The Trump administration’s mandate that selective institutions report admissions data disaggregated by race suggests it is targeting their multiracial student bodies, according to a leading scholar on race and education.

“Interestingly, given this is an administration that has said they don’t want race to be a factor in decision-making, they want to count up all the admissions decisions and disaggregate by race to see how that is all working out,” Beverly Daniel Tatum said on a recent episode of The Key, Inside Higher Ed’s news and analysis podcast. “[That] says to me, what they’re most interested in is increasing the presence of white people in those institutions.”

Tatum, the New York Times bestselling author of Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?, added that the administration’s ban on using geographic proxies to recruit students would likely be challenged in court.  

“If you are recruiting in a community that has a high percentage of Black or Latinx or Asian [students] … but has a low number of white students, then would you say that’s geographic targeting that is any different from the geographic targeting you were doing in the wealthy white community? Seems to me it is not different, so I think it’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” she told Sara Custer, Inside Higher Ed’s editor in chief.  

Tatum, who was president of Spelman College for 13 years, said, “The jury’s still out” on the president’s promise to elevate HBCUs. But she added that the administration’s actions toward selective institutions could lead to more Black students turning to those colleges.  

“And that is the history of HBCUs, right? They were created originally because there was no space, no place for that Black talent to be educated,” she said. “So in some ways it’s ironic, that the desire to invest in HBCUs might, in fact, be fueled by a kind of 1950s consciousness.”

Since retiring, Tatum has turned her attention to leadership in higher education. In the episode, she discusses her latest book, College Leadership in Turbulent Times: Peril and Promise and shares lessons from her own journey leading Spelman and serving as interim president at Mount Holyoke, and she dives into some of the biggest issues facing colleges today, from diversity, equity and inclusion to politics and finances.

Listen to the full episode here.