Rebuilding After DOE Drops Appeal on Jan. 21, 2026

Rebuilding Tipping Point After DOE Rescinds its Appeal of Order Blocking Feb. 14, 2025 “Dear Colleague” Letter

On January 21, 2026, the Department of Education rescinded its appeal to a court order blocking anti-DEI guidance the DOE provided in a Dear Colleague Letter February 14, 2025. In essence this means the DOE’s erroneous claims that the higher education sector was engaged in violations of civil rights laws because it attended to the realities of race have been all but nullified.

  No matter the type of institution one works in, no matter how atrophied the imagination or morale, both can be reignited for a better democracy if we begin to take ownership of our own autonomy and agency.    

1. Use the Alliance’s Framework to have administrative discussions about what the institution has learned about policies, civil rights, and risk to mission and their relationship to state regulations. Let that tool guide how to build, not react and tear down, for a future aligned with democratic ideals and your mission.
2. Make your supervisors aware of this document so they may consider using it for the institution. 
3. Once clear on institutional direction, situate higher education’s role as a vehicle for democracy and build your culture towards ensuring alignment in institutional self-governance, the ability to exchange ideas, and advance opportunity and success.
4. Provide time and space for students and employees to imagine a better future—one where systems and supports improve for all employees and students; where pedagogy, teaching, and research from all disciplines are valued; and students have more opportunity for a better life and a stronger nation because of their learning. 
5. Intentionally reach beyond our sector to explain the value of a higher education sector that is supported, not controlled by the government. 
6. Consider rebuilding what was lost. In that vein, bring the students, staff, and faculty most impacted, targeted, or chilled in the past years for meaningful conversations about higher education’s role in democracy, fair opportunity, and research for the public good. Even as other threats continue, a tipping point requires inertia, and leadership provides that inertia.
7. Encourage deep conversations about language and why it matters; but also, that it could change with good reason if the rationale provided is to strengthen the sector and institution, not to comply with an agenda that misunderstands our work.   
8. Reflect on leadership at all levels. Consider: Have the leaders at your institution immerse themselves in theoretical underpinnings that translate into systems change to advance democratic ideals for an equitable society. If not, the Alliance can provide that.
9. Build internal governance systems that are more nimble than typical and that can take accountability for holistic student outcomes, and the outcomes of the public good of higher education.
10. Avoid platitudes and imaginary thinking that higher education is facing a moment rather than a movement. And subsequently work to make institutions nimbler.
11. Get clear-eyed about the way in which institutional and sector autonomy have been so easy to dismantle. Narratives that pit identities against one another have moved the public. Our charge is to unite ourselves for that same public.  

And in the process, we can begin a movement to a brighter future.