The U.S. Education Department announced this week that it is investigating Tufts University and demanding colleges across the country to stop using voting data in their research, alleging that some researchers have illegally shared student information with third parties to influence elections.
Tufts hosts the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement on its campus in Medford. The federal Education Department says it has received reports that researchers affiliated with the study provided student data to political organizations, potentially violating federal law.
In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said colleges should stay out of electoral politics.
“American colleges and universities should be focused on teaching, learning, and research — not influencing elections,” McMahon said.
Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, said the threat of increased government oversight is nothing new.
“We’ve come to expect that,” Pasquerella said, pointing to the Trump administration’s broader attacks on higher education. However, she added that “it’s the idea that nonpartisan research on civic participation could be treated as suspect simply because it relates to voting.”
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump said he wants Republicans in Congress to “nationalize” elections. Pasquerella said that kind of rhetoric, combined with the investigation into Tufts, signals a shift in how federal government power interacts with local academic institutions.
“It mirrors what we’re seeing elsewhere in the attacks on higher education using the threat of enforcement or funding loss to reshape institutional behavior without ever passing a new law,” she said.
Conservatives defending the investigation argue that voter engagement efforts funded under the Biden administration favored Democrats and left-wing groups.
“One could hope that they are unbiased and would work to register people regardless of political view, but it’s unlikely,” said Simon Hankinson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a conservative-leaning organization in Washington, D.C. “Particularly when they target areas that overwhelmingly vote Democrat.”
“Democrats generally believe if illegal immigrants do vote, they will vote for them,” Hankinson added. “That’s the only credible reason why they would resist something as basic as voters having to show ID.”
Tufts declined to comment on the allegations but said it is reviewing the letter from the Department of Education.
