More than 50 uni­ver­si­ties are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for al­leged racial dis­crim­i­na­tion as part of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s cam­paign to end di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion pro­grams that his of­fi­cials say ex­clude white and Asian Amer­i­can stu­dents.

The Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment an­nounced the new in­ves­ti­ga­tions Fri­day, one month af­ter is­su­ing a memo warn­ing Amer­i­ca’s schools and col­leges that they could lose fed­er­al mon­ey over “race-based pref­er­ences” in ad­mis­sions, schol­ar­ships or any as­pect of stu­dent life.

“Stu­dents must be as­sessed ac­cord­ing to mer­it and ac­com­plish­ment, not pre­judged by the colour of their skin,” Ed­u­ca­tion Sec­re­tary Lin­da McMa­hon said in a state­ment. “We will not yield on this com­mit­ment.”

Most of the new in­quiries are fo­cused on col­leges’ part­ner­ships with the PhD Project, a non­prof­it that helps stu­dents from un­der­rep­re­sent­ed groups get de­grees in busi­ness with the goal of di­ver­si­fy­ing the busi­ness world.

De­part­ment of­fi­cials said that the group lim­its el­i­gi­bil­i­ty based on race and that col­leges that part­ner with it are “en­gag­ing in race-ex­clu­sion­ary prac­tices in their grad­u­ate pro­grams.”

The group of 45 col­leges fac­ing scruti­ny over ties to the PhD Project in­clude ma­jor pub­lic uni­ver­si­ties such as Ari­zona State, Ohio State and Rut­gers, along with pres­ti­gious pri­vate schools like Yale, Cor­nell, Duke and the Mass­a­chu­setts In­sti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy.

A mes­sage sent to the PhD Project was not im­me­di­ate­ly re­turned.

Six oth­er col­leges are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for award­ing “im­per­mis­si­ble race-based schol­ar­ships,” the de­part­ment said, and an­oth­er is ac­cused of run­ning a pro­gram that seg­re­gates stu­dents on the ba­sis of race.

Those sev­en are: Grand Val­ley State Uni­ver­si­ty, Itha­ca Col­lege, the New Eng­land Col­lege of Op­tom­e­try, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Al­aba­ma, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta, the Uni­ver­si­ty of South Flori­da and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Tul­sa School of Med­i­cine.

The de­part­ment did not say which of the sev­en was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed for al­le­ga­tions of seg­re­ga­tion.

The Feb. 14 memo from Trump’s Re­pub­li­can ad­min­is­tra­tion was a sweep­ing ex­pan­sion of a 2023 Supreme Court de­ci­sion that barred col­leges from us­ing race as a fac­tor in ad­mis­sions.

That de­ci­sion fo­cused on ad­mis­sions poli­cies at Har­vard and the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, but the Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment said it will in­ter­pret the de­ci­sion to for­bid race-based poli­cies in any as­pect of ed­u­ca­tion, both in K-12 schools and high­er ed­u­ca­tion.

In the memo, Craig Train­or, act­ing as­sis­tant sec­re­tary for civ­il rights, had said schools’ and col­leges’ di­ver­si­ty, eq­ui­ty and in­clu­sion ef­forts have been “smug­gling racial stereo­types and ex­plic­it race-con­scious­ness in­to every­day train­ing, pro­gram­ming and dis­ci­pline.”

The memo is be­ing chal­lenged in fed­er­al law­suits from the na­tion’s two largest teach­ers’ unions. The suits say the memo is too vague and vi­o­lates the free speech rights of ed­u­ca­tors.

WASH­ING­TON (AP) —