A former tenured professor at Bakersfield College, Matthew Garrett is the founder of Renegade Institute for Liberty, an organization dedicated to promoting intellectual diversity. He launched the California Curriculum Center shortly after retiring from academia to offer nonpartisan curricula for independent educators and charter schools.
California Community Colleges system Chancellor Sonya Christian has long promoted racial preferences in education, so her response to President Trump’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) directive prohibiting discrimination was unsurprising.
On February 14, the OCR issued a “Dear Colleagues” letter following President Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in institutions that receive federal funding. The letter warns schools that long-overlooked discriminatory policies based on antiracism, Critical Race Theory, DEI, and others—including those that use indirect proxies—violate federal law. Schools that continue such programming risk losing federal funding.
Christian’s guidance to the largest higher education system in the country? Ignore the OCR’s warning and continue those programs until prohibited by courtroom judgements.
Christian’s record of pushing racial preference policies began at Bakersfield College. She imposed “racial equity targets” that evolved into hiring quotas aimed at reducing white employees from 52.9% to 24.7%. These policies fueled workplace conflict and led to costly lawsuits, draining millions from her district’s budget.
[RELATED: PROF. GARRETT: Why these professors are hypocrites on academic freedom]
Now, as chancellor of the entire California Community College system, she is urging all districts to follow the same self-destructive agenda. In her February 18 reply to the OCR, Christian defiantly announced, “our existing programs will continue for the foreseeable future.”
What sort of programs are we talking about? The OCR might begin with the Umoja Community, a program that plays out differently on each campus. In theory, it is open to all students, but in practice the participants are entirely or overwhelmingly black. At Bakersfield College, Umoja is openly listed as an “African American Initiative.”
Under Christian’s leadership, the BC Umoja program began hosting segregated “learning community classes” with reduced class sizes, created a safe space “village” study hall, assigned dedicated counselors while other students may wait weeks for appointments, and organized regular events with catered lunches. BC’s Umoja classes alone cost hundreds of thousands of tax dollars each year. In 2023, Christian also directed the college district to approve over $4,000 per Umoja student to tour Historically Black Colleges and Universities over Spring Break. This year the Umoja students will enjoy a no-charge luxurious trip to Egypt costing over $8,000 per individual.
To protect programs like this, Christian misrepresented the OCR directive, emphasizing the department cannot “change the law.” But this is a deliberate distortion. The OCR isn’t creating new law—it is enforcing existing law as interpreted by the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court case Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing (1977) established a test for identifying discriminatory intent in facially neutral policies. Since then, courts have applied strict scrutiny to education cases involving racial preferences, requiring programs to demonstrate a compelling interest and be narrowly tailored.
In 2023, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard cast serious doubt on whether ‘diversity’ alone can ever satisfy strict scrutiny in education. In that context, the OCR explains, race-based decision-making, whether direct or through proxies, is subject to strict scrutiny and generally unlawful.
[RELATED: PROF. GARRETT: Leftists’ victimhood mentality persists as DEI retreat accelerates]
Christian now stands at the schoolhouse steps defending segregationist policies and racial preferences. Her stated strategy is for colleges to uniformly resist, compelling OCR to weed out violations one by one. She is likely betting that some schools may avoid detection, while others escape with a slap on the wrist, as OCR recently issued to the University of California system.
But this isn’t 2023, and as JD Vance recently said, “There’s a new sheriff in town.” The OCR has already warned that at the start of March 2025 the Department of Education “intends to take appropriate measures to assess compliance.”
Institutions that defy the OCR’s directive risk losing millions in federal funds, diverting resources from students while wasting taxpayer dollars defending lawsuits they cannot win. Beyond the legal and financial fallout, these policies create division, resentment, and campus dysfunction—the same chaos left behind by leaders who championed these policies elsewhere.
Administrators now have a choice. They can follow Christian’s failed example—ignoring federal law and dragging their institutions into legal and financial turmoil—or they can cut their losses, end discriminatory policies, and focus on serving all students fairly.
Editorials and op-eds reflect the opinion of the authors and not necessarily that of Campus Reform or the Leadership Institute.
This article was originally published at campusreform.org
Author
