MAGA Groups Help Trump Push Cultural Change in Schools
The complaint that prompted a federal civil rights investigation into gender policies at Smith College was not filed by a student, graduate or anyone affiliated with the 151-year-old women’s college.
The grievance originated from Defending Education, a conservative parents’ rights group. The organization’s senior attorney said she targeted Smith after learning that one of the school’s graduation speakers last year was Dr. Rachel Levine, a physician and retired four-star admiral who is transgender.
“I saw Levine was speaking and thought that was a curious choice for an all-women’s institution, so I decided to take a look at the college’s policies,” Sarah Parshall Perry, a vice president and senior legal fellow at Defending Education, said in an interview.
What resulted from Ms. Perry’s scrutiny was a formal investigation by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which in May accused Smith of discriminating against female applicants by allowing transgender women to enroll, a policy that had been in place for more than a decade. The investigation also involves determining whether the college violated civil rights law with gender-neutral restrooms and locker rooms. Smith, which has an unknown number of transgender students, now risks losing millions of dollars in federal funding.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/us/politics/defending-education-smith-transgender.html