Dan Morenoff Testifies Before House Higher Education & Workforce Development Subcommittee on Patterns of Illegal Discrimination Across Higher Education (and What Congress Can Do About Them)

On May 21, 2025, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Higher Education & Workforce Development heard testimony from our ED Dan Morenoff at its second hearing on Restoring Excellence: the Case Against DEI.  You can read the full version of his written testimony, below (or at the Committee’s website). Or watch the full hearing, here.

Mr. Morenoff summarized the applicable nondiscrimination laws through which the Lincolnian Constitution guaranties equality on our campuses.  He explained the rise and fall of the Supreme Court’s since-ended experiment in carving a narrow exception allowing colleges to discriminate in their admissions decisions, including how that exception was misread to justify unrelated lawlessness.  Mr. Morenoff then turned to the evidence that schools continue to flout the law after the Supreme Court closed this loophole in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

As documented in Mr. Morenoff’s written testimony, that evidence shows (among other things) that:

1. Our most selective schools appear to continue to discriminate in their admissions decisions.*
2. Colleges and universities continue to discriminate in their hiring and promotional decisions.**
3. Colleges and universities continue to administer discriminatory scholarships, either directly or through the fiction of corporate alter egos.
4. Through at least January 20, 2025, the federal government directly paid for illegal discrimination, through programs like NIH’s FIRST grants.
5. The federal government indirectly subsidizes illegal discrimination, by allowing accreditors to misuse their control over access to Congress’s purse to compel such activity (a discretion they regularly exercise).
6. The federal government directly subsidizes illegal discrimination through the Minority Serving Institutions programs.

Mr. Morenoff then flagged the Administration’s efforts to confront these patterns.

Finally, Mr. Morenoff suggested to the Committee that there are solutions available only to Congress.  Specifically, Mr. Morenoff emphasized the need for Congress to act amend the Higher Education Act (as proposed by ACR Project Directors Gail Heriot and Peter Kirsanow in their capacities as U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners) and for Congress to de-authorize and defund illegal programs to avoid them from returning in a future administration (including the MSI Programs).

* – Lexi Boccuzzi, At Some Elite Universities, Affirmative Action Ruling Leaves Little Impact on Racial Makeup, Prompting Scrutiny: ‘It Looks to Me Like Yale is Deliberately Sending a Message that it Doesn’t Intend to Comply with the Law,’ Expert Tells Free Beacon, WASHINGTON FREE BEACON (Sep. 11, 2024).

** – John D. Sailer | Manhattan Institute.