Feds now investigating admissions at Yale, Harvard

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is investigating whether Yale University illegally discriminated against Asian-American applicants, escalating its effort to challenge race-based admissions policies at elite universities.

The Justice and Education departments have begun a civil-rights investigation into Yale’s use of race as a factor in its admissions process and whether it has unfairly prevented qualified Asian-American students from attending the school, according to a letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights that was obtained by The New York Times.

Investigators are scrutinizing “whether the university discriminated against the applicant and other Asian-American applicants by treating applicants differently based on race during the admissions process,” according to the letter, which was sent to Yukong Zhao, a student who complained about the practice two years ago to the Justice Department.

Those claims echo a lawsuit brought by a group of Asian-American students who did not get into Harvard University and said the school systematically discriminated against them by suppressing the number of Asian-Americans who attended to make room for less-qualified students of other races.

The Justice Department is also investigating Harvard for how it uses race in its admissions policies, and last month it publicly backed the students suing the school. That case is set to go to trial in federal court in Boston next month.

Yale’s president, Peter Salovey, wrote in a message to students, faculty and staff members, “I write now to state unequivocally that Yale does not discriminate in admissions against AsianAmericans or any other racial or ethnic group. We will vigorously defend our ability to create a diverse and excellent academic community.”

The Education and Justice departments declined to comment on the investigation.

Both the Harvard and Yale investigations and the lawsuit could have farreaching consequences for college-admissions policies and for affirmative action, a tool that was born in the civil-rights era and intended to make U.S. education and opportunity more equitable.