In a letter sent to Yale University in May, the Trump administration’s Justice Department threatened Yale with litigation, major federal funding cuts, and withdrawal of tax-exempt status over allegations that its admissions policies unlawfully discriminate against white and Asian American applicants in favor of Black and Hispanic candidates. The initial target of the Justice Department investigation targeted Yale School of Medicine, but has since expanded to include Yale’s undergraduate college and Yale Law School. The DOJ called on the university to enter a voluntary resolution agreement or face a potential lawsuit.
Many members of Yale’s faculty, including the dean of the Yale Law School, staff, students and alumni have strongly opposed closed door negotiations between Yale President Maurie McInnis and the Justice Department. They argue that such an agreement could compromise university independence, giving federal officials ongoing leverage over admission policies, academic freedom, campus free speech, course content, faculty hiring, and the targeting of international students.
Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Daniel HoSang, professor of American studies and political science at Yale University, who also serves as president of the Yale chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Here HoSang considers what’s at stake in this Trump regime attack on Yale and other universities—and his work with faculty, students and alumni to stop a Trump-Yale deal.
DANIEL HOSANG: This letter alleged with the thinnest, thinnest of even evidence introduced that because the number of Black and Latino students at Yale School of Medicine did not go down significantly after the Supreme Court ruled in a decision around affirmative action in 2023 that Yale must intentionally be breaking the law. So there’s something quite odious about just that, just a pause on that contention right there. Simply the presence of robust numbers of Black and Latino students in the medical school proves “intentional discrimination” because why else would they be there? So that forms the basis of this finding.
We were shocked to learn that our university, rather than saying, “We stand by our admissions policies, we fully abide by the law and have updated our procedures.” Instead, it was disclosed through a reporting in the New York Times that they had entered settlement negotiations and that those settlement negotiations didn’t just concern admissions policies in the medical school, but concerned admissions policies in other schools on campus.
And once they start negotiating, anything can be put in those agreements, as we learn from the experiences at places like Columbia, University of Pennsylvania and Cornell. So it was quite startling to learn what’s happening. And I think the encouraging part is this really broad coalition of students and faculty and community members and elected officials is really calling on the university to tell the Department of Justice, “You can’t strong arm us into agreements like this. If you think the law has been broken, that should be proven in court. Otherwise, you have to allow institutions of higher education to have their autonomy respected.”
SCOTT HARRIS: Professor HoSang, what do you believe the ultimate goal of the Trump administration is in their threats to some of the most prestigious universities in the country in an effort to change these institutions’ internal policies? What part of the authoritarian playbook is this part of?
DANIEL HOSANG: Yeah. Well, I mean, I should point out, I mean, this is obviously the highest profiles. The ones that get the most attention are Harvard, what’s happening at Yale. But this particular round of investigations is also targeting a broad range of public and state medical schools. So the University of California-Los Angeles, University of California Davis, the University of Illinois in Chicago. And for all the challenges that medicine faces now and people’s concerns over the healthcare system, medical schools really have made significant advances in the last say, three decades. Medicine and being a physician used to be a career only for white, affluent, generally applicants from middle and upper class backgrounds. The kind of stereotypical way we understand what a physician used to be. And there’s been broad recognition that that’s not good for people. If we’re going to be able to serve the communities that deserve healthcare—and this includes in rural areas, includes in underserved urban communities—you need broad people to have access to this training.
And I think that’s really what this round of attacks is after, efforts to make medicine more accountable, more responsive, thinking about broad public health programs. That’s what’s really at risk here. If their vision of how medical school should work—which is really only to admit students based on small distinctions in test scores and grade point averages.
SCOTT HARRIS: Professor HoSang, what are opponents of a Yale-Trump deal doing right now, such as the group Stand Up for Yale? And that, of course, includes faculty, staff, and alumni. What are some of the things that you’re doing to influence the decision-making of the president of the university?
Faculty, we’ve held press conferences. We’ve had outside counsel produce a legal analysis so that our colleagues can understand what’s at stake. So it’s very difficult because the university has a whole office of attorneys, public relations and government affairs staff. This is their full-time job. We’re scrambling as faculty to both try to understand the underlying issues, to educate ourselves and to try to think together about what we lose when we allow, again, tactics like this to dictate policies in the university. Obviously, people have concerns and criticism about the Trump administration raising familiar alarms, but this should worry everyone.
If the government is just allowed to put forth allegations and then again strong arm institutions in closed door negotiations, what an affront to any basic definition of democracy that is.
For more information, visit Stand Up for Yale at standupforyale.org.
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