The Justice Department on Thursday accused Duke University’s law school of unlawfully considering race in admissions in the latest Trump administration action against higher education institutions.
In a findings letter to the school, the department said that while administrators paid lip service to being race-neutral in admissions, they used other factors as stand-ins for race, including personal essays and whether someone was a first-generation college student.
The Durham, North Carolina, school said in an emailed statement it was reviewing the letter and is committed to following the law “in a manner that is consistent with our academic mission.”
“Duke Law School doesn’t get a free pass to discriminate against white and Asian students simply because it thinks it has good intentions,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a news release. “Using ‘diversity’ essay questions to identify preferred races for admission is still illegal discrimination based on race.”
Affirmative action in college admissions has been illegal since a 2023 Supreme Court ruling. The same ruling said colleges could continue to assess how applicants’ backgrounds might speak to broader characteristics, but President Donald Trump has repeatedly accused colleges of using other proxies to maintain racial diversity, which conservatives view as illegal discrimination.
