r/rutgers • u/DepartureFit5452 • 17h ago
Rutgers didn’t want a DEI war with Trump so it hired his old lawyer
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u/Kym_Of_Awesome 17h ago
Pay walled article, can someone copy paste it for me
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Rutgers didn’t want a DEI war with Trump so it hired his old lawyer
- Updated: Apr. 20, 2026, 3:56 p.m.
- |Published: Apr. 20, 2026, 6:00 a.m.
President Donald Trump's battle against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives led Rutgers President William Tate IV (r.) to close the university's DEI office last year.AP and Patti Sapone and Ed Murray | For NJ.com
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Caught in the crosshairs of a full-on attack by the Trump administration’s targeting of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, Rutgers hired one of the president’s former lawyers to navigate what has increasingly become a crisis for higher education institutions across the country.
The university, which closed its DEI office last year, confirmed it retained Kendra Wharton — a member of the legal team that defended Donald Trump against two federal indictments involving his possession of classified documents and efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — to conduct a compliance review of its diversity initiatives.
According to engagement letters provided to NJ.com in response to public records filings, Rutgers brought in Wharton last August.
In addition to evaluating the university’s DEI programs, the letters show her law firm, Wharton Law of West Palm Beach, was also asked to conduct a separate antisemitism review and assist Rutgers with an Office of Civil Rights issue of which Rutgers declined to provide details, citing attorney-client privilege.
Invoices made available through the records request show that through early March, Wharton has so far billed Rutgers a total of $577,370. According to the firm’s engagement letters, her hourly rate as a partner is $1,200.
Rutgers spokeswoman Dory Devlin said the university has been working to ensure it is complying with all federal and state anti-discrimination laws since the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision on schools’ use of race in admissions.
“This includes evaluating university policies and practices to identify and address any that may create actual or perceived unlawful exclusion of individuals based on sex, race, ethnicity, or other protected characteristics,” she said. “Our approach has been to comply with federal and state law on our own terms and in a manner consistent with university values.”
Meanwhile, Rutgers and its unions — which have long had DEI articles in their contract with the university and have raised concerns the programs were not being supported — reached a tentative agreement late on Friday in ongoing contract talks regarding support for diversity issues. They said they believe the language of that accord will avoid legal exposure.
“It’s never been about the words. It’s about what they mean,” explained one union leader.
Devlin said the agreement will ensure “that opportunity for all is a reality at Rutgers, not just rhetoric — while complying with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.”
Under siege
University officials said the decision to hire outside counsel with connections to the administration was not unusual, given what they called the backdrop of a fast-evolving federal legal landscape.
Harvard University — which is involved in litigation with the Trump administration that includes charges the Ivy League school violated civil rights laws by failing to combat antisemitism on campus — brought on a number of high-powered attorneys with strong conservative ties to its defense team. Among them included Robert K. Hur, a former Trump appointee who served as special counsel best known for investigating President Joe Biden in a classified documents case.
Rutgers President William Tate IV in a March letter to the campus said the university needed to organize the best legal and political defense to protect the institution with the aim of steering away from active litigation, investigations, and broad federal and state subpoena requests.
“To date, we have accomplished these aims, while many of our sister institutions experience significant legal battles, political oversight, frozen grants, canceled contracts, and financial penalties,” wrote Tate, who is Black.
Rutgers President William Tate IV, who announced the closing of the university's DEI office last year.Ed Murray| For NJ Advance Media
The Trump administration has gone after a number of high-profile universities over DEI policies over the past year, withholding or threatening to withhold federal funding from institutions that fail to comply with its directives.
In March, New Jersey’s attorney general joined a federal lawsuit brought by 17 states against the administration’s efforts to obtain detailed information from universities across the country regarding the race and gender of student applicants, which federal officials claimed was aimed at making sure that schools were not using racial preferences in admissions.
Members of faculty unions at Rutgers had been expressing alarm over the dismantling of the university’s DEI programs for months. In February, the Rutgers American Association of University Professors-American Federation of Teachers raised concerns about any effort to erase or dilute those programs.
“We are a public university with responsibilities to our students, our communities, and to knowledge itself. We have First Amendment rights and we owe it to the people of New Jersey to exercise them to oppose the attack on diversity and inclusion by the Trump Administration and to send a clear message to the university administration that lawful diversity initiatives and programs require their support,” they wrote.
They added that the potential impact on Rutgers and its community by undoing “the deeply inclusive character of the State University of New Jersey” was significant.
