Author: Jodi S. Cohen

Jodi S. Cohen is a senior editor at ProPublica, where her investigative reporting focuses on education, civil rights and institutional accountability. Previously, she spent 14 years at the Chicago Tribune, where she covered higher education and exposed misconduct in university admissions. Her investigations have prompted legislative reforms and changes to public policies. She has received numerous journalism awards, including the Worth Bingham Prize for Investigative Journalism and the Studs Terkel Award. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan.

As Trump’s Education Department Scales Back Campus Sexual Assault Investigations, a New Database Puts the Records in Public Hands

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The civil rights arm of the U.S. Department of Education has dramatically scaled back investigations involving schools and colleges since the second Trump administration began, even as complaints continue to pour in.

The decline in investigations is especially dramatic for cases involving sex discrimination. More than 200 new complaints were filed with the office related to schools’ handling of sexual violence—rape, assault and abuse. But the Trump administration launched investigations in only 29 of them, finding fault with a school district only once, according to the newly obtained data. It’s typical for there to be at least 60 sexual violence investigations opened each year.

The department addressed fewer of these cases, despite continued concerns about the persistence of the problem—as demonstrated by the intense public scrutiny over how Cornell University addressed a student’s report of a 2024 gang rape.