I used to think that political liberalism encompassed some divergence of views. After all, they can’t all think exactly the same on everything, right? But the more I read the more I see a mental monolith, and it’s a monolith that verges on stupidity.
The Trump administration is investigating Smith College for admitting trans women. Could Bryn Mawr be next?
Bryn Mawr College, like Smith, accepts all individuals who identify as women. The Trump administration says that violates federal discrimination laws, but has not yet gone after Bryn Mawr.
by Susan Snyder | Tuesday, Cinco de Mayo 2026 | 4:52 PM EDT
President Donald Trump’s administration this week opened an investigation into Smith College, one of the oldest women’s colleges in the country, for admitting transgender women.
Both Bryn Mawr College and Moore College of Art & Design — women’s colleges in the Philadelphia area — also admit trans women, opening up questions about whether they could be among the next targets, though Moore already is weighing whether to go coed.
“The college remains focused on our mission and commitment to academic excellence,” Bryn Mawr said in a statement. “We continue to operate in compliance with all federal laws and regulations.”
Full disclosure: I did some concrete work at Bryn Mawr College, in 2004, though it was between semesters, with few people on campus.
Further down:
The 1,370-student Bryn Mawr on its website notes that it accepts all individuals who identify as women, including cisgender and trans women. The school also accepts “intersex people who do not identify as male, individuals assigned female at birth who have not taken medical or legal steps to identify as male, and individuals assigned female at birth who do not identify within the gender binary.”
Bryn Mawr clarified its enrollment practices regarding transgender women in 2015, noting that the school would accept transgender women and “intersex individuals who live and identify as women at the time of application.”
Does that mean Bryn Mawr would have to retain individuals who identified as women at the time of application, but who later decided that they were really men? 🙂
Personally, I do not see the legal issue, unless there are males who applied and were denied because they are male; such men might have a potential discrimination complaint.
I could see a potential privacy issue, as was the case with Brayden Fleming, the male volleyball player calling himself “Blaire” and pretending to be a woman to play on the San José State women’s volleyball team, and who could “pass” well enough that both his teammates and opposing teams did not know he is male. His road trip roommate didn’t realize that he was male. But if Smith and Bryn Mawr colleges were open, and informed other students that a particular student was actually male, giving the other students the opportunity to decide for themselves whether they wished to share a locker room or restroom with the transgender student, it’s difficult to see a legal problem.
Then again, we know how that would work out: any student who decided that no, she did not want to share a bathroom or locker room with a male student would herself be accused of transphobia, and disciplined, possibly to the extent of expulsion. Any student who protested the inclusion of men males in women’s only spaces would face all sorts of problems in Bryn Mawr, because the far-left leadership have decided, against all rationality and all science that boys really can be girls, and that it’s hateful to dispute that cockamamie notion.
So, the colleges have created their own problems, but had they decided that only real women could be admitted, they’d have faced problems under the previous Administration. Common sense and lawfare tend to be two diametrically opposed things.