Education Department Investigates Smith College for Admitting Transgender Students
NEWS & RESEARCH
The U.S. Department of Education has launched a Title IX investigation into Smith College’s long-standing policy of admitting transgender women, a move that could jeopardize the single-sex status and federal funding of numerous women's colleges nationwide. The Trump administration argues that Title IX’s single-sex exemption is based strictly on biological sex rather than gender identity, asserting that the inclusion of "biological males" in women's intimate spaces violates federal law. Triggered by a complaint from the conservative group Defending Education, the investigation reflects a broader federal effort to roll back transgender rights.
SOURCES: Inside Higher Ed | The Hill| NBCBoston
ANALYSIS & OPINION
The Trump administration is conducting a coordinated national campaign to reshape higher education by targeting liberal arts institutions, feminist scholarship, and transgender inclusion. This effort, exemplified by the “civil rights investigation” into Smith College’s trans-inclusive admissions and the state-led dismantling of gender studies at New College of Florida, aims to realign the government with a specific conservative agenda. One trans student at Smith lamented: “We're just a scapegoat in this administration's aims to just outlaw anyone that's different.”
HOW TO FIX IT
Smith College should reaffirm its definition of women as including cisgender, trans gender and non-binary people who self-identify as female.
Legally challenge the Trump administration’s reversal of the Obama/Biden view that Title IX was intended to prevent discrimination on the basis of sex, including transgender status.
