By Printus LeBlanc
In Martin Luther King Jr’s famous I Have a Dream speech, he uttered the words, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Apparently, the ivory towers of the academia either never heard the speech or completely ignored it. The Sessions led Department of Justice (DOJ) is taking the fight against racial discrimination to the ivory tower. In fact, it is taking the fight to the highest ivory tower in the land.
The DOJ and Harvard University are getting ready to do battle. A lawsuit filed in 2014 by the anti-discrimination group Project on Fair Representation, has caught the attention of the DOJ. The suit alleges the use of race in admission practices at Harvard violate federal civil rights law and have asked a federal judge in Boston to ban the school from using the discriminatory practice.
The Justice Department sent a letter to Harvard’s lawyer, Seth Waxman, a partner at WilmerHale, the law firm representing Harvard, stating its Civil Rights Division is investigating the racial discrimination claims. If true, the university would be violating Title VI, which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs receiving federal funding. Harvard has so far chosen to ignore the request, and as a result, the DOJ has threatened to sue the ivy league university if it does not produce the documents by December 1.
“Harvard has responded with delays, challenges to our authority to investigate, and a belated, unacceptable proposal to restrict our investigation,” wrote Matthew Donnelly, an attorney for Justice’s Civil Rights Division. Because Harvard receives that federal funding under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, department officials argue, the university must comply with its request.
One has to ask, what is Harvard trying to hide? If the extremely expensive ivory tower has nothing to hide, why are they refusing to cooperate? It makes sense to get this over with as soon as possible. Show the requested documents to prove the university’s innocence and quit spending money on expensive lawyers. Unless there is something to hide and the resulting judgment would be far expensive than the lawyers or a settlement.
A 2009 Princeton study found convincing evidence of racial discrimination in the ivy league system. The study found that “Asian-Americans need an SAT score 140 points higher than whites to get into a top private college. But compared to Hispanics, they need to score 270 points higher and compared to blacks, 450 points higher.” When looking at the enrollment data for Yale from 2001-2008, a disturbing trend was noticed. The percentage of Asian-American students stayed between 13.80 and 13.50. For a fluctuation of only 0.30 over an eight-year time frame hints at a quota system, which is also prohibited.
As kids we are taught don’t judge a book by its cover. For some reason, that disappears when you apply to college. Universities, notably the Ivy League, have taken to using racial discrimination in their admissions standards. It is refreshing to see an Attorney General take to heart and run the DOJ based on what Dr. King said at the Lincoln Memorial. This DOJ will judge people by the content of their character, not the color of their skin.
Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government
