Trump, GOP turn up the heat to ensure fairness, purge wokism on campuses

President Donald Trump and the GOP are making good on their promise to reform American education by eliminating racial preferences and excising radical politics from college campuses.

Naturally, the left is furious, but it offers schools a chance to save themselves.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the IRS will review and revoke the tax-exempt status of private universities that use racial preferences in admissions, scholarships, loans and athletics.

In the Supreme Court’s 2023 landmark Students for Fair Admissions cases — which held that race-based affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional — Chief Justice John Roberts thundered, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” He was dead right.

The Trump administration is taking the elimination of racial discrimination seriously. And that means discrimination against anyone: black, white, Asian or any grouping.

Bessent also promises to expose and punish the common practice of “rebranding” race-based policies as “equitable, inclusive or diversity-enhancing” to stay within constitutional guardrails.

College deans, eager to preserve their bloated, top-heavy administrative salaries, dress up their beloved “Diversity Equity Inclusion” offices as “Belonging,” “Student Success” or, in Harvard’s case, the “Office for Community and Campus Life.”

But these revamped bureaus have the same old purpose, namely pushing a leftist, un-American agenda of racial preference that is fundamentally opposed to merit.

At the same time, the House just passed a bill that will prohibit private universities that receive federal support — which includes almost all of them — from participating in boycotts of Israel or not permitting student exchanges with Israeli schools.

Currently no American schools take part in anti-Israel boycotts, but that could change if hollering student protesters or tenured radicals in sociology departments get their way.

The legislation, which passed with 33 Democrats crossing the aisle, doesn’t require universities to have campuses in Israel or faculty exchange programs. It just stops an antisemitic agenda from gaining purchase at institutions that get federal tax dollars.

American academia is in a severe crisis of credibility and finances. A recent Wall Street Journal report concluded that some of the priciest universities — 15 of which now charge more than $100,000 a year to attend — return negative value in terms of their grads’ future earnings.

With enrollment in sharp decline, America’s schools need to reevaluate what they’re offering students and families for their money.

Trump, Bessent and the Republican-led Congress are giving these drowning institutions a way out of the whirlpools of woke doctrine they are foundering in.

Let’s see if they’re smart enough to recognize the opportunity to return to core principles of fairness, merit and intellectual rigor.

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