During a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) spoke about the Trump administration demanding 'viewpoint diversity' at universities.
00:00Obviously, we're trying to understand what the Department of Education is doing with respect to the threats you've made against institutions of higher education.
00:08In the letter that you sent to Harvard, demanding that they make certain changes, you told them that they had to end all of their diversity programs, but that they had to institute viewpoint diversity.
00:23That doesn't seem to make sense.
00:26How do you tell them to end all their diversity programs?
00:30We assume that this is a mandate that you will make of other schools as well.
00:34How do you ask them to end diversity programs while instituting viewpoint diversity?
00:40Those seem to be totally contradictory.
00:43No, the diversity programs that we've asked and demanded to be eliminated were the DEI, where those programs actually were pitting one group against another.
00:53Isn't viewpoint diversity a diversity program?
00:57A viewpoint diversity is exchange of ideas that's actually better, absolutely.
01:02Now, here, because Harvard only has 3% by its own numbers, 3% conservative faculty, do you think they are allowing enough of viewpoint diversity through that teaching on campus?
01:11Where in the statute does it give you the ability to cut off federal funding for a university based upon your decision, your determination that they don't have viewpoint diversity?
01:21Can you cite to a statute an authority that Congress has given you to micromanage the viewpoint diversity of a college?
01:28Well, certainly if, well, now let's back up.
01:31Well, no, no, no.
01:32I think that's really important.
01:33No, no, no.
01:34I'm going to answer your question.
01:35Can you cite a statute?
01:36Because you can't cut off funding for universities unless you have a statutory authorization to do so.
01:42So what statute gives you the right to tell any university that they have to have a certain mixture of viewpoints?
01:49So here's what happened with Harvard.
01:51It's a pretty simple thing.
01:53I don't mean to be, I don't mean to provide a, being hostile to it.
01:57Well, I have to give you some, I think you have to cite the statute.
01:59The statute is Title VI.
02:01These were civil rights violations.
02:03That is why we filed a case and defunded or stopped the funding for a while for Harvard as well as we did Columbia.
02:09And in that conversation with them, we talked about different things that they should do coming back to the table to make their programming better.
02:17The president of Columbia absolutely indicated, as well as the president of Harvard, that they needed to do things on their campus to eliminate anti-Semitism.
02:25That was kind of the crux of what brought us into talking to the different universities.
02:30And then we sat down with them to say, okay, these are other issues that you need to address on your campus because you do receive federal funding.
02:38And under federal funding, if you are breaking the law, which they did under Title VI.
02:43I know, I don't understand any conception of civil rights law to give you the authorization to micromanage viewpoint diversity on campus.
02:51That's not authorized under the civil rights title provided to you by the United States Congress.
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