Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published in the National Association of Scholars’s weekly CounterCurrent newsletter on July 21, 2026. My colleague, Kali Jerrard, does an excellent job each week analyzing the latest developments in higher education, and I’m happy to crosspost her work here. To subscribe to CounterCurrent or browse past editions, visit the National Association of Scholars’s CounterCurrent archive.

Last week, my colleague Jared Gould wrote in his weekly newsletter that the Trump administration is working to dismantle the Department of Education (ED) and has already made it difficult for any following administration to restore it. This got me thinking about other cases in which the Trump administration has used Executive Orders (EOs) or other executive branch action to reform higher education or force colleges and universities to reform themselves.

Reforming higher education through the federal government was a hot topic about six months to a year ago with the flurry of EOs and ED directives being handed down by the bushel. But where do things stand now? Such matters have seemingly flown under the news radar in recent weeks.

Upon assuming the presidency for a second term, Donald Trump and his administration quickly opened Title VI and Title IX investigations into several colleges and universities due to cases of anti-Semitism and corresponding pro-Palestine-Hamas encampments and protests, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives, and biological males competing on women’s sports teams. Through EOs, the administration sought further changes in higher education funding, grants, and loans. Several federal departments subsequently cut or froze major federal funding to these institutions until they acquiesced or until agreements could be struck (which mainly happened through Case Resolution Agreements).

The government is required to conduct a thorough investigation, inform a university of its noncompliance with Title VI, “make an effort to obtain voluntary compliance, reach a determination that voluntary noncompliance is not possible, give notice to both the university and Congress, and provide a hearing,” before proceeding with cutting funding over Title VI violations. It was on these grounds that some institutions resisted. They claimed that the administration did not follow the formal process for such punitive action, thus ensnaring the Trump administration in legal battles over civil rights enforcement.

The Trump administration has attempted to bypass these legal hurdles through a number of new methods, making an example of the high-profile universities it has sought to reform.

First up, the institutions that came to agreements with the Trump administration.

Most notable from this list is Columbia University. After the university found itself at the forefront of the pro-Palestine protests and encampments post-October 7, 2023, anti-Semitism ran rampant, both in and out of the classroom. Columbia found itself the prime target of the Trump administration, with the administration cutting $400 million in federal grant money due to its failure to address anti-Semitism and other civil rights violations. The university’s July 2025 agreement to pay $221 million to the federal government settled the civil rights probe and restored about $400 million of the cut federal research funding, along with ensuring future grants and contracts.

The University of Virginia (UVA) reached an agreement with the Department of Justice (DOJ) pausing its five investigations into the university in exchange for UVA adopting the DOJ “Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination.” UVA must now submit a quarterly report to the DOJ to demonstrate that it no longer engages in discriminatory DEI initiatives. Part of this agreement required UVA President Jim Ryan to resign—a resignation that seems hollow in light of his cushy $1.1 million sabbatical.

Last November, Northwestern University settled with the Trump administration, agreeing to pay $75 million over three years to restore nearly $1 billion in federal research funding.

Cornell University agreed to pay $60 million over three years, half to the U.S. government and the other half to research programs that benefit agricultural research. This agreement was struck to restore $250 million in federal funding. As part of the agreement, Cornell must address discriminatory policies at the university and conduct annual surveys to ensure anti-Semitism is being addressed, among other concessions.

Brown University will pay $50 million over 10 years to local workforce development programs to restore its $510 million in federal funding.

The University of Pennsylvania agreed to revise its policies on transgender athletes, follow the existing, legally tested Title IX rule, and abide by Trump’s EO defining sex as biological to resolve the civil rights suit that took away $175 million in federal funding.

Note that all agreements struck with the Trump administration covered a wide array of issues and concessions by the universities beyond just addressing anti-Semitism.

As for examples of institutions that contested the Trump administration’s rescission of funding in court and have won for now, we have Harvard University and the University of California (UC) system.

(Important to note that the following cases are ongoing while the Trump administration moves the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) out of ED to the DOJ. This move, along with downstaffing of OCR, has increased the backlog of unresolved discrimination cases.)

Harvard University’s saga with the U.S. federal government ended in court, after a federal judge in Boston ruled last September that the Trump administration had to restore the more than $2.6 billion in research funding to the university. The judge determined that “the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands for changes to Harvard’s governance and policies.” While the Trump administration claimed that the initial funding freeze was due to Harvard’s delay in addressing campus anti-Semitism, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs (the same judge of early SFFA v. Harvard infamy) found that reason to be a “smokescreen.” That is, the administration targeted institutions under the guise of anti-Semitism and froze funding for research that had little to do with anti-Semitic discrimination. The Trump administration filed a new lawsuit against the university on March 20 of this year, citing Title VI violations once again, and OCR launched two new investigations as well.

The UC system also successfully challenged the Trump administration in court, after U.S. District Judge Rita Lin issued a preliminary injunction preventing the administration from freezing UC funding as part of its civil rights investigation. As part of the UC system, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) faced particular scrutiny from the DOJ because of the pro-Palestinian protests and encampment between May 2024 and July 2025. As part of the broader preliminary injunction, Judge Lin ruled that the National Institutes of Health restore the $500 million in research grants to UCLA. Earlier this year, the Trump administration sued the UC system, alleging that UCLA in particular ignored complaints of anti-Semitism from its employees. This lawsuit escalates the legal pressure against the UC system.

These two cases show that institutions of higher education can successfully challenge executive action regarding civil rights if there is a lack of formal proceedings by the executive branch to investigate potential Title VI and Title IX violations. Additionally, acting by executive action invited scrutiny by the court for “coercive conduct,” and accusations of violating the First Amendment. While the Trump administration came in swinging and won a handful of fights, broad reforms will require following established rulemaking procedures and working with Congress to enact lasting corrections to higher ed. This will prevent more legal losses for the administration and keep these reforms from being easily overturned.

Higher ed’s current situation still looks bleak, with public trust down once again. To rebuild trust in higher education, school administrators ought to see the winds of change and reform themselves. If they don’t, the Trump administration ought to continue using every tool at its disposal, seeking legislative action rather than litigation when possible. Otherwise, higher education might find itself back in the same position once political winds change in the White House.