OPINION:
Last month, when the Department of Justice published the findings of an investigation into the Ohio State University College of Medicine, it sent higher education an unmistakable reminder: Universities using race in ways that violate federal civil rights law can no longer expect to escape public accountability.
The school, the Justice Department found, had discriminated against White and Asian students in admissions for the 2023, 2024 and 2025 incoming classes. The federal investigation concluded that Ohio State’s medical school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, both of which signaled a renewed commitment to enforcing equal protection principles across American academia.
That high-profile enforcement effort is conducted alongside other federal civil rights inquiries targeting prominent institutions, including the University of Virginia, which entered into a Standstill Agreement with the Justice Department in October 2025. These actions deserve praise.
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For decades, prestigious universities operated under the assumption that their academic status and public standing insulated them from federal civil rights oversight. The federal government’s willingness to investigate and hold top-tier institutions accountable represents a long-overdue reaffirmation that anti-discrimination law applies on college campuses no less than anywhere else.
Still, the success of these flagship investigations highlights a broader structural problem that remains largely unaddressed. Although the nation’s best-known universities attract federal investigators, media attention, and public oversight, hiring and admissions practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion continue to be found at smaller liberal arts colleges and regional public universities.
These institutions rarely receive comparable scrutiny.
After the Nov. 3 elections, policymakers in Washington face renewed pressure to demonstrate that federal laws are enforced consistently and impartially. If the Trump administration wants to complete the critical work it has begun, civil rights enforcement cannot stop where the headlines stop.
Consider Otterbein University, a private liberal arts university in Westerville, Ohio. In a recent job posting for an assistant professor of criminology for which a friend applied, candidates were required in application materials to submit statements addressing specific prompts, including how their teaching and scholarship address diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as “How do you see yourself contributing to Otterbein’s Belonging Plan?”
Such requirements do not merely ask prospective faculty members about their teaching effectiveness or scholarly achievement. They require job seekers to explain and demonstrate commitment to a particular institutional framework concerning DEI as part of the hiring process.
Similar concerns extend to regional public universities. At Georgia State University College of Law, official hiring announcements prominently showcase institutional diversity metrics and organizational commitments — signaling to job seekers that identity-conscious considerations remain integral to institutional priorities, even where formal candidate statements are not explicitly mandated.
More broadly, nationwide studies conducted by organizations such as the National Association of Scholars and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression demonstrate that mandatory diversity statements, ideological screening filters and identity-conscious benchmarks remain standard operating procedure at hundreds of midtier private colleges and regional state universities across the country.
These are schools that rely heavily on federal financial aid programs and state taxpayer subsidies.
Defenders of these requirements frequently characterize them as benign administrative tools designed to identify faculty who can support diverse student bodies. In practice, however, mandatory DEI statements function as ideological screening mechanisms.
They systematically advantage job applicants who embrace a specific political framework while penalizing heterodox scholars who do not. The constitutional and statutory issue is not whether an institution may value fairness or equal opportunity. It is whether a college receiving public funds may condition employment on an applicant’s willingness to endorse a controversial ideological doctrine that critics say is difficult to reconcile with anti-discrimination law.
The resulting disparity in federal oversight is difficult to defend. Elite universities face high-visibility compliance checks and national media coverage, while regional institutions continue to use ideological litmus tests with near-total impunity.
If federal civil rights law is to retain its integrity, enforcement cannot be confined to a handful of famous campuses. Equal application of the law requires equal enforcement of the law.
Federal oversight must extend beyond elite medical and law schools to encompass the hundreds of regional institutions operating quietly outside the national spotlight. Every college benefiting from public support must be held to the exact same legal standard.
• Scott Douglas Gerber is a Declaration of Independence Center scholar at the University of Mississippi and a fellow at the National Association of Scholars. His 11 books include, most recently, “The Trafficker: A Novel.”
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