BOSTON: President Donald Trump’s administration on Monday (Apr 28) said it was probing whether Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review violated civil rights laws when the journal’s editors fast-tracked consideration of an article written by a member of a racial minority.
News of the new probe came hours after a federal judge agreed to expedite Harvard University’s lawsuit seeking to block the Trump administration from freezing US$2.3 billion in federal grant funding that the Ivy League school has warned will threaten vital medical and scientific research.
The announcement of the probe by the United States Departments of Education and Health and Human Services said Harvard Law Review editors may have engaged in “race-based discrimination” in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Harvard Law Review’s article selection process appears to pick winners and losers on the basis of race, employing a spoils system in which the race of the legal scholar is as, if not more, important than the merit of the submission,” Craig Trainor, the Education Department’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement.
A Harvard University representative said in a statement that the school is “committed to ensuring that the programmes and activities it oversees are in compliance with all applicable laws and to investigating any credibly alleged violations”.
Representatives of the Harvard Law Review, a legally independent student-run organisation, did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
