White House pressure leads universities to cut ties with nonprofit that helps racial minorities

The Trump administration said Thursday its campaign to end diversity programs in higher education has led dozens of universities to cut ties with an organization known as The PhD Project, which helps racial minorities earn doctorate degrees.

The PhD Project was a little-known nonprofit group until it caught the attention of conservative strategists last year and became the focus of an investigation by the U.S. Department of Education. The Republican administration says school diversity programs often exclude white and Asian American students.

The investigation, opened in March 2025, has resulted in 31 universities agreeing to end partnerships with the group, the department’s Office for Civil Rights said Thursday. Negotiations are continuing with 14 additional schools, it said.

The department said in its statement that The PhD Project “unlawfully limits eligibility based on the race of participants” and that institutions partnering with it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in education programs and activities that receive federal money.

“This is the Trump effect in action: institutions of higher education are agreeing to cut ties with discriminatory organizations, recommitting themselves to abiding by federal law, and restoring equality of opportunity on campuses across the nation,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said.

Many of the schools promptly cut ties with The PhD Project after the investigation was opened, in order to avoid entanglements with the administration. It had undertaken the inquiries after warning schools they could lose federal money over “race-based preferences.”

The PhD Project is one of many nonprofits that helps underrepresented groups gain access to higher education.

“The PhD Project was founded with the goal of providing more role models in the front of business classrooms and this remains our goal today,” the organization said in a statement Thursday. The website says it has “helped more than 1,500 members earn their doctoral degree.”

The group of 31 colleges listed by the department included major public research universities such as Arizona State, Ohio State and the University of Michigan, along with prestigious private schools like Yale, Duke and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

MIT, like many of the schools cited in the investigation, had paid The PhD Project “a nominal fee” to participate in the group's university fairs or conferences, allowing MIT to send representatives to answer questions about attending their school, spokesperson Kimberly Allen said.

MIT informed the government in April 2025 it had ended its participation in such conferences and was notified months later that the Office for Civil Rights had found it in violation of Title VI. The school signed a “resolution agreement” with the department about a week ago to resolve the matter “but explicitly did not admit any liability, wrongdoing or violation of any law or regulation,” Allen said.

The University of North Dakota said it, too, promptly ended its membership with The PhD Project two weeks after the investigation was announced last year.

“The University became a member of the PhD Project to have access to the PhD Project’s member directory and applicant database, to be able to recruit a larger pool of qualified applicants for faculty positions,” spokesperson David Dodds said in a statement.

The University of Utah said it had a table at annual conferences hosted by the nonprofit in the 2024-25 school year and two previous years. It cut ties with the project in October after settling with the department, university spokesperson Rebecca Walsh said.

Out of 170 PhD students admitted to Utah's business school over the past 14 years, just two were involved through the PhD Project, Walsh said.

The Education Department said that all of the 31 universities have also agreed to review partnerships with other organizations “to identify any that violate Title VI by restricting participation based on race.”

The administration has targeted a wide range of practices that it has labeled as diversity, equity and inclusion.