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Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education Catherine E. Lhamon said the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the department will put students at risk at a Harvard Graduate School of Education forum on Tuesday.

After threatening the department on the campaign trail last year, Trump signed an executive order instructing his education secretary to take steps to close the department earlier this month. They have since laid off nearly 50 percent of federal workers there.

“Now with more than half the staff gone, the staff’s average caseload will exceed 100, and that means that people will not get answers, that students will graduate not knowing if the federal government would be there to protect them,” Lhamon said, referring to the closure of seven of the 12 regional Office for Civil Rights offices, including the Boston office.

The OCR is charged with investigating all claims of race, sex, and disability discrimination in schools to ensure student safety. The office has investigated several claims against Harvard, including for antisemitism, anti-Palestinian bias, and preferential admissions policies.

Lhamon, who led the office under the Biden administration, joined Neal McCluskey, director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute; Mathematica fellow Brian Gill; and Bellwether co-founder Andrew J. Rotherham at the forum, moderated by HGSE professor Martin West.

The speakers repeatedly emphasized the confusion surrounding Trump’s decision to shutter the education department and the changing landscape of student loans and education research after department cuts.

Lhamon also argued that the February Dear Colleague Letter issued by the department that warned federally funded universities against offering any race-based programming was in line with the administration’s unusually involved posture on education.

She said the current administration was being “more directive than any administration ever has been in the history of this country.”

“It’s the federal government telling you what you can say, what you can read, what you can do in your school,” Lhamon said. “That is the most Orwellian version of education that they’ve ever had.”

“I’m sick about it as a mom of two students, because I know that every day that my kids are deprived of an opportunity is a day they won’t get back,” she added.

McClusky, however, said Trump’s decision to dissolve the department was not inherently “anti-educational.”

McClusky explained that a federal education department is not required by the U.S. Constitution. The department was established in 1979, and currently distributes funds to K-12 programs, facilitates education research, and sets education standards.

“There’s a very serious concern whenever the government — any government, or in particular the federal government — funds something and will eventually control it, and the idea that we should have essentially one answer in education for all kids makes no sense,” McClusky said.

But Gill, who researches education policy, said Trump’s decision to cut 90 percent of the staff for the Institute of Education Sciences — the Department of Education’s research arm — will be difficult to undo.

“There’s a real concern that not only the research has stopped, but that it’s going to be hard to start it up again because there are not people there ready for that,” Gill said.

Rotherham added that the effects of most funding cuts to federal programs and research will take several years to materialize. While student loans are expected to be distributed by another federal agency, likely the Small Business Administration or the Treasury, the details of how this will work in practice are unknown.

“The cuts, if they do them, would then start an impact in the coming years, and the research — why I think it’s super important — is the one that’s going to be the least visible,” he said.

But Rotherham ended by saying the administration’s education policy is just one area experiencing a radical shift under Trump.

“I worry we’re getting main character syndrome in education,” Rotherham said. “It matters, but there is other stuff happening in government that I think is far more worthy of attention.”

—Staff writer Mackenzie L. Boucher can be reached at mackenzie.boucher@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @Mactruck0528.