Trump Admin Starts Breaking American Bar Association’s Left-Wing Monopoly On Law School Accreditation; Watchdog Asks Ed Department To Block American Bar Association’s Renewal As Law Schools’ Sole Accreditor

US Dept of Ed / Wikimedia Commons/CC By 2.0

Trump Admin Starts Breaking American Bar Association’s Left-Wing Monopoly On Law School Accreditation:

The Trump administration announced Friday it is moving forward with dismantling the American Bar Association’s (ABA) stranglehold on U.S. law schools, which allowed the organization to force left-wing ideologies on legal education at the threat of revoking accreditation.

Department of Education staff recommended that the ABA lose its status as the only officially recognized accreditor of American law schools, starting a process that will send the recommendation to the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI), and then to Undersecretary of Education Nicholas Kent for review.

“We have said many times that accreditation, in general, operates like a cartel,” Assistant Secretary of Education David Barker said, according to The Wall Street Journal. “When there’s no competition, accreditors feel free to inject their own political preferences, their own ideologies into the work that they do.”

The ABA was already scheduled to have a hearing before NACIQI in September, and many have said such a hearing could be an avenue to block renewal. An official familiar with the matter told The Federalist that part of the September meeting is about resolving some mostly unrelated issues brought up at a prior renewal hearing.

The Education Department’s Friday move is a new line of attack against the ABA, but the official said that loss of the ABA as an accreditor would likely still open the door for a university’s law school to be accredited under the umbrella of the full university’s accreditation, if it is affiliated. Law schools not affiliated with a larger university rely on accreditation to be eligible for federal student loans.

According to The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the recommendation, the Department of Education prepared a report of nearly 500 pages that details the ABA’s lack of fitness to have so much authority over law schools and states the association does not maintain enough independence from the legal profession to be a trustworthy accreditor of educational offerings. --->READ MORE HERE

Tony Webster / ABA / Wikimedia Commons/CC By-SA 2.0

Exclusive: Watchdog Asks Ed Department To Block American Bar Association’s Renewal As Law Schools’ Sole Accreditor

The Trump administration on Wednesday published rules that would open the door for other accreditors to be recognized across American higher education, as Trump himself recognizes that accreditation is the “secret weapon” for controlling universities.

Opposition to the American Bar Association’s (ABA) “role as the federal government’s exclusive law school accreditor” is growing ahead of its September renewal hearing, as the left-wing organization’s history of pushing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and other ideologies make them unfit for such a powerful position.

In a Thursday letter obtained by The Federalist, government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust (PPT) urged the Department of Education’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity (NACIQI) and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to reject the ABA’s renewal as the only recognized accreditor for America’s law schools.

“The ABA has a lengthy record of misusing its accreditation power to enforce ideological conformity, require discriminatory DEI policies, and engage in partisan and potentially anti-competitive conduct. It has proven itself completely unqualified to serve as a neutral gatekeeper to the legal profession,” PPT communications director Alexa Moutevelis told The Federalist. “The Department of Education should no longer allow this organization to strong-arm law schools into forcing racially discriminatory programming requirements and admissions standards. The freedom of our nation’s brightest young legal minds depends on it.”

McMahon will have the ultimate statutory authority to determine if the ABA continues to be a “reliable authority” to have accreditation powers.

The letter details the ABA’s many offenses related to DEI and other left-wing ideological goals, some of which it says are unlawfully discriminatory and are in direct contravention of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to rein in accreditors’ institutional capture of American universities.

The ABA considers DEI to be a “strategic imperative” for itself and for the legal profession as a whole. “It permeates everything we do internally and externally as an association,” the ABA states.

However, because of the Trump administration’s focus on rooting out the discriminatory ideology, the ABA encourages schools to come up with under-the-table work-arounds so that they can maintain the ideology while not being the subject of federal scrutiny and disciplinary action.

“The ABA effectively requires schools to find creative ways to avoid constitutional or statutory requirements that conflict with its DEI mandates,” the letter states [emphasis in original]. “It conditions accreditation on violating the spirit of the law, if not the literal text.”

The ABA’s Standard 206 effectively enforces affirmative action hiring at law schools as a criteria for accreditation, and Standard 303(c) required all accredited law schools to teach “bias, cross-cultural competency, and racism,” both at the beginning of law school and prior to graduation.

The ABA claims it paused Standard 206 and is considering the repeal of 303(c), but the PPT letter says the ABA is acting in “bad faith.” “With these issues still pending, one might even surmise that the ABA intends to continue to run out the clock until a more favorable administration takes office,” it states. --->READ MORE HERE

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