Did an honorary degree for Dr. Rachel Levine lead to Title IX probe of Smith College?

The Trump administration’s investigation into Smith College, the prestigious women’s college in western Massachusetts, may have begun with something as symbolically potent and legally tenuous as an honorary degree awarded to Dr. Rachel Levine, one of the nation’s highest-ranking transgender public officials and a pediatrician who previously served as Pennsylvania’s physician general and health secretary.

That’s the assessment of Suzanne B. Goldberg, the Columbia Law School professor and founder of the school’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, who previously served in senior roles in the Biden administration, including as acting assistant secretary for civil rights at the Department of Education. In an interview with The Advocate, Goldberg described the federal government’s Title IX probe into Smith’s admissions policy as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to use civil rights law to target transgender inclusion in public life.

“The investigation is wrong at so many levels,” Goldberg said.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Education announced it had opened a Title IX investigation into Smith, one of the nation’s oldest historically women’s colleges, over its policy allowing transgender women to enroll. The administration argues the federal civil rights law’s exemption for single-sex institutions applies only on the basis of what it calls “biological sex.”

In February 2025, Smith announced that Levine would be among the May commencement awardees.

During remarks connected to her Smith appearance, Levine spoke critically about cuts to the federal public health workforce under the Trump administration. “Many dedicated public health leaders, including most of the HIV and infectious disease team who I worked with in my office at HHS, have had their positions eliminated,” Levine said. “These hardworking civil servants went to work every single day to support the health and well-being for all Americans, including those living with HIV.”

Related: Department of Education threatens to pull Smith College's funding for admitting trans women

Title IX, passed in 1972, prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs. For years, Democratic administrations increasingly interpreted those protections to include discrimination based on gender identity. But the Trump administration has reversed that approach and is now using Title IX enforcement powers to challenge transgender inclusion in schools, athletics, housing, and educational institutions nationwide.

Critics say the administration is stretching the law far beyond its original purpose in order to pressure institutions into rolling back recognition of transgender people. Smith has admitted transgender women since 2015.

But Goldberg said the factual basis for the investigation reveals something broader and more ideological at work.

The complaint prompting the federal probe came from the conservative advocacy group Defending Education. The first attachment included in the complaint was Smith’s webpage announcing honorary degree recipients, including Levine, the former assistant secretary for health under President Joe Biden, and a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine became the first out transgender person confirmed by the Senate to a federal office in 2021.

Smith awarded Levine an honorary degree during its commencement ceremonies last year, recognizing her decades-long public health career, which included leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and advocacy around mental health, adolescent medicine, and LGBTQ+ health equity.

“A key official at the organization that filed the investigation said her interest was piqued when Admiral Levine received an honorary degree,” Goldberg said. “The organization took it even further by filing a complaint attaching as the first, so presumably the most important exhibit to their complaint, the announcement of Rachel Levine among the honorary degree recipients.”

To Goldberg, that sequence matters because Title IX investigations are traditionally intended to address concrete harms that affect students’ access to education. “Fundamentally, the law is concerned with harm to students in accessing their education,” she said. “This is not a complaint from a Smith student who says she hasn’t had equal access to education based on sex because of the presence of transgender students.”

Related: Brown University is ‘functionally inaccessible’ to transgender students after Trump settlement

Instead, Goldberg argues, the administration is using Title IX as a political tool. “Title IX does not apply to college admissions by private undergraduate institutions,” Goldberg explained. “The prompt of an honorary degree to a prominent transgender physician and public official is sort of extraordinary and horrifying.”

The administration has defended the investigation as a protection of women’s educational spaces. In announcing the probe, the Education Department said an all-women’s college “loses all meaning” if it admits transgender women.

“Allowing [transgender women] into spaces designed for women raises serious concerns about privacy, fairness, and compliance under federal law,” said Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey. “The Trump Administration will continue to uphold the law and fight to restore common sense.”

But LGBTQ+ advocates say the administration’s broader Title IX strategy is designed to marginalize transgender Americans from public institutions.

“What’s most important to recognize is that this is not about protecting women’s colleges — this is part of a continued effort from the federal government to target transgender Americans,” Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president of public engagement campaigns at The Trevor Project, told The Advocate in a statement.

Heng-Lehtinen pointed to new survey data from the organization, finding that 94 percent of transgender and nonbinary young people said recent anti-LGBTQ+ laws, policies, and political debates caused them stress or anxiety.

“Actions like these from the government — whether they target transgender people’s health care, access to schools, or any other topic — send a message to transgender young people that says, ‘you don’t belong,’” Heng-Lehtinen said. “And that message is as dangerous as it is untrue.”

Goldberg warned against viewing the Smith investigation in isolation.

“The government is using its official powers and resources to go after a school because it does not like who the school chooses as an honorary degree recipient,” she said. “It is a shocking waste of resources in addition to the core problem of overstepping the law.”

She also argued the Smith case is part of a larger campaign by the Trump administration to pressure colleges and universities over diversity, gender identity, and institutional autonomy.

“It’s important to connect the dots from the investigation of Smith to other efforts by this administration to overtake the leadership of colleges and universities around the country,” Goldberg said. Since returning to office in January 2025, President Donald Trump’s administration has dramatically escalated pressure on colleges and universities through antisemitism investigations, attacks on diversity initiatives, federal funding threats, and challenges to transgender inclusion policies.

Last year, Brown University agreed to adopt the administration’s binary definition of sex across single-sex campus spaces as part of a deal restoring more than $50 million in frozen federal research funding, prompting trans students to tell The Advocate the Ivy League campus had become “functionally inaccessible” for transgender people.

“Granting an honorary degree to Admiral Levine and admitting transgender students, even if Title IX were to apply to college admissions or honorary degree recipients, neither of these would provide evidence of discrimination,” Goldberg said.