A Justice Department investigation has found that Yale University illegally discriminated against Asian American and white applicants and violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act while receiving millions in taxpayer funding.
Following a two-year investigation, the Justice Department notified Yale of the violations of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs that receive taxpayer money, a statement said Thursday.
INBOX: DOJ Finds Yale Illegally Disciminates against Asians and Whites in Undergraduate Admissions in Violation of Federal Civil-Rights Law.
Department threatens suit without changes within two weeks. https://t.co/n73kO56gm3
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) August 13, 2020
The probe revealed that Yale, which is among the country’s most selective and prestigious universities, discriminated against undergraduate applicants on the basis of race and national origin. Race specifically was the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year, the Department of Justice found.
“Yale grants substantial, and often determinative, preferences based on race to certain racially-favored applicants and relatively and significantly disfavors other applicants because of their race, a letter from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department says.
“Yale’s race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants.”
Asian American and white applicants have only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable credentials, and Yale rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, although these applicants would otherwise be admitted.
“There is no such thing as a nice form of race discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband said in the statement.
“Unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs fosters stereotypes, bitterness, and division. It is past time for American institutions to recognize that all people should be treated with decency and respect and without unlawful regard to the color of their skin.”
The Department of Education and Department of Justice opened the investigation into Yale University in September 2018, reacting to a complaint that Yale racially discriminates against Asian Americans in its admission process.
Yale “does not discriminate in admissions against Asian Americans or any other racial or ethnic group, to share information about our undergraduate admissions practices, and to affirm our unwavering commitment to diversity as a pillar of this university,” Yale President Peter Salovey said in a statement provided to The Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: Trump Admin Investigating Yale For Discriminating Against Asian-Americans)
“The creation of a diverse academic community has not come at the expense of applicants of any racial or ethnic background,” Salovey added.
Race may be considered by universities receiving taxpayer funding as one of a number of factors according to a Supreme Court ruling, but Yale’s practice was not limited, using race at “multiple steps of its admissions process” which resulted in a “multiplied effect of race on an applicant’s likelihood of admission,” the statement says.