Attorney General Pam Bondi announced today (Thursday, March 27) that the Department of Justice has launched investigations into Stanford and three University of California schools to determine if the schools were using DEI to discriminate based on race.
The investigation puts in limbo federal funding for Stanford. The Trump administration has been aggressively withholding funding from other universities for their handling of student protests, their use of DEI or their transgender athlete policies. The administration has withheld $400 million from Columbia, $800 million from Johns Hopkins and $175 million from University of Pennsylvania.
Bondi directed the department’s civil rights division to see if the schools are complying with with the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the 2023 case Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. Fellows of Harvard College, which banned discrimination in admissions.
In that case, the court ruled 6-3 that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Students for Fair Admissions argued that such programs discriminated against Asian American applicants by using race as a factor in admissions decisions.
Before the court’s ruling, Stanford filed a brief with the court defending Harvard’s use of race as a factor in admissions. Diversity is “essential to innovation and progress,” especially in science, technology, engineering and math — also known as the STEM fields, Stanford said.
After that decision, then-Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne stated that Stanford will “adapt to the new legal environment” while maintaining its commitment to diversity. He said Stanford will expand its outreach to students from “historically underrepresented” groups.
Attorney General Bondi indicated yesterday that the schools weren’t following the supreme court’s ruling.
A statement from the DOJ said, “For decades, elite colleges and universities have prioritized racial quotas over equality of opportunity, dividing Americans and discriminating against entire groups of applicants, all in the name of DEI.”
She said the Biden administration allowed colleges to continue discriminating against Asian students, and didn’t protect the civil rights of those students.
“President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” Bondi said in a statement. “Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the color of their skin.”
In addition to Stanford, the other schools the DOJ will investigate are UC-Berkeley, UCLA and UC-Irvine.
Stanford has been living on the fat for too long and, from the eye test alone, defying the Supreme Court’s recent ruling banning race-based affirmative action programs. This is all a positive development. DOGE is uncovering fraud, waste and abuse, and the previous administration was willfully blind on this stuff because the money went to groups that supported Democrats.
If I worked at Stanford, I’d update my resume and start looking for a new job. Layoffs are coming!
Stanford is still practicing DEI when it comes to admissions, a year after the Supreme Court said it was illegal? To paraphrase Captain Louis Renault in Casablanca, “I’m shocked! Shocked to find that Stanford is violating federal law.”
Just wait until the FBI tracks down the white and Asian students who were well qualified but denied admission so that a diversity pick could enter Stanford. These witnesses will have interesting stories to tell. Can you imagine the House hearing where these qualified students who were discriminated against testify? It will be brutal. Stanford would be wise to make a deal right now to avoid this from coming out.
Stanford has practiced discrimination (admissions, financial aid, hiring, etcetera) for many, many years. Perhaps not as severely as some other colleges, and mostly using a quiet, almost invisible approach. But it has been very much a part of the LSJU “culture” for a long time. We know one LSJU who was at the top of the graduating class in a difficult major field of study, had even developed a brand-new medical-related graduate program while applying to Stanford Med School. Scored in the top percentile natually on the MCAT admissions exam, too. SMS won’t even grant an admissions interview. We also know a student who was equally well qualified plus work experience researching law cases and conducting administratve law cases (presenting, examining witnesses, cross-examining opposition witnesses, and in other proceedings writing the decision orders, etcetera). This person was admitted by overnight special courier letter. Unfotunately, SLS then would not offer even one cent of the financial aid needed to enable actual enrollment and attendance. WHy now? Because, “all of our financial aid funds this year are reserved for persons of a racial group other than yours.’
We could go on. The point is not to paint LSJU as the worst, most racist, anti-Christianm anti-semitic place on earth. Rather, to just point out that LSJU does have a longstanding discriminatory element in how it operates. Does it admit, hire, promote Caucasians, Christians, Jews, Asians? Yes, quite a bit. Is LSJU free of institutional racism/ biases that really do hurt a lot of good (and extremely well qualifed) people? Yes, unforutely this, too, is true.
We sincerely hope that a fine school like our very own LSJU can clean up itgs act ASAP.
Corrected:
Is LSJU free of institutional racism/ biases that really do hurt a lot of good (and extremely-well qualified) people? No, unfortunately it is not. …”