Dear Friends of FAIR,
FAIR is proud to announce the latest effort in our civil rights advocacy: filing a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the University of the District of Columbia. This complaint, filed in partnership with Our America Foundation, challenges discriminatory practices that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment by excluding speakers based on their race and viewpoints.
In a case that perfectly encapsulates the discrimination FAIR was founded to combat, UDC excluded Black and Hispanic speakers from hosting a debate about race in America based solely on their racial identities and perspectives. What happened at UDC highlights a disturbing trend on college and university campuses that strikes at the heart of both civil rights and academic freedom.
In May 2025, the Our America Foundation approached UDC about hosting a debate titled “Is the American Dream Alive for Black Americans?” featuring diverse Black and Hispanic panelists including FAIR’s Executive Director Monica Harris. The proposed event was intended to afford UDC students the opportunity to engage with different perspectives on one of America’s most important ongoing conversations.
UDC’s response was swift and shocking.
Dr. Monique Gamble, speaking on behalf of the university, rejected the debate outright, explicitly citing the racial identities of the university’s students as justification. In her written response, Dr. Gamble stated that UDC’s students have “identities [that] actually do put them at risk in a society that has a known history of criminalizing race, gender, sexuality, immigration and socio-economic status.” She further claimed that the university would not “entertain these realities as debatable.”
Put simply, a public university funded by taxpayers refused to host a debate about Black Americans’ experiences – and featuring Black panelists – because university officials determined that their perspectives were incompatible with the institution’s mission.
UDC’s rejection lays bare the pernicious groupthink that’s infected American higher education: viewpoint conformity that denies students the opportunity to engage with diverse viewpoints on critical issues. University administrators have appointed themselves guardians of ideas that are deemed “safe” for students to encounter. Yet this approach doesn’t protect students; it infantilizes them, denying their capacity to think critically and engage with complex ideas.
Ironically, UDC's discrimination also targets the very speakers whose voices should be central to conversations about race in America. The university’s policy effectively barred Our America Foundation’s National Director, Gabriel Nadales, who is Hispanic, and Black panelists from participating in open debate because their viewpoints didn’t align with what the school believed people of their racial identities should embrace. This discrimination, wrapped in the language of protection, ultimately hurts the very students it claims to help.
Our complaint alleges violations of both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Title VI's language is clear and unambiguous: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.” UDC’s actions undermined this fundamental principle when it excluded panelists based on their racial identities and perspectives on race.
The university’s attempt to justify this discrimination by invoking student protection as justification runs afoul of federal civil rights law. Title VI contains no exception allowing discrimination when it’s done in the name of protecting certain groups. If universities can exclude speakers based on their race and racial perspectives under the guise of “protection,” Title VI becomes meaningless.
UDC also violated the First Amendment by engaging in viewpoint discrimination. The school’s requirement that on campus debates “unequivocally acknowledge” certain racial perspectives is patent viewpoint discrimination and exactly what the First Amendment prohibits.
This isn’t just about one university’s bad decision. UDC’s actions are symptomatic of a broader crisis in American higher education that prioritizes ideological conformity over intellectual diversity. When universities exclude speakers based on race and ideology, they’re not protecting students; they’re failing them.
This case embodies everything FAIR stands for. We believe in advancing civil rights for all Americans, not just those who conform to prevailing orthodoxies. We champion freedom of expression because open dialogue is essential to the fairness and understanding we seek to advance. And we recognize that true equality means equal treatment regardless of race or viewpoint.
Our complaint asks the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights to require UDC to:
Issue a public apology acknowledging the violation
Revise its discriminatory event policy to ensure viewpoint-neutral and race-neutral criteria
Allow the proposed debate to proceed under reasonable restrictions
Implement Title VI and First Amendment training for staff
Submit to monitoring to ensure future compliance
FAIR remains committed to challenging any practices that divide us based on immutable characteristics and to promoting policies that unite us through our common humanity. We will continue to challenge discrimination wherever we find it, whether it arises from the left or the right, because civil rights laws must protect all Americans equally – not just those with approved viewpoints.
Our students deserve better. Our democracy demands better.
FAIR will continue to monitor developments at UDC and provide updates as the OCR investigation proceeds. For more information about FAIR’s legal advocacy work or to support our efforts, please visit fairforall.org.
With hope and gratitude,
Monica Harris
Executive Director
Join FAIR in Conversation July 23rd at 7pm ET for a lively discussion about The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. Evolutionary psychologist Gad Saad establishes the argument that certain ideological movements undermine rational thought and stifle intellectual diversity. Employing the metaphor of a parasite to describe how these harmful ideas infect our minds and are spread through cultural institutions to distort our ability to engage in critical thinking, Saad examines postmodernism, identity politics, radical feminism, and cultural relativism, claiming that these ideas not only encourage censorship and erode individual freedoms but also threaten the foundational principles of Western civilization, including reason, scientific inquiry, and freedom of speech, expression, and thought.
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UDC's rejection was shameful and cowardly. Their students would have learned a lot from Monica Harris and others.
When critics—often from far-left or Marxist perspectives—accuse organizations like FAIR of “downplaying or dismissing systemic racism,” what they’re really doing is shifting the conversation away from universal human rights and toward a worldview that permanently divides people into identity groups. This isn’t just a philosophical debate; it’s an active campaign to rewrite our laws, our institutions, and our democracy itself. Right now, we see admissions policies, hiring standards, and even criminal justice rules being rewritten so that group identity, not individual merit or conduct, determines outcomes. This isn’t progress—it’s the deliberate erosion of the very principle that every individual is entitled to equal protection under the law, regardless of race, sex, or creed.
The American constitutional tradition—admired around the world—was built on the idea that rights belong to all people equally, not parceled out by group. When activists push for policies that treat people differently based on race or identity, they are not correcting injustice; they are destroying the protections that keep injustice at bay. History is clear: every society that has abandoned equal rights for group-based “equity” has ended up with more division, more resentment, and often, far greater persecution and violence. When the law is no longer equal, public trust collapses and democracy itself is put at risk.
So, to those who claim that defending universal civil rights is “minimizing” racism, the answer is simple: the most effective and lasting antidote to racism is a rock-solid commitment to equal rights and common humanity. Any ideology that undermines this principle—no matter how noble it sounds—threatens the very freedoms and protections that have made America, and similar societies, the freest and most just in history. Dividing us by race or group identity is not progress; it’s a reckless step backward that history has already proven leads to chaos, suffering, and the breakdown of everything that makes a free society possible.
list of countries and regimes that have used identity-based policies—often in the language of “justice” or “equity”—and failed, resulting in greater division and persecution:
Nazi Germany
Rwanda
Former Yugoslavia
South Africa (Apartheid)
Cambodia (Khmer Rouge)
Soviet Union (ethnic targeting and class-based persecution)
China (Cultural Revolution, ethnic policies)
Zimbabwe
Sri Lanka
Lebanon