Inside the Trump Administration’s Attack on Smith College and Title IX

DDonald Trump’s administration is turning Title IX—the 1972 law Congress passed to protect women—into a weapon against women and higher education. On May 4, the U.S. Department of Education announced an investigation into Smith College—one of the nation’s leading women’s colleges, where I teach—putting both its federal funding and students’ federal loans at risk. In a press release, the DOE suggests the Massachusetts-based school violates Title IX because it admits transgender women and grants them “access to women-only spaces,” including dormitories, bathrooms, and locker rooms.  While the administration frames its investigation of Smith College (which describes itself as “educating women of promise for lives of distinction and purpose”) as “defending women,” its probe is part of a broader reinterpretation of civil rights laws to erode women’s rights, undermining the very purpose of these statutes.  

The DOE investigation is based on a fundamental misreading of Title IX: the law exempts private college admissions. Title IX does apply to private colleges outside of admissions, but it does not require sex-segregated dorms, bathrooms, locker rooms, or sports teams. Title IX allows colleges to have separate living facilities for men and women, but does not require it. Similarly, the implementing regulations allow separate bathrooms and locker rooms, but do not require them. In other words, Title IX prohibits discrimination; it does not require discrimination. 

The DOE’s investigation did not stem from a complaint from a Smith student but from a conservative advocacy group. Notably, the DOE does not cite a single Smith student who has been unable to participate in campus life because of the college’s dorms, bathrooms, or locker room policies.

That’s hardly surprising. Smith College, which opened in 1871, has single-stall bathrooms across campus. In dorms, bathroom stalls have doors, while showers and changing areas have curtains. The gym also provides private showering and changing areas. Despite this, if any student—including trans students—expressed privacy concerns, the college would undoubtedly accommodate them.  

The administration claims to be “defending women,” but I can assure you that Smithies don’t need Donald Trump’s protection. Over a decade ago, cisgender women students demanded that Smith admit transgender women. Today, cisgender women here still support Smith’s trans-inclusive policy, as evidenced by students’ Trans Smithies Belong campaign and a petition to the Board of Trustees with nearly 3,600 signatures demanding that Smith fight back. 

The DOE investigation of Smith College not only erodes a private women’s college’s right to operate free from ideological coercion, but it is part of a broader war on Title IX. The claim to be “defending women” rings hollow after the Trump administration rolled back protections for student survivors of sexual harassment and assault instituted under President Joe Biden. Instead, the Trump administration reinstituted lenient 2020 Title IX standards that granted unprecedented procedural protections to students facing discipline for sexual misconduct, including the right to cross-examine their accusers—protections generally unavailable to students facing other kinds of misconduct charges. The Trump regulations narrowed the definition of sexual harassment, stripped many students experiencing off-campus and online abuse of Title IX protections, and raised the hurdles schools must clear to discipline students accused of sexual assault. Under these regulations, schools can more easily discipline a student for plagiarism than for sexual assault.  

Rather than defending women, the Trump administration is threatening them. For example, the administration recently redefined nursing, social work, and education—all majority-female fields—as “non-professional,” capping federal loans for graduate study in these fields at $100,000. Meanwhile, students pursuing graduate education in fields where men are more represented, such as business, law, and medicine, enjoy a $200,000 cap. It also eliminated Biden-era loan forgiveness programs, a move that disproportionately harms women, who hold two-thirds of the nation’s student debt. [See “The GOP War on Nurses,” in the Washington Monthly.] 

For years, conservative Republicans have made false claims about protecting women athletes under Title IX. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump supporters staged a cross-country bus tour. “Save Our Sports,” wrapping their attack on trans students in the language of Title IX. The irony is that conservative Republicans have spent years blocking the expansion of women’s access to athletic opportunities. Banning a handful of trans women from women’s sports will not change that. The “Save Our Sports” campaign was organized by the conservative Independent Women’s Forum—a group formed in 1991 to support Clarence Thomas’s Supreme Court nomination. 

Having done nothing to advance women’s rights, conservatives now claim to be saving women’s sports and protecting women’s colleges? The claim is risible.  The Heritage Foundation’s latest report, Saving America by Saving the Family, actually recommends young women skip college altogether in favor of marriage and motherhood. And most recently, the administration revoked guidance that would have required schools to share Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) revenue proportionally with women athletes. 

The Trump administration’s actions undermine Title IX. In 1972, Congress passed this guarantee of women’s equal rights in education. For over 50 years, women’s rights advocates have fought to uphold that promise and have made tremendous progress, despite formidable Republican opposition. Today, women are 58 percent of enrolled undergraduate students, 56 percent of law students, and 55 percent of medical students.  

But equality remains elusive in many areas. Women hold only 42 percent of full-time MBA seats and account for just 44 percent of NCAA student-athletes. Female athletes receive only 18 percent of athletic funding, despite being 58 percent of the student body. Women experience shockingly high rates of sexual harassment, assault, and dating violence on campus. Strong Title IX protections hold perpetrators accountable.  

Conservatives have spent decades blocking efforts to strengthen Title IX—and now they feign to be its defenders. The strength of Title IX protections has always depended on which party controls the White House. While courts have interpreted Title IX to protect students from sexual harassment and assault, the contours of that right have vacillated wildly depending on who is president—Democrats expanding protections for women, Republicans eroding them. No administration has gutted them more than the Trump administration.  

As a scholar who follows the partisan Title IX divide, I find it galling to hear those who repeatedly sought to weaken Title IX protections now claim to be champions of women’s education. The Trump administration has decimated the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which enforces Title IX. It’s using what’s left to attack a leading women’s educational institution.  

This Title IX weaponization is part of a broader plan, laid out in Project 2025, to force colleges and universities to conform to conservative ideology. In a 2021 speech titled Universities are the Enemy, J.D. Vance said, “We must aggressively attack the universities in this country” and suggested it was “time to seize the endowments, penalize them for being on the wrong side of some of these culture war issues.” Trans rights are at the center of the Trump administration’s investigation of Smith, but so are women’s rights and higher education. As one Smith alumna—Victoria Hugo-Vidal—has said, “conservatives don’t like women, they don’t like education, and they especially can’t stand educated women.” 

The post Inside the Trump Administration’s Attack on Smith College and Title IX appeared first on Washington Monthly.