The U.S. Department of Education says it's investigating 45 colleges and universities for what it calls Civil Rights Act violations through partnerships with a higher education nonprofit, including Cornell University and NYU.

In a department release Friday, the department claims the investigations follow "allegations that these institutions have violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act (1964) by partnering with 'The Ph.D. Project,' " a nonprofit that seeks to diversify college business schools by increasing the amount of Black, Hispanic and Native American doctorate recipients. The department's claim is that the nonprofit "limits eligibility based on the race of participants."

New York schools are included in the list — Cornell University and New York University are among the list of 45.

The investigation is being run through the department's Office for Civil Rights, which also is investigating six schools due to what it calls "impermissible race-based scholarships" and "administering a program that segregates students on the basis of race." This list of schools includes Ithaca College.

In a statement, an Ithaca representative said "Ithaca College does not discriminate on the basis of race in the awarding of the scholarships cited in the Title VI complaint that is the basis of the Department of Education's investigation."

The Feb. 14 memo from Trump's Republican administration was a sweeping expansion of a 2023 Supreme Court decision that barred colleges from using race as a factor in admissions.

That decision focused on admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, but the Education Department said it will interpret the decision to forbid race-based policies in any aspect of education, both in K-12 schools and higher education.

The memo is being challenged in federal lawsuits from the nation's two largest teachers' unions. The suits say the memo is too vague and violates the free speech rights of educators.