America First Legal (AFL) filed a civil rights complaint with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Wednesday alleging Harvard Medical School is continuing to use racial preferences in admission despite federal law.
The complaint alleges Harvard is engaging in a “calculated effort” to appear as though it is complying with the law despite adopting policies that allow it to discriminate, such as “race proxies embedded within holistic review criteria and ideologically driven DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] frameworks—all designed to produce predetermined demographic outcomes.” Harvard has allegedly rebranded efforts focused on DEI using euphemisms to appear neutral but still uphold its commitment to diversity, AFL stated.
“Once considered the gold standard of American higher education, Harvard today is better known for defying the Constitution than upholding it,” AFL’s complaint reads. “Rather than dismantle its ‘discrimination, exclusion, and intolerance’ practices as required, Harvard has chosen instead to rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful practices under new euphemisms. It has chosen defiance over compliance.”
Harvard Medical School did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
While Harvard claims to have shuttered its DEI offices, it appears to have simply reshuffled the staff to new offices within the university. The university’s website also uses terms such as “culture of belonging,” “expanding and supporting programs” and “greater opportunities to engage across difference” as proxies for its original mission, AFL claims.
Harvard’s medical school has adopted similar methods of maintaining its commitment to DEI, according to AFL.
Harvard Medical School’s DEI Office was similarly rebranded while maintaining the same leadership and a slightly tweaked mission statement, according to the complaint. The school has also embedded “identity-based ideological instruction” into all of its curriculum, such as “Health Equity” and “Sexual and Gender Minority Health.”
The school’s “holistic admissions” process also allegedly “utilizes diversity-based essay prompts structured to elicit racial and identity-based information about an applicant in ways that allow admissions officers to discern race and other protected characteristics,” according to AFL.
Harvard has further “constructed a parallel, race-conscious pipeline to identify, recruit, and advance individuals from its preferred demographic categories” which begins “as early as the middle school level,” the firm alleged. Many of its programs specifically seek out “underrepresented minorities and/or disadvantaged individuals” as a proxy for race and gender, which allows it to recruit its desired student body as early as possible.
These admission proxies are used throughout Harvard’s medical residency programs, AFL found.
The university is even using federally funded research grants to uphold DEI in the medical field, prioritizing recruitment based on race, the complaint says.
The Trump administration has already been targeting Harvard for a multitude of reasons, including unchecked antisemitism on campus, failing to properly disclose foreign funding sources and illegal DEI practices. Harvard has lost billions of dollars, been referred to the DOJ and risks losing its foreign students and accreditation status.
AFL is urging the DOJ to expand its investigation into Harvard’s medical school.
Despite the Supreme Court in 2023 declaring that affirmative action policies are illegally discriminatory, many universities have attempted to skirt the ruling by shifting from explicit racial considerations to more subtle race-based recruiting methods. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) publicized its method, which included using students, staff and alumni to personally reach out to minority students, hosting events for “underrepresented groups” and viewing applications “holistically” rather than in separate segments.
Other prominent universities have followed in its footsteps. UCLA now remains under investigation by the DOJ and risks losing millions in federal grants after the administration said the school “engages in racism, in the form of illegal affirmative action.”
The Department of Education (ED) has made it clear that racial preferences, whether used explicitly or through proxies, will not be tolerated and schools accused of failing to abide by federal civil rights law may be investigated and punished. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) further clarified that even policies that “appear facially neutral” but “function as proxies for race-based decision-making” are not consistent with federal law.
Several medical school accreditors and associations have recently modified or entirely suspended their DEI requirements for member institutions.
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