President Donald Trump signed a handful of executive orders Wednesday evening aimed at dismantling key concepts and ideologies that have significantly shaped American education – some, more acutely within recent years, and others, across decades.
One such order seeks to reform higher education accreditation practices, another to revoke school discipline policies built around race, and another requires increased reporting of foreign investment and gifts to higher education institutions.
Major accreditors like the American Bar Association’s Council, the Liaison Committee on Medical Education or the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education all include statements on diversity, equity and inclusion or underrepresented groups in their accreditation standards, according to Trump’s executive order. “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education” requires that accreditation standards be more focused on academic excellence and directs the secretary of education to deny or suspend accreditation recognition to accreditors who don’t abide by the new standards or “otherwise violate Federal law.” It also directs the attorney general to go after “unlawful discrimination” in American law schools, medical schools, or graduate medical programs.
The “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies” executive order cites 2023 guidance from the previous administration which noted that “statistical racial disparities in student discipline may indicate violations of law, and encouraging schools to collect, analyze, and adjust their disciplinary policies in light of racial disciplinary data.” It aims to reverse that practice and end alleged racial discrimination in school disciplinary practices.
Trump also signed executive orders calling for the incorporation of artificial intelligence education into schools, federal workforce training programs aligned with “our country’s reindustrialization needs” and the “growing demands for skilled trades.”
In an order called “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” Trump directs the end of the use of disparate-impact liability “in all contexts to the maximum degree possible” within the federal government. Disparate impact theory is a legal theory that allows employment, health care, education practices across every segment of society to be evaluated by the disproportionate impact they may create for certain groups of people, regardless of whether there is discriminatory intent behind them.
Trump also signed a proclamation asking Americans to observe the Days of Remembrance of Victims of the Holocaust in light of “the worst outbreak of anti-Semitism on American soil in generations.”
