After a judge cleared Harvard in 2019 of similar charges, now the DOJ has concluded a two-year investigation into Yale, alleging discrimination against certain applicant demographics.
A Justice Department investigation has found Yale University is illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law, officials said Thursday.
Yale denied the allegation, calling it “meritless” and “hasty.”
The findings detailed in a letter to the college’s attorneys Thursday mark the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in the college application process, following complaints from students about the application process at some Ivy League colleges. The Justice Department had previously filed court papers siding with Asian American groups who had levied similar allegations against Harvard University.
The two-year investigation concluded that Yale “rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit,” the Justice Department said. The investigation stemmed from a 2016 complaint against Yale, Brown and Dartmouth.
“Yale’s race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants,” Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, who heads the department’s civil rights division, wrote in a letter to the college’s attorneys.
Prosecutors found that Yale has been discriminating against applicants to its undergraduate program based on their race and national origin and “that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year.” The investigation concluded that Asian American and white students have “only one-tenth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials,” the Justice Department said.
“Unlawfully dividing Americans into racial and ethnic blocs fosters stereotypes, bitterness, and division,” Dreiband said in a statement. “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 investigation also found that Yale uses race as a factor in multiple steps of the admissions process and that Yale “racially balances its classes.”
The Supreme Court has ruled colleges and universities may consider race in admissions decisions but has said that must be done in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity and should be limited in time. Schools also bear the burden of showing why their consideration of race is appropriate.
In a statement, Yale said it “categorically denies this allegation,” has cooperated fully with the investigation and has been continually turning over “a substantial amount of information and data.”
A reminder: 12% of Yale students are legacy.
Aka, about 700 of them.
Sorta puts that ‘rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit’ in perspective, doesn’t it?
Yeah, it might reject ‘scores’ of qualified white applications. It also might pick _hundreds_ of unqualified white applications because their parents and grandparents attended Yale. Some of who literally were attending while the school was segregated.Report
Oh, and another reminder: Legacy admissions basically exist to keep to Jews out of elite schools. That was their origin, literally to keep minorities out of the schools. Schools found the ‘Jewish quota’, the amount of Jews they were willing to admit, less and less defensible, so invented legacy admissions.
The minorities being kept out has changed a bit, but it’s the same principle.
Affirmative action tries to undo the mistakes of the past by giving traditionally discriminated again groups a slight advantage. Whether or not people think this is justifiable is debatable. It’s possible it’s not a good idea. I’ve never liked it, mostly because college is actually way too late in the process to fix educational issues.
But having people complaining about _that_ while just blithely accepting the much larger system of legacy admissions that was literally built to give advantage to traditionally _privileged_ groups and lock out minorities, and still mostly manages that, is absurd.Report
Yale can accept whomever it wants as students.
But it can’t want whomever it wants.Report
Although the legacy admits may not be the best as these things are generally measured, Yale, like all other top-tier colleges, has so many more highly-qualified applicants than it can take that it could dispense with the admissions bureaucracy, draw the names out of a hat (maybe after culling the least promising 10% or so), and almost nobody would notice in practice any difference in the quality of the entering class. The ethnic and class composition of the entering class would be whatever it was, nobody could yell about discrimination, educational standards would be maintained, and the disappointed aspiring Eli might end up at Old Nassau or NYU, with little genuine reason to complain.Report
Yale’s admission standards just got cancelled.
Here’s the breakdown:
The enrolled student population at Yale University is 44.3% White, 13.9% Asian, 9.4% Hispanic or Latino, 5.67% Black or African American, 4.76% Two or More Races, 0.324% American Indian or Alaska Native, and 0.108% Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islanders.
why doesn’t that add uo to 100%…Report
Ahh. “Non-resident aliens.” They come in at 21%.Report
It would be interesting to see an admissions equivalency chart. Like, take the academic record of the median black HYPS admit. At what schools do the median Asians have similar records?Report
How does HYPS compare to HBCU?Report
Trump’s 2020 America – Where making Yale white again is a way better use of DoJ time then actually keeping polling places open in minority communities or keeping police from killing a man over a fake $20.Report
Personally, I think that legalizing marijuana would fix *SO* many problems across the board. Policing, job discrimination, and stuff down the road too. I can’t believe that the House hasn’t put forward a bill yet.Report
the War on Drugs has been a dismal success in as much as it has destroyed inner cities in exactly the way it was hoped. Legalizing marijuana would indeed solve a great many problems – including tax revenue sources (See Colorado); so would retooling cocaine sentences so that they are proportional to the crime, not more lenient by form of cocaine consumed.Report
Yes. We know this is your pet issue. So much so that you can’t comprehend people with other priorities, ranked priorities, different priorities, etc. It is a monomania for you.Report
I thought we were taking turns talking about what we’d rather talk about.Report
Do you understand why the Drug War matters in this?Report
In this case, no.
