William Treanor, executive vice president of Georgetown University and dean of the university’s law school, issued a firm response on March 6 to a threat from Edward Martin, interim United States attorney for the District of Columbia, to refuse to hire Georgetown Law graduates unless the school eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
This controversy comes on the heels of weeks of action by the Trump administration to eliminate D.E.I. initiatives from both the federal government and the public square more broadly, including private corporations and universities.
In an initial letter dated Feb. 17 and sent again on March 3, Mr. Martin asserted, without citing examples, that Georgetown Law “continues to teach and promote DEI.” He threatened to bar Georgetown Law alumni from consideration for fellowships, internships or full-time employment in the office of the U.S. attorney for Washington unless Mr. Treanor provided a satisfactory response to two questions.
“First, have you eliminated all DEI from your school and its curriculum?” Mr. Martin asked. “Second, if DEI is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?”
In a reply dated Thursday, March 6, Mr. Treanor refused Mr. Martin’s demand to modify the school’s curriculum, citing Georgetown’s tradition of Jesuit education as well as universities’ general freedom to set their own curriculum under the First Amendment.
“As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding,” Mr. Treanor wrote.
“Your letter challenges Georgetown’s ability to define our mission as an educational institution,” he continued. Of Mr. Martin’s threat to “deny our students and graduates government opportunities,” Mr. Treanor wrote that, “given the First Amendment’s protection of a university’s freedom to determine its own curriculum and how to deliver it, the constitutional violation behind this threat is clear, as is the attack on the University’s mission as a Catholic and Jesuit institution.”
Mr. Martin is himself the product of a Jesuit education, a graduate of the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass., and Saint Louis University School of Law in Missouri. Before becoming an interim U.S. attorney, he worked in the state government of Missouri and served as chairman of the state’s Republican Party. He had never worked as a prosecutor before President Donald J. Trump appointed him to his current position on Jan 20.
Since then, Mr. Martin has stoked controversy on multiple occasions, including by firing prosecutors who had investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection and appearing to threaten to prosecute critics of Elon Musk in an initiative he termed “Operation Whirlwind,” which he argued was intended to protect public officials from threats of violence.
Georgetown Law appears to be taking Mr. Martin’s threat seriously as it pertains to students’ career opportunities. “Since the change of presidential administration, and the shifting landscape for federal employment, our career advisors have mobilized to support our students,” Merrie Leininger, a Georgetown Law spokesperson, wrote in an email to America.
“We’ve hired temporary and full-time staff to reach out and provide individualized support and career counseling to students who may have been affected by the federal freezes, job offer revocations, and layoffs. We’ve expanded our outreach to public sector organizations across the country to seek out new job opportunities. And our faculty, alumni, employers and community partners have also stepped up to provide job opportunities for displaced students.”
Many Georgetown Law students and campus organizations greeted Mr. Treanor’s letter with approval.
“We applaud Dean Treanor’s response and his resolve to stand tall against authoritarianism and bullying,” read a statement released on March 8 by the Coalition for Justice, an association of student organizations dedicated to pushing back against what it describes as the Trump administration’s “attacks on our democracy and our freedoms.”
“In times like these, we must hold the line against tyranny—even if it feels impossible, even if we are alone, even as our own country’s leaders stand against us. Now is the time to stand strong against fascism,” C.F.J. concluded.
In an interview with America, Kylie Swinmurn, a second-year Georgetown Law student and cofounder of C.F.J., dismissed Mr. Martin’s allegations of improper conduct by the university.
“I think the fact that we have a human rights institute, racial justice clinics and classes on gender and sexuality is enough for them to attack us,” she said. “As part of our graduation requirements, we have to take classes on racial history, sex, and gender. I imagine that might be a target, but I think realistically, any university that has any left-leaning or liberal views, classes or opportunities is going to face a similar threat.”
Ms. Swinmurn said that much of the Georgetown Law community was energized by Mr. Treanor’s response to Mr. Martin.
“Since the first executive orders came out, we’ve seen so many schools cowering to the administration and saying to get rid of all things D.E.I,” she said. “The fact that our dean and our school responded so immediately, to say ‘Absolutely not,’ gave a lot of us a lot of faith in our community. ’”
Greydon Tomkowitz, a third-year law student at Georgetown, told America in a text message that “Dean Treanor makes an admirable First Amendment argument that a court would likely have to decide substantively if he decided to challenge the U.S.A.O.”
But Mr. Tomkowitz, who has previously interned at the U.S. attorney’s office and hopes to find work there in the future, was doubtful of Mr. Treanor’s invocation of Georgetown’s Catholic identity, charging the dean with inconsistency in his application of Catholic teaching to the school’s administration.
“As dean of the law school, he’s tolerated the continued presence of several actively anti-Catholic organizations, including If/When/How,” a reproductive rights group Mr. Tomkowitz described as “pro-infanticide.”
“Dean Treanor is trying to have his cake and eat it too—accepting the strength of a religious shield only when it’s advantageous to his current goals,” he said.
Ms. Leininger clarified that If/When/How is not a student organization with access to university benefits and does not receive funding from the university. “As the nation’s oldest Catholic and Jesuit institution,” she said, “we recognize that the perspectives of some members of our community run counter to the Catholic and Jesuit values that animate our University. We work very hard to ensure that these values maintain a privileged place in our community while at the same time providing a forum that does not limit speech either in the content of the view being expressed or the speaker expressing the view.”
The U.S. attorney’s office for the District of Columbia declined to comment for this article.
On March 6, the day of Mr. Treanor’s reply, several Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee filed a professional misconduct complaint with the District of Columbia Bar Association against Mr. Martin, accusing him of abusing his prosecutorial power to threaten political adversaries. Senator Richard Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said that Mr. Martin’s actions “are part of a broader course of conduct by President Trump and his allies to undermine the traditional independence of Department of Justice investigations and prosecutions and the rule of law.”
Note: The author is a graduate of the College of Arts and Sciences at Georgetown University.
