CounterCurrent: Week of 07/14/2025
Colleges and universities have long faced scrutiny for violating Title IX, but fewer realize how often they violate Title VI—and their proposed solution is even more troubling.
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects against discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, specifically in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance, and the Department of Education’s (ED) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) oversees Title VI enforcement for academia.
Under Education Secretary Linda McMahon, the ED has opened several investigations into Title VI violations at institutions of higher education—most notably George Mason University and Harvard University. Many colleges and universities are responding to this by creating jobs for Title VI coordinators and hiring administrators in droves—a situation which eerily parallels the early 2010s and the administrator hiring bonanza related to Title IX complaints during the Obama administration. But colleges and universities aren’t stopping at just creating new positions and hiring Title VI coordinators, they are also creating fully-staffed Title VI offices and centers, as well as new training programs and re-evaluating investigative procedures, says an Inside Higher Ed article.
While some colleges and universities have been proactive in creating Title VI positions and offices on campus, others were required to do so as part of agreements with the OCR. The Inside Higher Ed article explains that “many resolution agreements related to shared ancestry since Oct. 7 in which OCR made an adverse finding against the institution required the college to hire a Title VI coordinator.” As an example, in January of this year, the University of Washington (UW) agreed to hire a Title VI coordinator to resolve two complaints of anti-Semitism. Additionally, UW was instructed to put up a new office under which the Title VI and Title IX coordinators would be housed. Compare this to the State University of New York system which is merely being “proactive” in its response to potential Title VI complaints, requiring all campuses to bring on a Title VI coordinator by the fall of 2025.
(Note that currently the two main areas for Title VI violations are anti-Semitism and Islamophobia. From 2023 to 2024, the number of resolved Title VI cases increased 24 percent, and there were 515 complaints alleging discrimination based on shared ancestry in fiscal year 2024, compared to just 59 such complaints in fiscal year 2023—a sevenfold increase.)
For some, this is a welcome development—at least if you think hiring coordinators and administrators are an effective solution. According to the Inside Higher Ed article,
[M]any institutions’ Title IX coordinators have historically handled Title VI complaints. But that could be problematic, as many Title IX coordinators are unfamiliar with Title VI and what should be considered a racially hostile environment, an antisemitic hostile environment or an Islamophobic hostile environment.
However, schools already have lawyers who can handle Title VI complaints: can they not advise on this matter themselves?
Incentivizing colleges and universities to hire more bureaucrats is a short-sighted solution by the OCR, and one that we have seen in action before.
During President Trump’s first term, then-ED Secretary Betsy DeVos restored due process considerations in cases of alleged sexual misconduct, disincentivizing schools from continuing Title IX administrator-led “kangaroo courts” that sprang up from Obama-era ED mandates. Dear Colleague, a report by Teresa R. Manning, the Policy Director at the National Association of Scholars, expounds upon this situation, including the problem of administrative bloat—specifically when said administrators are given power to oversee the application of Title IX without having the necessary credentials or experience.
Now, as colleges and universities are creating new coordinator and administrator positions, albeit for Title VI this time, Manning gives a warning,
In adding administrators, schools get to maintain and even expand their administrative bloat while seeming to be ‘proactive’ in preventing civil rights violations. In truth, it's just a jobs plan for university bureaucrats. Bureaucrats may initially back your cause. But in very short order and inevitably they serve their own self interest only.” Bureaucrats simply beget more bureaucrats.
Perhaps the ED should incentivize schools to utilize the tools at their disposal when faced with Title VI complaints—i.e., university lawyers—instead of creating a potential do-over of the Title IX fiasco of the 2010s. Or even better, don’t discriminate based on race, color, or national origin to begin with.
Until next week.
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, written by the NAS Staff. To subscribe, update your email preferences here.
Photo by Alex McCarthy on Unsplash
