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Dear Â鶹Æƽâ°æ Community:

We continue to work every day on the many ongoing federal policy developments. Issues ranging from research funding to diversity initiatives are seeing rapid change. Courts are considering numerous challenges to executive orders and federal agency actions and putting some policy changes on hold. While the pace and scope of federal activity are extensive, we are comprehensively addressing the potential impacts at Â鶹Æƽâ°æ.

There are questions about each policy issue for members of our community. Our home in the nation’s capital gives us many important connections to the federal government. It is one of the enduring strengths and opportunities in our educational experiences, research, and community engagement. It also means our programs and our people have extensive interactions with federal entities, including research grants, educational partnerships, and friends and family who work in government agencies. The upheaval happening in the federal workforce deeply affects many of us across our community. Many of our students, faculty, and staff are facing difficult personal circumstances, and we are here to support you.

While the policy issues are complex, our starting point is clear thanks to our enduring values. We focus on our core mission of educating students and creating knowledge as we move our work forward. We support our community and each other. Our overall policy approach is based on a set of core principles — coordination, compliance, communications, and community. Our leadership and our teams are collaborating to assess policy developments, engage with higher education associations, and take appropriate steps here at Â鶹Æƽâ°æ. We are ensuring compliance with the law, which is a fundamental requirement and responsibility. We are sharing information as it becomes available and seeking additional ways to provide updates and answer questions. And critically, we are focused on supporting our community, which is experiencing these policy issues in many ways.

Our engagement on the recent Dear Colleague letter from the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (where I worked earlier in my career) is a good example of this approach. The letter purports to significantly expand interpretations of federal law and legal precedent regarding diversity and inclusion initiatives. We are well positioned to address its complexity thanks to the expertise of our teams, the ongoing work of our Office of Inclusive Excellence to develop guidance and answer questions, and the extensive work done following the 2023 Supreme Court decision in SFFA v. Harvard. We are also working closely with national organizations that are monitoring these developments. While we continue to explore any potential additional implications of the letter, our commitment and work to advance a welcoming, inclusive community for everyone continues. We embrace the full and wide array of perspectives and backgrounds in our community that enrich our learning environment for everyone.

To support our community across the federal policy topics, we are deploying an array of resources and programs. Our Office of Sponsored Awards and Research Administration (OSARA) is regularly updating our faculty and staff working throughout our research enterprise (including a message to the teams earlier this week). This information is available on the OSARA website. Student Affairs, working with partners across the university, launched a series of events and gatherings for students on several topics in the federal policy space. And we are exploring broader ways to come together in community to discuss these matters.

As we work through the federal actions and address further developments and changes, it is important to avoid individual attempts at anticipatory compliance with orders or taking unilateral action without engaging with our policy experts. We will be adding updates and resources to our federal policy website to help address some of the most common questions and topics. Our leadership and teams are engaged with offices and departments across the university to address immediate needs.

Thank you for your continued support for our mission and our community as we work through these complex matters.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Alger 
President