(AP) The American Civil Liberties Union urged the Trump administration Friday to drop its investigation into a Middle East studies program the agency says has focused too much on the “positive aspects of Islam” and misused grant money to promote “ideological priorities.”
A letter from the group’s Washington office urged Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to revoke her agency’s threat to cut grant funding to the Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies unless it revises its programs.
The ACLU said the department is abusing grant rules to push its own views and is injecting the process with “the presidential administration’s long pattern of anti-Muslim bigotry and discrimination.”
But the review is not “anti-Muslim or pro-any other group,” the Education Department said.
