Image CreditBreccan F. Thies / The Federalist
The Biden administration’s Department of Education threw away over $100 million on university grant funding to train K-12 social workers in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology, “anti-racism,” and critical race theory.
According to a Wednesday report from Parents Defending Education (PDE), the Education Department awarded $100,964,880 to 26 colleges and universities for the far-left trainings. The grants were awarded apparently to help students with mental health under the Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration and the School-Based Mental Health Services grant programs.
“School social workers did not use to spend years marinating in highly ideological courses about privilege, oppression, racial capitalism, and white supremacy, but today, this is common practice in public and private universities,” Erika Sanzi, director of outreach for PDE, said in a press release. “While this is obviously disturbing, the fact that the U.S. Department of Education has been funding it since 2021 is a major red flag. How can a social worker help students become the best version of themselves if they see them as oppressors with unearned privilege?”
The report comes as President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to dismantle the Education Department as much as feasibly possible without interrupting essential functions like distributing education dollars to states, providing student loans, and conducting civil rights investigations.
The Education Department awarded an $8 million grant to Georgia State University’s Master of Social Work program in 2023. The program, which is directed at youth mental health, mandates a “Diversity and Social Justice” course, which “focuses on understanding and applying multicultural concepts to practice, developing awareness of one’s cultural identity, and exploring how diversity and justice issues impact generalist practice in the context of field education,” according to the university website.
Florida International University received $6 million for “Project DIG” for its Master of Social Work program to focus on “recruiting and retaining credentialed mental health providers from diverse backgrounds” and adopting “anti-racist and anti-oppressive frameworks.”
Another $1.2 million went to the University of Alaska Anchorage in 2023 to fund a Bachelor of Social Work program that requires a class called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion through Community Service Learning.” The course “uses intersectionality as a framework for exploring multiple dimensions of difference and their relationship to oppression, privilege, and cultural humility.”
The University of Alaska Anchorage also offers a Master of Social Work, which offers a course on “Engaging Diversity through Justice and Anti-Oppressive Social Work Practice” in order to review “the intersecting dimensions of human diversity as they relate to identity formation, human rights, and social, economic, environmental and racial justice through understanding oppression, privilege, and power across micro, mezzo and macro levels of social work practice.”
In addition to dismantling the Department of Education altogether, the Trump administration has also been focused on eradicating concepts like DEI ideology, critical race theory, and other discriminatory practices from schools. While the Trump administration had already slashed hundreds of millions in far-left teacher training, a Biden-appointed judge ordered the grants be reinstated.
Breccan F. Thies is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
