earlier. There were some EOs essentially rescinding sort of a prioritization of those institutions and support for those institutions, both locating offices within the White House itself outside of the Department of Education, and then executive orders from the Biden administration prioritizing the needs to support those institutions. Certainly not a good sign that those were rescinded as part of the packages of things that happened. Those were day one. That said, again, most of direct federal support for Tribal Colleges and Universities is in statute. It is not something that’s subject to administration prerogative. So again, I think there are reasons for funding concerns.
Interestingly, when you talk about tribal colleges, though, tribal colleges, as the leaders of those institutions and others know, have a defined federal status. It’s a little bit different than some of the other Minority-Serving Institutions. HBCUs and TCUs have a unique relationship with the federal government in that regard. The Heritage-led Project 2025 effort actually specifically excluded TCUs and HBCUs from the changes, the eliminations of funding for other MSIs. They were going after HSIs or going after AANAPISIs, whatever, but they said HBCUs and TCUs should be excluded. So despite these executive orders, I think I was a little surprised to see those for that reason. Those institutions do tend to have a little bit, I think, more prioritization within the Trump administration than other MSIs certainly, and certainly some of the other types of institutions we’ve seen being thrown into the spotlight.
Mushtaq Gunja: Sure. We have just a couple of minutes left. I know I haven’t been able to hit every question in the Q&A in the chat, but thank you for all of those.
A couple of very big picture questions. Jon, Sarah, what is ACE doing? What are we up to in these first few weeks? How are we helping our institutions? So let’s start there. And then I guess second question, I’ll just tee it up so you guys can start thinking about it. What advice do you have for our institutions as they are absorbing all of these EOs? And what, if anything, can they do to be more on the front foot and not just playing defense?
Sarah Spreitzer: Yeah, I would say from the ACE perspective, we’re trying to meet with new members of Congress. We’re trying to meet with the new chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Senator Cassidy. We’re trying to meet with the new chair of Ed and Workforce, Congressman Walberg, to really talk to them about higher education, the importance of higher education, how higher education can help address the national challenges that obviously are being identified by the White House. And then again, getting to know the new administration. We’re going to be communicating to cabinet secretaries once they are confirmed about our priorities and where we can be a resource. So for instance, Secretary Rubio was just confirmed. We will be sending a letter to the Department of State that talks about the importance of our international students and how visa processing times are a big issue for our international students. And so I’d say we are trying to position ourselves as a resource and then understanding the implications of some of these things. And also, again, communicating with the incoming administration about why some of these ideas may not be good.
And I guess for institutions that are sitting back on their campuses, I always think having conversations with your members of Congress are so important, bringing them to campus, talking to them about the value of higher education. I think too often policymakers think of higher education as these monolithic organizations, that we all look a certain way, they may not understand how a community college may look different from a four-year R1 institution, and that we serve perhaps different populations, and even what we give back to our community, our locality. And so it’s really important to have those conversations before going to them and saying, “Hey, I don’t like this.” Right? It’s better to be part of the conversation on the front end.
Jon Fansmith: Much like you can probably tell by the bags under our eyes, Sarah and I are spending a lot of time not sleeping and doing other things.
Sarah Spreitzer: I don’t have bags under my eyes. What are you talking about?
Jon Fansmith: I’m sorry. You can tell by the bags under my eyes, then. It has been a lot. And I think I would give the same response in terms of what we are doing and what institutions should be doing. Breathe. Take a moment. There is a lot happening. There’s a lot of uncertainty. You don’t want to rush. I’ve seen the thought pieces already about should colleges pre-comply by doing X, Y, and Z? Should colleges stand on their principles and shout it to the rafters? And I think we are analyzing. We’re putting it together. We’re talking with the people involved in pushing these policies forward. We’re talking with the people who are concerned about where these policies might go. We’re talking most of all to our members about what the impacts will be.
And I would strongly encourage you to do exactly what Sarah said, talk to your elected representatives about what that looks like for you, what that means for your campus and your community. That is the way to cut through a lot of this. But first and foremost, take that moment, understand the situation, and understand it’s going to keep looking like this for a little while. These things are going to start to sort out. We’ll keep trying to do the best and most comprehensive analysis and communication with all of you so that you’re aware of what’s happening and losing sleep along the same lines.
But that’s probably a good point to end it. I want to say before we do wrap up, two notes from our producers. One, the podcast version of this will be released on Friday so you can listen to it again. Likewise, the recording of this will be made available on our website. The live video recording of it will also be made available, so you’ll be able to come back to those as well. Second, keep an eye on our website. We will be putting up summaries and more information on all of this. There is a lot to go through, but we are committed to not just the resources we’ve already provided, but providing more and of better quality out to you to help inform people.
And then finally, I just want to end. We had at some point I think around 800 people joining us for this. The number of questions, Mushtaq, I don’t know how you did it because they were flying in fast and furious. There was clearly a lot of interest. We appreciate that. We also really appreciate the fact that we are a great community that aligns in these moments to help each other, not just our own institutions. And we’re seeing that, great examples of that right now. So thank you all for your work and we look forward to working with you as things keep moving forward.
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