Smith College Investigation Widens Trump Administration’s Attacks on Higher Education, Advocates Say
Smith College, Northampton, MA. Photo: Brian Logan Photography c/o Shutterstock
by Sarah Prager (Prism)
Smith College is being investigated for admitting trans women. Advocates compared it to attacks on race-conscious admissions
The following article appeared originally in Prism on May 20, 2026. It is reposted here following Prism’s distribution guidelines.
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The Smith College community and national trans rights organizations say the U.S. Department of Education’s Title IX investigation into the women’s liberal arts college in western Massachusetts signals the Trump administration’s new line of attack on higher education and transgender rights.
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced on May 4 that it opened an investigation into Smith College for “admitting biological men [transgender women] and granting them access to women-only spaces.” Smith began admitting transgender women in 2015 after a student-led effort.
The OCR aims to determine whether the college violated Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in any education program or activity receiving federal funding. The department’s statement claims that Title IX only applies to biological sex, not gender identity, and “an all-girls college that enrolls male students professing a female identity would cease to qualify as single sex under Title IX.”
Andrew Ortiz, senior policy attorney at Transgender Law Center, said that this investigation is unique.
“It’s both in line with the administration’s consistent weaponization of the levers of power within the federal government to go after trans people and to attack higher education—public education generally—using trans people as a scapegoat,” he said. “But it’s also kind of new because the vast majority of the Title IX investigations to this point have primarily focused on sports participation and to some degree access to facilities, like bathroom access. This is, I believe, the first investigation that’s directly related to admissions.”
Ortiz also said the majority of Title IX investigations until now have been into public institutions.
“Because it’s a private institution, Title IX doesn’t and shouldn’t apply to the admissions decisions of Smith, so it makes this even more odd and confusing,” he said. “Yes, this is a new escalation and a new version of what they’ve been doing, but it’s also part of a larger project to delegitimize and dismantle higher education and public education.”
Ortiz connected the Smith investigation to the decades-long fight by right-wing actors against race-conscious programs and admissions.
“It gets all tied up into the same bundle to fight against equality and multiracial democracy generally,” he said.
The OCR investigation was prompted by a 2025 complaint against Smith by the conservative advocacy group Defending Education. The group did not reference any complaints from the Smith community, calling itself “an interested third-party organization.”
Students and alumni expressed support of trans women at Smith following the news of the investigation. Smith’s campus was quickly decorated with chalk statements such as “trans women belong at Smith” and trans pride flags on sidewalks. A recent graduate launched a petition to the Smith Board of Trustees urging them to “fight the Trump administration instead of backing down or settling.” There are over 3,500 signatures from Smith alumni and students so far.
Beck Worrell attended Smith from 2012 to 2019 and was involved in organizing for the policy change to admit trans women.
“I think there’s a very strong general consensus that trans women absolutely belong at Smith,” he said. Worrell said his concern is that if the Trump administration threatens to withhold federal funding, would Smith be willing to lose out in order to continue admitting trans women?
Carolyn McDaniel, a senior director at Smith’s Office of Communications & Marketing, told Prism in an email statement, “The College is fully committed to its institutional values, including compliance with civil rights laws.”
Smith’s director of civil rights compliance and Title IX coordinator did not respond to Prism’s request for comment.
Worrell said he believes that Smith’s $2.7 billion endowment should be used to refuse federal funding if needed. He also believes Smith should withdraw from the NCAA, the governing body for college athletics, due to its 2025 policy that allows only people assigned female at birth to participate in women’s sports.
Trans students are not abstract political talking points—they are real people trying to get an education and live their lives. – Ash Lazarus Orr
While students accept that trans women should be admitted to Smith, Worrell said, there is no consensus about trans men and nonbinary students. Worrell said multiple students during the 2015 movement for trans women told him that he wasn’t welcome as a transmasculine person. It affected his mental health to a point where he took medical leave that delayed his expected 2016 graduation.
Ash Lazarus Orr, press relations manager at Advocates for Trans Equality, said that much of the current political focus on trans people is on trans women specifically.
“That focus is not accidental. It’s rooted in longstanding ideas about gender, who is allowed access to power, and who gets recognized as legitimate,” Orr told Prism in an email statement. “Meanwhile, trans men and nonbinary people are often erased from these conversations entirely because the debate is frequently framed around policing who is allowed to be seen as a woman.”
Orr said that this type of investigation can end with requests for policy changes, voluntary compliance agreements, or threats to federal funding. He also said that no matter the legal result, the effect on trans students can be personal.
“If schools are pressured to change admissions or enrollment policies, students could face exclusion from institutions they were already admitted to in good faith,” he said. “There are also serious privacy concerns—investigations like this can create environments where students feel pressured to disclose personal medical or identity information, or risk being forcibly outed in order to justify their presence in women’s spaces.”
Ortiz and Orr both said this investigation is prompted by the Trump administration’s anti-trans agenda, not by anything new happening at Smith, and that the opening of the investigation creates uncertainty and fear regardless of the outcome.
“Trans students have always existed, and they deserve the same opportunity to learn, thrive, and build community as anyone else,” Orr said. “What’s often missing from these conversations is the reality that trans students are not abstract political talking points—they are real people trying to get an education and live their lives. Policies that target them create instability where none previously existed.”
Orr added, “The question shouldn’t be whether trans students deserve access to educational spaces. They do. The question is whether institutions will stand by their values when that inclusion becomes politically controversial.”
Sarah Prager’s writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, The Atlantic, NBC News, and other national outlets. She is the author of four books on LGBTQ+ history for youth: Queer, There, and Everywhere: 27 People Who Changed the World; Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History; Kind Like Marsha: Learning from LGBTQ+ Leaders; and A Child’s Introduction to Pride: The Inspirational History and Culture of the LGBTQIA+ Community. Sarah has presented on LGBTQ+ history to over 200 audiences across eight countries, including two U.S. embassies. Learn more at www.sarahprager.com
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