The Trump administration has been threatening universities, imposing government overseers on them, and forcing the resignation of their presidents. Now it is targeting any professors who voice even general or symbolic opposition to these policies.

The New York Times reports:

When the Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into George Mason University over accusations that the university’s diversity programs were discriminatory, many members of the faculty were outraged.

Professors quickly published a resolution supporting their president and the university’s efforts around diversity.

Now, Justice Department officials say they will investigate the faculty, too.

In a letter sent on Friday, the Trump administration said it would seek drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president, Gregory Washington. …

Tim Gibson, an associate professor at George Mason and the president of the Virginia state conference of the American Association of University Professors, a faculty rights group [said] … the federal government … is rolling out “a new model of how universities are to be governed—it’s much more top-down from the federal government.”

The standard here is that it will not merely be forbidden for universities to pursue “diversity” policies. It will now be forbidden even to defend or advocate these policies. Yet under the new rules, it is apparently not forbidden to give academic awards to white nationalists for advocating white nationalism. Funny how that works.