The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division is investigating Indiana University’s scholarship programs in a probe into compliance with federal law.
IU administration directed faculty and staff involved in scholarship processes across the university to preserve all documents, notes, communications and recordings that could be used in the investigation.
According to the DOJ’s Dec. 12 letter to IU President Pamela Whitten, obtained by the Indiana Daily Student, the review is investigating if IU’s scholarship programs are compliant with federal law and whether the university is “discriminating against program participants based on any statutorily prohibited basis.”
As part of the review, the DOJ requested a demographic breakdown of all IU students. It also ordered IU to provide numbers on how many scholarships and total funds the university awarded — broken down by sex, race, ethnicity or national origin — and the evaluation and selection criteria used to determine scholarship recipients.
The DOJ directed IU to provide any policies, agreements, processes, audits, surveys and all communications surrounding its scholarships where “eligibility or selection criteria considered race, ethnicity, national origin, or sex.” It requested materials and dates for “nondiscrimination training,” as well as any complaints, grievances or appeals filed by students, staff or third parties. These materials include:
- Emails and voicemails
- Hard copy documents and all attachments
- All text and instant messages
- Hand-written notes
- Printed or electronic databases
- “Any other hard-copy or electronic document, whether in draft or final form, and whether or not the document appears to be a duplicate of any other document.”
The university was required to respond to the DOJ’s request within 45 days of when it received the letter, or Jan. 26. The IDS has not obtained any response IU sent to the DOJ, and an IU spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The IU Office of the Vice President and General Counsel sent letters to faculty and staff who have material that could be used in the investigation.
“Effective immediately, you must preserve and refrain from deleting, altering, or destroying any records—whether paper or electronic—related to scholarship administration,” the undated letter read.
The letter said the Office of the Vice President and General Counsel will work with the University Information Policy Office to preserve recipients' emails and electronic documents, and that all preserved information won’t be accessed “until the need to provide specific records arises.”
The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment by time of publication.
Under the Trump administration, the DOJ and U.S. Department of Education have launched investigations into and sent letters to many other higher education institutions for a swath of issues, from race-based admissions to handling of antisemitism and the participation of transgender athletes in collegiate sports.
In March last year, the Department of Education sent a letter to IU Bloomington, along with 59 other schools, stating it was investigating antisemitic harassment and discrimination and threatening federal funding. There is no resolution related to this investigation at IU listed on the department’s Office of Civil Rights website.
On Friday, the Trump administration sued Harvard University for allegedly not disclosing data in its own DOJ investigation into race-based admissions. The DOJ also opened an investigation in July 2025 into George Mason University for alleged “discriminatory practices” regarding student scholarships.
