March 26, 2025 (EIRNS)—Several attorneys at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights are warning of the potential for abuse of a new policy at the Office for Civil Rights to demand universities hand over lists of names of students involved in campus protests. The demand is not only for the names of these students, but also their nationality, their ethnicity, and their “ancestry.” The demand is broad and not limited to students convicted of a crime or violating university policies. One attorney at the Office for Civil Rights is quoted in the Washington Post saying, “My first thought was, ‘This is a witch hunt.’” Another lawyer said, “There is no investigative reason for us to be asking for that information,” and added that merely making the request may violate privacy and other laws.
The Office for Civil Rights was established to guarantee that schools and universities complied with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The Office investigated complaints against schools violating the Civil Rights Act and was never meant to investigate individual students or their behavior. Any violations usually resulted in a settlement where the school made modest changes and the Office would close its investigation. There were never any $400 million penalties such as those imposed on Columbia University.
The current head of the Office for Civil Rights is Craig Trainor, a darling of the Federalist Society and several attorneys suspect that his true goal may be to compile a list of names for deportation.
