The Department of Justice (DOJ) has officially opened an investigation into Harvard University’s Affirmative Action program. The University has come under fire as of late due to speculation of misuse and malpractice of Affirmative Action guidelines. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that race can be taken into consideration during the college application process. This case could become the first legal battle over Affirmative Action in the Trump administration.
The investigation centers mainly around a federal case made by a group of students against Harvard in 2015. The claim asserts that Harvard admits a very particular number of Asian Americans each year, a similar claim was also brought to the DOJ. The problem now is that the DOJ has found Harvard to have taken a defensive stance against releasing documents pertinent to the case. The DOJ is now threatening to sue Harvard if they fail to release documents to the department. Harvard’s associate dean of communications told CNN that, “We have an obligation to protect the confidentiality of student and applicant files and other highly sensitive records, and we have been seeking to engage the Department of Justice in the best means of doing so”. Department letters show that the first deadline for Harvard was November 2nd and that not one document was handed over.
Harvard’s missed due date has lead the DOJ to state that Harvard is not in compliance with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights, which only adds to the Department’s main complaint of the university’s acceptance program. Title VI, which is more commonly known just as Affirmative Action, prohibits discrimination based on race or origin in federally funded programs. This was originally intended to be an equalizer for disadvantaged students and minorities to be able to make it into prestigious federally-funded universities like Harvard and the University of Texas. Instead, large and highly selective universities are using it to make their numbers seem more diverse. A dissenter of the practice, Edward Blum, even likened Harvard’s policies to an something of a quota to be met for Asian students.
This is a gross misuse of the Affirmative Action ideals and should be a shock to the minorities who are accepted and attended universities like Harvard. Affirmative Action and many of the provisions of the Civil Rights Act are necessary steps toward creating an equal playing field for everyone in American society, but Harvard has misconstrued it for personal benefit. Affirmative Action specifically is very beneficial in assisting minorities and disadvantaged demographics in dithering their education. It would feel amazing to be accepted into a university with a name like Harvard, and it’s something that is limited to only dreams for most as Harvard accepts only around five percent of its applicants. The entire principle of the acceptance would change if someone was accepted solely on basis of meeting attractive numbers in the diversity department. Universities need to condemn fabricating diversity and instead create and promote true diversity along with having the credentials to succeed as every other student.
Some of the dispute has been caught up in litigation problems and speculations, mainly against the side of the DOJ. In particular, on-lookers (and Harvard’s attorney Seth Waxman) have been wondering, “Why now?”. Head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division under Barack Obama, Vanita Gupta said, “The Justice Department is going out of its way to scoop up this case and get involved”. To support, Gupta pointed out that the Department dismissed the original complaint against Harvard in 2015.
Photo: Joseph Williams (originally posted to Flickr as Harvard) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
