Fear not, fans of the Trump administration – the war is back on. The war on Academia and its addiction to racial preferences, that is. Jonathan Turley wants to remind us that he told us so, and he’s entirely correct.
Let;s start off with the basics, which John also covered yesterday. While the Department of Education continues its enforcement actions and negotiations with Harvard, the Department of Education has taken aim at two more prominent schools over their admissions policies. Late yesterday, Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon charged both Yale and UCLA with discriminatory actions in med-school admissions and ignoring the 2023 Supreme Court rulings striking down racial preferences in admissions. The DoJ also announced new investigations into at least three more universities:
The Justice Department on Thursday accused the Yale School of Medicine of violating anti-discrimination laws, the second major medical school targeted in the past eight days by the Trump administration over admissions policies the government said illegally favored Black and Hispanic applicants over more qualified white and Asian students.
Last week, the Justice Department issued similar findings for the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles. In March, the department also opened investigations into admissions policies for medical schools at Stanford, Ohio State and the University of California, San Diego. And in February, it sued Harvard University, seeking more detailed admissions data.
Harmeet K. Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, said Yale was subverting a 2023 Supreme Court decision that overturned race-conscious admissions policies by relying on “proxies” to determine the ethnicity of its applicants.
So how badly has Yale defied the Supreme Court decision in Harvard/North Carolina? Dhillon explained it in a press release yesterday afternoon:
Yale’s documents show that its leadership intentionally selected applicants based on their race. Yale’s documents reveal that they studied how to use racial proxies to circumvent the Supreme Court’s prohibition on using race to select students. Yale’s admissions data demonstrate that Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to Yale than White or Asian students with the same test scores.
“Yale has continued its race-based admissions program despite the Supreme Court and the public’s clear mandate for reform.” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This Department will continue to shed light on these illegal practices, and demand that institutions of higher education comply with federal law.”
The investigation showed that, in general, Black and Hispanic applicants were admitted with consistently lower academic qualifications than their White and Asian counterparts. These facts support the Department’s finding that Yale violated the law by intentionally discriminating based on race in its admissions, in clear violation of federal law.
The details are important here. Yale claimed that it would comply by adjusting its admissions process, but as Turley will point out, those adjustments appear to have been designed to hide discrimination rather than boost compliance. And Dhillon isn’t falling for the Academia banana in the tailpipe.
Dhillon presented these findings to the attorney representing Yale in a letter made public by the DoJ as part of the release (also linked in the excerpt). The data from the three most recent admissions classes is not just compelling; it also indicates that Yale has become more emboldened in its determination to use racial preferences. The median Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores for students admitted, broken out by self-identified race, show a significant preference for both black and Hispanic students, especially in the most recent class:
The median score for white and Asian admissions is the 100th percentile. Anything less than perfect means white and Asian students have to apply elsewhere. For everyone else, there is a significantly lower bar for entry. This was not an anomalous result from a single year either, but a progression in discrimination over three years. Yale actuallty got worse after the Supreme Court struck down racial preferences.
Dhillon issued a polite warning at the end of her letter:
Having determined that Yale deliberately discriminated on the basis of race in its decisions to admit and deny applicants, the Department seeks to enter into a voluntary resolution agreement with the University to ensure that admissions practices are brought into legal compliance.
The unspoken part of this conclusion is that the DoJ has the means to force compliance if Yale refuses to do so voluntarily.
Dhillon found similar discrimination at UCLA, which should surprise no one after the exposure of its woke curricula. John covered that last week, and the discrimination process is similar to Yale’s. However, Dhillon points out that UCLA remains so woke that they have tipped over into a tacit form of segregation seen in the Jim Crow era:
The Department uncovered evidence that UCLA’s leadership intentionally selected applicants based on their race. Documents reviewed by the Division reveal that UCLA adheres to the dubious contention that patients receive the best care when treated by a doctor of the same race, rather than by the most qualified.
“UCLA’s admissions process has been focused on racial demographics at the expense of merit and excellence — allowing racial politics to distract the school from the vital work of training great doctors.” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”
That was the same justification used to prevent black doctors from working in ‘white’ hospitals and clinics before the Civil Rights Era. This is what’s known as Peak Woke, and hardly its only manifestation.
Turley warned all along that the DEI industry in Academia would not comply with the Supreme Court rulings. The investment in racial preferences runs too deeply to be excised so simply, and Turley warns that lawsuits alone won’t work either. Universities are basically running out the clock, he warns:
I wrote about how administrators were already preparing to use essays as an indirect way to achieve the same identifications and preferences in admissions. The essay “prompts” encourage students to effectively self-identify by discussing incidents where they faced discrimination. The shift to the essays would allow the removal of high-scoring students while elevating those with lower scores. That prediction was quickly confirmed, as top candidates were rejected based on their essays, while schools used essays to flag their backgrounds.
Interviews can serve the same function as an alternative to formal self-identification and race-based scoring.
Faculty and administrators at UCLA and other schools remain adamant in using race-based admissions. They simply justify discrimination as equity and diversity.
These schools remain hardened silos of race-based practices and policies. The same faculty and administrators are unlikely to yield unless compelled to do so. In the meantime, they will spend copious amounts of money and time fighting for differential treatment based on race. The hope is that a new Democratic administration will not enforce these rules and allow such circumvention to continue in admissions.
If the Trump administration wants an end to DEI, it will have to make resistance very, very expensive. Dhillon appears to be up to the task, but much will depend on the 2028 election. Turley’s warning is likely prophetic.
Editor’s Note: President Trump is fighting to ensure America’s kids get the education they deserve.
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