CHE reports:

OCR’s letter offers an expansive interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which banned the consideration of an applicant’s racial status. Though the so-called SFFA decision pertained only to admissions evaluations, Trainor wrote that the ruling “applies more broadly,” prohibiting institutions from considering race in “hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”

The SFFA decision did not hold what the OCR letter says, but it is almost certain that the current Supreme Court would agree with this blanket prohibition on the consideration of race.  And that's probably the bet that the Trump Administration is taking:  namely, that universities will comply because they anticipate that in a legal challenge, SCOTUS will side with Trump.

Racial preferences, as we have noted many times before, are deeply unpopular with the vast majority of Americans, including racial minorities (and putting aside their questionable legality).  The academy is one of the few institutions, along with portions of the media, still strongly committed to "diversity."  (Corporate America talks the "diversity" talk because it's cheap to do so and no threat to the plutocracy; now that it may be illegal, I suspect them to abandon the sinking diversity ship quickly.)  I, for one, will not be sorry to see the end of "diversity blather" in higher education, although I will be sorry it comes at the cost of actual affirmative action for the victims of American apartheid.  Of the battles higher education will need to fight right now with the Trump-lodytes, this is not the one that universities have any chance of winning, either before the courts or in the court of public opinion.

(Parts of the letter overreach the paragraph above, and suggest that it could be unlawful to teach about racial disparities.  Any attempt to try to prevent expression of the viewpoint that racial disparities are real and deleterious in America would meet with successful First Amendment challenges.)