Leaders and others at the biggest universities in Southern California are mulling a range of responses to the Department of Education’s new threat to cut federal money to any school that doesn’t end race-specific equity efforts by the end of this month.

Though the potential conflict touches a host of issues that, among other things, could reshape how America thinks of racism, experts said two basic things are at stake: The future of equity-oriented academic efforts in one of the nation’s most racially and ethnically diverse communities, Southern California, and billions of federal dollars that help local students attend school, fund research and pay for things like health care and on-campus food.

“This new directive isn’t clear other than it is intended to be hostile to academia,” said John Rogers, an education professor at UCLA, who suggested the new threat is part of a broader pattern in the first weeks of President Donald Trump’s second term.

“But it definitely raises a lot of questions,” Rogers said.

“Could a school bring together African-American parents or Mexican-American parents who grew up in, say, Anaheim, and draw on their experiences to share with children? Would that be good oral history practices or would that be outlawed as discriminatory?

“That’s the kind of thinking that’s reflected in the current moment.”

The Department of Education’s new directive came in a letter – dated Feb. 14 and signed by Craig Trainor, the department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights – that threatens to pull federal tax dollars from schools that provide or host equity-oriented activities.

Though the letter doesn’t define specifically what could imperil federal financing, it did reference some common practices that, until now, haven’t been particularly controversial, such as race-based dorm assignments and add-on graduation ceremonies for students of specific racial or cultural groups.

“In recent years, American educational institutions have discriminated against students on the basis of race, including white and Asian students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and low-income families,” wrote Trainor, who addressed the letter “Dear Colleague.”

“For example, colleges, universities, and K-12 schools have routinely used race as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring, training, and other institutional programming. In a shameful echo of a darker period in this country’s history, many American schools and universities even encourage segregation by race at graduation ceremonies and in dormitories and other facilities.”

Recent admissions data from the 10 biggest schools in Southern California show that White students are marginally under-represented at some local universities and that Asian students are overrepresented – sometimes dramatically – at most schools.

The letter notes that a 2023 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the use of race in college hiring or admissions, but Trainor claimed, without offering evidence, that schools have skirted the ruling by relying on college essays and other indicators that might signify a student’s race or ethnicity.

“The Department intends to take appropriate measures to assess compliance with the applicable statutes and regulations based on the understanding embodied in this letter beginning no later than 14 days from today’s date, including antidiscrimination requirements that are a condition of receiving federal funding.

“All educational institutions are advised to: (1) ensure that their policies and actions comply with existing civil rights law; (2) cease all efforts to circumvent prohibitions on the use of race by relying on proxies or other indirect means to accomplish such ends; and (3) cease all reliance on third-party contractors, clearinghouses, or aggregators that are being used by institutions in an effort to circumvent prohibited uses of race.

“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding.”

Some in California pointed out that the CSU system does not require essays for most applicants, though they are required from students who apply to the Equal Opportunity Program.

The Department of Education letter raises some questions that it doesn’t answer. If schools make changes, how will those changes be evaluated, and by whom? Can schools appeal funding decisions? Do programs that promote non-racial forms of equity, such as gender or sexual preference, disqualify schools for federal money?

What’s also not certain – though is widely acknowledged to be a potentially huge deal – is how much federal money might be at risk.

Both the University of California and California State University systems, as well as the state’s community colleges and all K-12 districts, get money from Washington. How much of that is direct assistance, and how much actually is used by students and researchers, is debatable. During the 2023-24 academic year, the UC system’s 23 campuses reported receiving more than $12 billion out of a total budget of $51.4 billion. But that figure included Pell Grants, which are used by about 1 in 4 students in California to pay their tuition and other expenses.

Federal money also flows to private schools. The University of Southern California recently noted in an on-campus news release that federal grants helped push its total research spending to more than $1 billion.

Losing federal money could push state schools to boost tuition fees or rely on more out-of-state and international students at the expense of California admissions. Already, state funding forecasts suggest both the UC and CSU systems will need to grow their undergraduate populations over the next few years, even as the overall student-age population shrinks, as a way to stave off budget cuts.

Many school officials contacted this week – including some who didn’t want to go on the record because of the threat of lost federal revenue – said the Department of Education’s new demands are ripe for legal challenge. They note that federal education money isn’t a gift to be given or withheld at the discretion of the government but is, instead, from taxes paid by citizens who, historically, have favored public education. They also argue that legal claims made in the letter run far beyond the purview of government officials.

“The writer of that letter isn’t a judge,” said one school official from San Bernardino County who declined to be named.

Others who study education and the Trump administration’s statements about the power of schools to “indoctrinate” students (an idea referenced in the letter, “Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’… “) said it might be too soon to assess the actual intent behind the threat to pull federal funding for schools that don’t dump equity programs.

“I’m not sure what precisely is intended by this. It’s vague in some ways and very specific in others, and it’s sometimes contradictory,” said William Jeynes, a professor of the history of education at Cal State Long Beach who is writing a book about the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education.

“And I think we have to be cautious to assume that (Trump) knows what he means,” Jeynes added. “It wouldn’t be out of character for this kind of letter to go out without him fully thinking it through.”

If the result is chaos for educators, that might be the point, said UCLA’s Rogers.

Recently, Rogers and academics from UC Riverside and the University of Texas, among others, published a study that found culture war battles cost schools about $3.2 billion last year. The money went toward everything from legal bills to fend off lawsuits to security at school board meetings. In districts where such conflict was deemed “high” by the researchers, the costs ran up to $80 per student.

“Every superintendent we talked to, every one, said they wound up using time on these issues that they otherwise would use to improve education,” Rogers said. “Instead, they’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time to make sense of and respond to very vague and problematic directives.

“This new letter fits into that pattern.”