Department Of Justice Accuses Yale University Of Discrimination Against Asian And White Applicants

The United States Department of Justice issued a statement issued on Thursday where Yale University was accused of being discriminatory against White and Asian students. According to CBS News, the department argued that the Ivy League institution rejected "scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race." Yale denied the allegation, calling it "meritless" and "hasty." The investigation, done over a period of two years, 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. 

"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, head of the department's civil rights division, wrote in a letter to the college's attorneys. Prosecutors found that the university had been discriminating applicants for their undergraduate programs based on their ethnicity 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."

"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." It was also discovered that race is used as a factor in multiple steps during the admissions process and that Yale "racially balances its classes." As per the Justice Department, these policies and the institution's wider-reaching admissions processes are "a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act." The Supreme Court does allow universities to consider race in admissions decisions but it must be done only to promote diversity.

As expected, in a statement, Yale said it "categorically denies this allegation," and has cooperated fully with the investigation and has been continually turning over "a substantial amount of information and data." "Given our commitment to complying with federal law, we are dismayed that the DOJ has made its determination before allowing Yale to provide all the information the Department has requested thus far," the said statement by Karen Peat, the school's director of university media relations. "Had the Department fully received and fairly weighed this information, it would have concluded that Yale's practices absolutely comply with decades of Supreme Court precedent."

The statement then added that they take several factors into consideration and look at "the whole person when selecting whom to admit among the many thousands of highly qualified applicants." "We are proud of Yale's admissions practices, and we will not change them on the basis of such a meritless, hasty accusation," the statement said. The Justice Department has demanded that Yale stop using race as a criteria for admission. However, if they intended on continuing this practice, then they will have to submit a plan to the Justice Department "demonstrating its proposal is narrowly tailored as required by law, including by identifying a date for the end of race discrimination."