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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA group that touts itself as devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity has filed a civil rights complaint against Indiana University over what it describes as the university’s offering of “discriminatory” scholarships.
The Equal Protection Project filed the complaint, which is posted on its website, July 15 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in Chicago.
The 14-page complaint lists at least 19 race-based scholarships at the Kelley School of Business, the IU Indianapolis campus and the McKinney School of Law
“For some of the scholarships terms such as ‘minorities’ or variations on that term are used. It is clear from the context of the scholarships and the usage of such terms by Indiana University that these terms reflect a racial and/or ethnic descriptor that excludes whites,” the EPP complaint reads.
In the complaint, EPP argued that in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harv. Coll., 600 U.S. 181 (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it …. The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.”
Following the SCOTUS ruling, Students for Fair Admissions issued a statement that called the decision a “restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation.”
“The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws,” part of the statement read.
The complaint further alleges that since IU is a public institution, its creation, sponsorship and promotion of discriminatory scholarships also violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Universities and law schools have tried to maintain a balance between the Supreme Court opinion and maintaining diversity efforts since the 2023 ruling.
William A. Jacobson, president of Legal Insurrection Foundation and founder of the Equal Protection Project, said EPP has no specific plans for further litigation against Indiana University regarding these scholarships, but if additional discriminatory scholarships or programs come to its attention, the group would consider additional actions.
“We received an anonymous tip that there was a pervasive discrimination problem at IU regarding scholarships,” Jacobson said in an email. “After our own independent research, we documented the problem. We filed the complaint because the scholarships are discriminatory on their face, and because the number of discriminatory scholarships indicated to us a systemic disregard at IU for anti-discrimination laws and IU’s own non-discrimination policies.”
Jacobson said as far as other universities, EPP expects to continue to file complaints if and when discriminatory scholarships and programs come to the group’s attention.
Mark Bode, IU’s executive director for media relations, said in an email that IU does not comment on individual complaints.
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Racial equality should be the goal of every American. I am glad there are people devoted to the ideals of Martin Luther King Jr.
+ 1
Kings ideals weren’t white people trying to eliminate scholarships for 13% of the population.
Thomas,
King was clearly against racial discrimination. I would hope in this day and age you could find agreement on that.
So you’re saying MLK would look at everything the past decade that Republicans are doing – from ending race based scholarships to ending DEI efforts to making sure that the only version of history taught is the white man’s version to … even making it illegal to pass out water to people waiting in line to vote for hours at some polling center in the black part of a town in Georgia that mysteriously has way too many voters for too few machines – and he’d be for that?
Joe,
DEI involves overt discrimination of entire groups of people based on skin color. Are you seriously in favor of that in this day and age? That’s very 1960s Democrat Party thinking.
I’ll take that as a “no”.
Joe,
So, if you’re truly against overt discrimination based on skin color, then you must be against DEI. See, I knew you’d come around!
Yeah, except that’s not why they’re filing these suits. They file them to keep historical minorities from being able to move forward. They point out the likes of Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson, who now oppose the exact programs that allowed them to move forward. The folks who file these suits are afraid the beneficiaries of these programs will outshine them in school and in life.
One of the great lies upon which this discrimination is based: ” They point out the likes of Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson, who now oppose the exact programs that allowed them to move forward.”
Showing two of the fundamental flawed premises – (i) that without these programs, the minorities could not compete, and (ii) it’s only these programs that “allow” minorities to move forward. Horsefeathers to both.
Yes, horsefeathers!
Anonymous tip! OK then make scholarships race neutral, make hiring race neutral, make resume review race neutral.
For scholarships, base selection on financial need and performance; for hiring make selections based on college performance and an interview (oops . . . interview behind closed doors and altered voice so that no hint of race can be ascertained), and for resumes ensure an application number is assigned to ensure unbiased selections be made.
Derek: apparently you’ve never hired someone. Altered voice? College performance? At which college? An HBUC? if you tell me the school, I might be able to figure out race. If I can’t hear your voice, I don’t know if you can handle the job for which I’m trying to hire you.
Tim,
It’s easy to hire based on objective measures that don’t involve skin color.
Gee, Colin Powell was very clear on why he got to be a general, and it wasn’t because he was such a funny guy. As for “horsefeathers”, Clarence Thomas was from an area of such poverty he never would have been able to get into college. That part of Georgia didn’t speak English, they spoke a Creole dialect. But the Catholic Church provided him with the ability to attend college at Holy Cross. From there he got into law school, and then a poor boy from Georgia somehow became an assistant AG in Missouri. He is a poster child for affirmative action. And the same legal theories that allowed women to receive abortions allowed Clarence to marry a white woman, which would have been illegal in many states until the US Supreme Court overruled those laws.
Ben Carson? hardworking kid who got to attend Yale on a full scholarship, and not because they wanted a kid from Detroit, and then University of MIchigan, where he received special help with med school because he was in danger of flunking out.
Both men are very bright, no doubt, and worked very hard. And that’s the whole point. These affirmative action programs allow very bright, hard working minority people to receive an opportunity to show what they can do. Powell, Thomas, Carson; all would never have made it to where they are without affirmative action.
Tim,
You ignore the clear fact that many very bright hard working people have been REJECTED based on their skin color alone.
That is the institutional racism you claim you are against.
Your goal should be to eliminate racism in all its perverse variations.