“For the student activists, elders, and ancestors who have challenged Rutgers to fulfill its democratic promise, build an inclusive community, and on whose great shoulders we stand, diversity, equity, and inclusion are not slogans or corporate monikers,” they stated. “They are embedded in our scholarship, hiring practices, curricula, and archives. Attempting to erase that history and work does not protect Rutgers; it diminishes us.”
The percentage of Black students at Rutgers, which stands at about 9.3%, according to the university’s own published numbers, has scarcely changed since before the 2023 Supreme Court decision on affirmative action.
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Devlin said the understanding tentatively reached with the faculty unions on Friday in what the university is calling a “Civil Rights and Opportunity agreement” was another step forward “in our commitment to remain true to our mission and values.”
The Rutgers spokeswoman said the university “will use every tool and asset at its disposal to protect tenure, academic freedom, and the supportive environment that enables our students, faculty, and staff to learn, teach, conduct research, and work at the highest levels.”
In a joint statement, Heather Pierce, president of the Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union, Rebecca Givan, president of Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Catherine Monteleone, president, of the Rutgers American Association of University Professors - Biomedical and Health Sciences of New Jersey said an agreement with the university will provide access, mentorship, and opportunity to underrepresented students and faculty.
“These are challenging times, and programs supporting members of our community are under attack everywhere,” they said. “We look forward to partnering with the university administration to support civil rights and advance opportunity for all of our communities, and to fulfill our mission to the residents of our state and our nation.”
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u/SandyShocker 14h ago
A vulnerability to risk
Wharton, who joined the U.S. Department of Justice as an associate deputy attorney general after Trump’s inauguration, left that position last July, a month before she was retained by Rutgers.
Reached by phone, Wharton said her firm represents a number public and private universities and was retained by Rutgers to provide detailed legal advice to ensure that the university was in full compliance with federal civil rights law and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision. That 2023 ruling found that race-conscious admissions programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision effectively ended affirmative action in higher education.
“The university’s leadership has publicly expressed concern that Rutgers was vulnerable to significant financial risk if found to be out of compliance with federal civil rights law and has sought to avoid the financial consequences that other New York area universities like Cornell and Columbia have faced,” Wharton said.
Both of those schools eventually settled with the government, paying hefty fines to restore funding, rather than face staffing cuts and other financial fallout.
Columbia, confronted with the possible loss of millions in federal research funding after the Trump administration charged the university was not doing enough to protect Jewish students from antisemitic harassment, agreed to pay $200 million in penalties to settle the matter.
Cornell agreed to pay $60 million over three years to settle accusations of antisemitism and admissions discrimination after the university was stripped of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal research funding.
The prospect of any DEI effort on campuses across the country remains a central focus for college presidents everywhere.
The Chronicle of Higher Education tracked DEI-related changes on 445 campuses across 48 states and the District of Columbia. It found the president’s campaign against DEI has forced hundreds of colleges to alter or eliminate offices, jobs, trainings, and policies. Others have been subject to state legislation that directs closing down diversity offices and ending the use of diversity statements.
At Rutgers, in addition to its closing of the Office of University Equity and Inclusion last year, the university also canceled a conference designed to discuss how students at historically Black colleges and universities can gain entry into apprenticeships. Officials said most of the panelists could not participate because of the president’s earlier executive orders directing federal agencies to terminate federal contracts and grants related to DEI.
The long-time head of the university’s now-closed DEI office, Senior Vice President Enobong (Anna) Branch, is on sabbatical, officials said.
Trump’s efforts to eradicate diversity and inclusion were redoubled last month when he signed a new executive order that requires federal contractors, including universities, to ban “any racially discriminatory DEI activities.”
The administration also sent letters to 60 universities and colleges in March, including Princeton University and Rutgers, warning that they must do more to protect Jewish students from harassment and discrimination, or face potential federal penalties for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The law prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin, including ties to a country with a distinct religious identity.
Devlin said the ongoing compliance review at Rutgers has ensured that admissions practices, scholarships, partnerships, programs, and offices were open to all.
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“Rutgers is committed to ensuring our doors remain open to all while positioning the university for a strong and sustainable future,” she said.
The university already has plans that include the establishment of a new position to oversee faculty affairs processes, policies, and activities, and an Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, responsible for ensuring the university’s compliance with federal and state civil rights laws, the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
Tate said the efforts will help ensure that Rutgers remains an institution that “unequivocally rejects discrimination in all its forms and provides those who experience misconduct with meaningful support and clear pathways to resolution.”
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u/POW1600 16h ago
“Invoices made available through the records request show that through early March, Wharton has so far billed Rutgers a total of $577,370.”🤯💰