3 University of Louisville scholarships offline amid Trump administration probe – WHAS11
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Three scholarships at the University of Louisville scholarships are currently unavailable after the Trump administration’s Education Department launched a civil rights investigation, accusing the grants of being discriminatory and exclusionary.
A UofL spokesperson told WHAS11 the Sagar Patagundi Scholarship, Dawn Wilson Scholarship and Louisville Tango Festival Scholarship “aren’t currently posted” as the school reviews them and the claims made by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
The university said it was notified of the investigation on Tuesday, a day before the OCR announced the investigation.
The three scholarships are dedicated to undergraduate students who are undocumented or DACA recipients, LGBTQ+ students of color, or Latino and Hispanic.
“I’m not a civil rights expert, but like it seems like it’s certain types of scholarships they’re going after,” said Tyler Fleming, associate professor in the departments of Pan-African studies and history at UofL.
Fleming has been watching the changes on campus, and online, in real time, saying “eliminating these scholarships is a serious deal.”
Meanwhile, state Rep. Jason Nemes (R-Middletown), a lawyer by trade, told WHAS11 he didn’t know the university was offering these grants.
“It seems like it’s a violation of federal law, and they shouldn’t be doing it,” he said. “There’s nobody that should be getting any benefit that those Kentucky kids shouldn’t be receiving. That’s what the law is, and the universities should be following the law, whether they agree with it or not.”
The probe comes on top of federal and state mandates in Kentucky to strip all DEI-related policy and procedures from public universities.
“As a faculty member, I’m still kind of figuring that out. We haven’t had many meetings over the summer, which has sort of added to a lot of the confusion,” Fleming said.
As of July 25, if you go to UofL’s website under its LGBT Center tab and click on ‘scholarships,’ you’ll reach a dead end. Instead, the website tells users they aren’t “authorized to access this resource.” When users try to access other scholarships offered by the Office of Access and Opportunity and the Cultural & Equity Center, they’re told “the page you are looking for doesn’t seem to be here.”
“The Trump administration is moving very fast and trying to dismantle the status quo, whether you like it or not, and universities are bearing the brunt of a lot of these changes…and it’s only been a few months,” Fleming said.
He’s worried about long-term effects on university enrollment, while Nemes said all public universities must comply with federal guidelines.
“With respect to the undocumented immigrants, illegal immigrants, those folks shouldn’t be getting benefits and in-state tuition because it’s federal law,” Nemes said. “So, one can make an argument that they should, but it doesn’t matter what you think. The law is that it can’t happen, so the universities have to follow the law. It’s that simple.”
In March, the OCR launched a similar civil rights investigation into the University of Kentucky, alleging it engages in “race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs.”