This is a thread about the DOJ stating that Yale discriminates against Whites and Asians. This is a claim that has been tried and failed against Harvard. It is also patently false based on the demographics.
So it is about the ongoing white supremacy and racial resentment of the Trump admin. Jaybird launches into his monomania.Report
So it is about the ongoing white supremacy and racial resentment of the Trump admin.
The argument that race quotas and other admissions criteria at elite schools discriminate against whites, and especially asians, has been circulating for at least decade. So linking this ruling back to Trump and white supremacy requires argument. I ask this seriously: do you want to make that argument?Report
I don’t have a strong opinion about this Yale case or not, but note how fluid racial categories are where Asians are variously white or nonwhite depending on the circumstances, similar to Saul and Lee’s observations that Jews occupy some gray zone in between white and off-white.
My parochial and anecdotal sense is that in a highly European group, Asians are off-white, then in an integrated group with Africans and dark skinned people Asians become white.
Sort of like how cream becomes either a neutral background or accent color depending on the carpet.Report
A couple of years ago there was a very big debate on diverse the tech industry. There might not be that many African-Americans or Hispanic-Americans but you have lots of Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants. The issue seemed to be whether a high percentage of Asians was enough to make Silicon Valley diverse or do you need more Black people and Hispanics.
I think that in certain Intersectionality corners, people of color really means of African, Indigenous American or Australian, or Hispanic descent. Asians are kind of color, especially if they are Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, but not really of color the way the above groups would be.Report
I think that in certain Intersectionality corners, people of color really means…
Intersectionality is limited to the intersecting properties of *oppressed* people(s) in specific contexts.. So skin color alone isn’t determinative.Report
All I can say is this racial taxonomy stuff is messed up. Reminds me of this Report
That’s a pretty funny video. (and should be required viewing)Report
The most ridiculous thing is it doesn’t even need to exaggerate or follow anything to Its logical conclusion to get the result.Report
How is the helpful in answering the question I asked Saul?Report
Did you mean to say –
“Yale is discriminating against whites, especially Asians”
or
“Yale is discriminating against Asians, not whites.”?
Honestly I don’t care one way or the other. Just noting how the category becomes fluid and contextual, at the convenience of whatever point is desired.
Maybe the larger point is that the boundary of “White Enough” are weaponized in service to whatever group wants to gain advantage sort of like an awful version of Dave Chappelle’s ethnic draft where an Asian is drafted into the White Army to drive out the Blacks, but then the moment the threat is past, is pushed out of the gates as well, and everyone starts giving side eye to the Jew.Report
Not that you should necessarily care, but this doesn’t clear anything up for me to understand what you mean. I can read the words, so I know what you have said, but I assume this has some more to it than the words here in your mind?Report
I’m lost with this comment – I really have no idea what any of this means, or even what I think it maybe, sort of could mean, for you. Are we talking parisian or hamburgian euro group?Report
I’d just like to point out that my marijuana policy comment was responding to a comment that was discussing Trump’s inability to keep the cops that killed George Floyd under control.Report
One of the reasons certain minorities have a problem accessing the Ivies (or Higher Ed in general) is because drug convictions impact student aid eligibility. Factor this against how often minorities are convicted for minor drug offense via a plea deal, and you have large demographics getting cut out of the aid pipeline.Report
You realize that there are international treaties that the control a lot of these things, so the House just can’t pass a bill without renegotiating treaties. You also realize that said bill would not even make it on the Senate floor. I’m not even seeing how legalizing marijuana is going to be the magical bullet solution. It certainly wasn’t in the states that past it.Report
While I am more than happy to acknowledge that we have to keep arresting BIPOC and LGBTQQIIAAPDM+ people for smoking marijuana because we have international treaties, I’m still kind of shocked that people are willing to defend the status quo because changing it would be difficult.
Or, hell, make grand sweeping gestures that could then be proven hollow by Cocaine Mitch killing it in the Senate.
Or, hell, make the DOJ come out and say something official!
Like they did about Yale.Report
It seems like there are solutions that are rejected not on the merits but rather because if they worked they would tend to undermine a larger world view.Report
I’m not even seeing how legalizing marijuana is going to be the magical bullet solution.
Who said ending the Drug War was a magic bullet solution to social problems? Has anyone *ever* said this?
