The US Department of Justice on Thursday accused Yale University of breaching civil rights legislation by illegally discriminating against white and Asian American applicants.
The department’s finding — which Yale said was “meritless” — came after a two-year investigation into the undergraduate admissions process at the Ivy League university in New Haven, Connecticut.
The US Supreme Court has ruled that universities may consider the race of an applicant in making admission decisions, but the department said it must be “in certain limited circumstances as one of a number of factors.”
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“The Department of Justice found Yale’s use of race is anything but limited” and was used at “multiple steps of its admissions process,” it said.
“The Department of Justice found Yale discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year,” it said.
“For the great majority of applicants, Asian Americans and whites have only one-10th to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials,” the department said.
“Yale rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit,” it said.
US Assistant Attorney-General Eric Dreiband said that there is “no such thing as a nice form of race discrimination.”
“Unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs fosters stereotypes, bitterness and division,” Dreiband said. “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 demanded that Yale agree not to use race or national origin in its undergraduate admissions cycle this year.
In a statement, Yale “categorically” denied the department’s allegations and said its admissions practices “absolutely comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent.”
“At Yale, we look at the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants,” the university said. “We are proud of Yale’s admissions practices, and we will not change them on the basis of such a meritless, hasty accusation.”
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