Why One Campus Told the Government It Has Ties With 1,200 Groups That 'May’ Discriminate By Jasper Smith March 12, 2026 Last month, the Trump administration announced that 31 colleges had agreed to cancel their partnerships with the PhD Project, a nonprofit organization focused on increasing diversity among business-school faculty members.
In those resolution agreements with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights was an unusual provision: that each campus provide a list of partner or membership organizations that “may” be violating federal antidiscrimination law.
Colleges are taking vastly different approaches to comply with that request. Half a dozen campuses told The Chronicle that they had come up with no such organizations, while one university gave the government a list of over 1,000 groups.
That’s the University of Kentucky, which in December submitted a list of more than 1,600 organizations — 1,200 of which it “flagged for cancellation” or “deeper review.”
The list includes hundreds of identity-based organizations, such as the Latinx Studies Association, the National Black Law Students Association, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. It also includes dozens of local businesses, a handful of other universities, and hundreds of unassuming organizations that make no mention of identity in their titles: the American Society of Breast Surgeons, the learning game Kahoot!, the Kentucky Maple Syrup Association, and even the Society for the Study of Amphibians and Reptiles.
Faculty members and students are not allowed to use university funding to pay for partnerships, memberships, subscriptions, or conference attendance with organizations that have been flagged for cancellation. Faculty can argue that conference attendance is protected by academic freedom if they document that they are presenting research, speaking on a panel, or reviewing scholarly work, a spokesperson said.
When senior leaders of the American Aging Association learned from The Chronicle that the group had been flagged on the University of Kentucky’s list of membership cancellation, they were confused. The association focuses on gathering scholars and physicians together to share research on how to improve the quality of life for senior citizens.
The association “has a diverse membership and welcomes membership and meeting attendees from all backgrounds and at all career levels,” George L. Sutphin, its chair, wrote in an email to The Chronicle. “It will be a shame if any student will miss the opportunity to participate because of restrictions put in place by their institutions.”
To compile the list, university leaders pulled all membership or partnership records from the procurement office. To determine if an organization might discriminate on the basis of race, according to the university’s general counsel, dozens of university leaders manually looked at whether an organization’s name includes an identity- specific term, if its “public-facing materials” contain phrases like “antiracism,” “structural racism,” or “similar concepts,” and if the organization runs trainings related to diversity, equity, inclusion or similar programs that “limit opportunities based on race.”
“We have a responsibility to be able to protect our work and our mission. And so while there were initial conversations about how to handle this, we felt that we needed to comply,” Tiana Thé, a university spokesperson, told The Chronicle. “When we get a letter that says we are found in violation of Title VI, we felt we could not take the chance that we would lose our federal funding.”
The pressure to comply with such a granular demand illustrates the unusual challenge of weathering the Trump administration’s scrutiny — that even spending money on faculty membership fees in an organization that has a diversity statement on its website could draw the ire of the government. College lawyers who might once have opposed broad government inquiries are now weighing the risks of resisting.
No Appetite for Risk The Trump administration set its sights on the PhD Project last March, with the Department of Education describing it as discriminatory because of its goal to increase racial diversity in the professoriate.
Dozens of colleges rushed to cut ties with the organization to avoid costly investigations and the possible withdrawal of federal funding.
The administration investigated 45 campuses and inked resolution agreements with 31 of them last fall. (They were not publicly uploaded to the Office for Civil Rights’ website until last month). According to those agreements, the civil-rights office will provide “feedback” to the colleges regarding the organizations, and the colleges will be instructed to cancel unapproved memberships or partnerships.
Still, it’s unclear if the agency has enough staff to investigate whether thousands of organizations are engaged in race discrimination. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, has decimated the department’s civil-rights branch. As of December, just over 400 of its staffers remain, and seven of the 12 regional offices have closed. Thé said the University of Kentucky has not heard from the office since December. (The Office for Civil Rights did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment.)
The diminished efficiency of the civil-rights office has left colleges’ general counsels with lots of decision-making power on what counts as diversity, equity, and inclusion, an ambiguous and legally fraught term, said Scott Schneider, an education and employment lawyer.
Spokespeople at six universities said their institutions had not found any other partnerships or memberships with organizations that may restrict participation based on race.
An Arizona State University spokesperson told The Chronicle that the institution has “complied with the department’s request to review current memberships and partnerships to identify any that restrict participation based on race” and that “none exist.” (Representatives from 24 colleges did not respond to requests for comment or declined to provide their lists.)
In the past, it was common for campuses to resist expansive demands from the civil-rights office, Schneider said. But the Trump administration’s aggressive posture toward the sector may have dampened the “institutional appetite” to push back.
In this case, compliance comes at a cost for local businesses in Lexington that landed on Kentucky’s list. Black Soil KY, a nonprofit focused on reconnecting Black Kentuckians to their agricultural heritage and combating the decline of Black farmers, was a frequent partner with the university.
Ashley Smith, its founder, said the group gave tours of farms ran by Black farmers in the state to University of Kentucky researchers and students. The nonprofit has also provided student interns with scholarships and sponsored their attendance at national agricultural conferences, Smith said.
That partnership began to fray after Kentucky lawmakers passed House Bill 4 last March, which restricts universities from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. The university responded by backing out of hosting Black Soil KY’s annual Juneteenth luncheon. In August, the director of a food-systems center on campus told Smith that the center would no longer sponsor staff attendance to a Black Soil KY conference on farming, citing state legislation, according to email exchanges shared with The Chronicle. Since then, the group has said it won’t seek any funding or sponsorships from the campus.
“The general public needs to know that UK is singling out small businesses who have done great work with them, who are vital for their town and gown, and they really could care less as long as they stay in line,” said Smith, who is also an alumna.
Thé said that the university is still making changes to its list and recognizes that some organizations listed for cancellation may be critical to the university’s mission, research, or service to Kentuckyians. Those will be removed from the cancellation list, she said. In fact, the university shaved 400 groups off its initial list of 1,600 after it determined that those groups were “institutionally critical,” Thé said.
Because the review process continues, Thé said the university was unable to provide a list of organizations that have been removed from the cancellation list since it was sent to civil-rights office.
“These community organizations are very important to us, and certainly the state ones as well,” Thé said. “So any time we get a question about anything, we will take a review of it.”
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