You realize that there are international treaties that the control a lot of these things
Everyone who’s thought about the issue for more than a few minutes knows that international treaties come into play, but you reverse the causality here. The Treaties don’t “control” what happens domestically, and insofar as they create an obstacle to better domestic policy they should be scrapped and re-written.Report
Jaybird above practically said it is a magic bullet even if he didn’t use that word.
“Personally, I think that legalizing marijuana would fix *SO* many problems across the board. Policing, job discrimination, and stuff down the road too. I can’t believe that the House hasn’t put forward a bill yet.”
Legalize marijuana and everything like police brutality, job discrimination, and more will magically mystically solve themselves.Report
Lee, you’re acting like you’ve never heard Jaybird talk about criminal justice issues before – like about the role cop unions play, frinstance – which strikes me as disingenuous.Report
The referent of “disingenuous” is unclear.Report
You have it backwards. The DOJ is filing these lawsuits because it is Yale that is determined to keep Yale white. Liberal elites are very protective of their elite and privileged positions.Report
Well the the DoJ got it really wrong since their action claims that whites have been discriminated against in admissions.Report
The DOJ is claiming that the discrimination was against Asians, in an action filed by Asians. Whites are only affected insofar as they’d never get into Yale with comparable test scores as some other groups that Yale racially favors.
But of course Democrats will bend over backwards to argue in support of racial discrimination. Heck, some progressive universities are even mandating racially segregated orientation classes now. Kamala Harris’s kids probably find that confusing because they’re Swedish Americans.Report
Making Yale stop discriminating by race will probably not increase the percentage of white students very much, but it will increase the number of Asian-American students substantially. That was the result in California when Prop 209 went into effect and the UC admissions departments hadn’t figured out more subtle ways of discriminating on the basis of race.Report
The GOP march into racial resentment and white grievance continues apace.Report
These guys don’t seem to be GOP members.
https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/Report
I looked at that piece. “Summit News”. Why would the local paper of Summit County in CO being talking about this??? Oh i see this Summit News is something else.
There is no information about who they are or who owns them. No background on this pub at all. Interesting. Every story is red for conservatives: “virtue signaling”, pro-trump stories and anti Dem stuff.
Fine if that is what you are into. But not exactly something that anyone should trust w/o knowing anything about them and it clearly set up to get conservatives riled and give ammo for throwing out links on threads.Report
Eh, conservatives have a pretty strong case when we’re talking about race based affirmative action. And since when did Asian count as white?Report
Most of the evidence for white privilege is outcome-based. White people earn more money than black people. We do better on standardized tests. We’re admitted to elite universities at higher rates (though some AA hard enough to prevent this). We live longer. We’re arrested, incarcerated, and killed by police at lower rates. And so forth.
By all of these standards, Asians are doing even better than non-Hispanic whites. In fact, on some of these metrics the Asian-white gap is as large as the white-black gap. If Asians weren’t white, it would seriously fish up the Narrative. So they’re white.Report
No, they don’t. This is another variant of bad faith trolling from conservatives and generally most of them probably think fewer black and brown people should go to college. The new attack against AOC is also that her GPA is not good. This is rich considering that Trump is probably a functional illiterate with zero intellectual curiosity.
They are bad faith trolls and nothing more. They provide no evidence of correctness or sincerity. Any thing that says whites are discriminated against in college admissions is a dictionary definition of trolling.
This is the crowd that spent years attacking Barack Obama with claims that he was only admitted to Harvard Law and got to the Law Review because of diversity. Now the attack is on AOC. Meanwhile, they seem fine with the fact that Biden went to Syracuse for Law School which is a much less prestigious school than Harvard Law.Report
None of that is germane to race based affirmative action. I, personally, am not convinced that race based affirmative action is bad policy but the left should view it as the danger it is. It is treating people differently because of race no matter how one slices it.
In my opinion race based AA should be treated like radioactive chemotherapy. It IS a poison. Maybe we can use it to cure a bigger ill but it should be used gingerly, cautiously and with a solid plan to not use it indefinitely.Report
UC has settled numerous cases with Asian applicants for discriminating against them. They have the legal and political firepower to defeat anyone in court if the facts are on their side; settling out of court is pretty much proof that they’re guilty.
Given the absolute lack of intellectual diversity among university presidents and admissions officers, it’s pretty clear that the only way elite colleges keep Asian percentages as low as they are is by actively discriminating against Asians.
Your ad-hominem attacks on Trump’s intelligence and education clearly show that you don’t have an actual case to make.Report