White House pressure leads universities to cut ties with nonprofit that helps racial minorities
The Trump administration said Thursday that its campaign to end diversity programs in higher education has led dozens of universities to cut ties with an organization known as “The Guardian.” PhD ProjectWhich helps racial minorities earn doctoral degrees.
The Doctoral Project was a little-known nonprofit group until last year it caught the attention of conservative strategists and became the focus of a study conducted by the U.S. Department of Education. Republican administration says school diversity programs often excludes white and Asian American students.
investigationThe project, which opened in March 2025, resulted in 31 universities agreeing to end their partnerships with the group, the department’s Office for Civil Rights said Thursday. It was stated that negotiations with 14 additional schools are continuing.
The Department said in a statement that the Doctoral Project “unlawfully limited eligibility based on the participant’s race” and that institutions partnering with it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in educational programs and activities that receive federal money.
“This is the Trump effect: institutions of higher education agreeing to cut ties with discriminatory organizations, recommitting themselves to complying with federal laws, and restoring equal opportunity on campuses across the country,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
Most schools immediately cut ties with the PhD Project after the investigation was opened to avoid confusion with the administration. He conducted the investigations after warning schools they could lose federal money because of “race-based preferences.”
The Doctoral Project is one of many nonprofit organizations that help underrepresented groups access higher education.
“The PhD Project was founded with the goal of providing more role models in front of the business classes, and that remains our goal today,” the organization said in a statement Thursday. The website says it has “helped more than 1,500 members obtain doctoral degrees.”
The group of 31 colleges the department listed included major public research universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and the University of Michigan, as well as prestigious private schools such as Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Like most of the schools named in the investigation, MIT pays the PhD Project a “nominal fee” to attend the group’s college fairs or conferences, which allows MIT to send representatives to its schools to answer questions about attendance, spokeswoman Kimberly Allen said.
MIT notified the government in April 2025 that it was ending its participation in such conferences, and months later the Civil Rights Administration reportedly found that it violated Title VI. Allen said the school signed a “resolution agreement” with the department about a week ago to resolve the matter but “expressly does not admit any liability, wrongdoing or violation of any law or regulation.”
The University of North Dakota also said it immediately terminated its membership with The PhD Project, two weeks after the investigation was announced last year.
“The University became a member of the Doctoral Project to provide access to the Doctoral Project’s member directory and applicant database so that it can recruit a broader pool of qualified candidates for faculty positions,” spokesman David Dodds said in a statement.
The University of Utah said it has a table at annual conferences hosted by the nonprofit for the 2024-25 school year and the previous two years. The university cut ties with the project in October after reaching an agreement with the department, said Rebecca Walsh, a spokeswoman for the university.
Of the 170 doctoral students accepted to Utah’s business school in the past 14 years, only two were involved in the doctoral project, Walsh said.
The Department of Education said all 31 universities agreed to review partnerships with other organizations “to identify those who violate Title VI by restricting participation based on race.”
The administration targeted a wide range of practices, which it labeled as: diversity, equity and inclusion.
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