Carleton College president says federal ‘Dear Colleague’ letters are an ‘effort to intimidate colleges’

Colleges and universities across Minnesota have just days left to end “race-based decision making” on their campuses after the U.S. Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights threatened to pull funding.

The letters sent earlier this month warn any scholarships, programming and even graduation ceremonies based on race could be considered “discriminatory” due to a 2023 Supreme Court case.

So how are colleges responding? Carleton College in Northfield received one of these letters. Carleton President Alison Byerly spoke with MPR News host Tom Crann.

Below is a transcript of their conversation, edited for clarity. Click play above to listen to the full conversation.

What was your reaction when you first saw the letter?

Well, I think most of us were certainly taken aback and confused by the framing of the letter and the very sweeping generalizations that it makes about what the letter asserts constitutes discriminatory practices in higher education.

You know, it’s no secret that this administration is focused on what they see as DEI activities being problematic at educational institutions, but their definition of what they see as DEI-related or even potentially discriminatory goes far, far beyond what anyone might have imagined in reading the Supreme Court decision about specifically the use of race and admissions.

So, do you view the letter from the Department of Education as a threat?

Absolutely. I think it’s actually because it goes so far beyond what I think many legal scholars would say is likely to stand up as really enforceable. It does feel like an effort to intimidate colleges into taking actions voluntarily that might not stand up to legal scrutiny if it really came right down to it.

It appears the same letter was sent to thousands of institutions across the country. It doesn’t sound like Carleton has plans to make changes to programming, class offerings or any aspect of student life in response to this letter.

Well, the status of the letter, among other things, is somewhat unclear. The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland issued a preliminary injunction on Feb. 21 referencing the executive orders about DEI. The letter itself says in its own wording that it doesn’t have the status of law. It simply outlines the administration’s view of how they would plan to regard colleges that take part in these actions.

So it is very confusing. It feels a bit like running a race that you’ve done many times, and suddenly you’re being told that you might be disqualified under new rules that have only just been invented and that maybe you'd better drop out it.

I think it’s trying to get colleges to make changes, and I certainly think that if a time comes that we’re legally required to make changes, we will look at it differently. But right now, it’s not clear that that what’s outlined in the letter has the force of law.

At Carleton, how much of your funding comes from the federal government, and what might you lose if that were to go away?

Well, I think any institution would find a loss of federal funding to be devastating. Carleton receives typically $10 million to $11 million a year from the federal government. The vast majority of that is financial aid. We get about $8 million a year for students.

Pell Grants, the federal support of financial aid that goes directly to students and comes through the institution: That is the largest portion of federal funding. But we, in any given year, usually have $3 million to $5 million of other types of grant support for academic research, scientific research being undertaken by faculty, in many cases, in collaboration with students.

And so all of that has implications for our budgets, if we found that that that funding is being held hostage to the government’s review and scrutiny of the kinds of programs that they outline.

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