Harvard University has reportedly shuttered its “Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program” as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on discriminatory racial preferences.
The university quietly shuttered the 50-year-old program in May, previously used to recruit minority students in middle and high school and assist them with the application process, according to The Harvard Crimson. The Trump administration has made clear its goal to root out programs and policies that discriminate on the basis of race, and Harvard has been a major target of the administration for months over a multitude of allegations.
The program has reportedly been replaced with Harvard Recruitment Ambassadors, a program utilizing current Harvard students to assist prospective students in applying to the Ivy League school.
“The college search and application processes can feel a bit daunting, and you may have questions,” the new program page reads. “You’ve found the right place to get answers from those who have most recently been in your shoes.”
Harvard did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
The minority recruitment program was apparently responsible for recruiting 75-90% of minority students who later enrolled at Harvard between 1971 and 2012, though it reportedly played no role in admissions decisions, according to the Crimson. Student employees were tasked with contacting minority high school students with high PSAT scores, fielding emails and phone calls and even traveling to schools to provide application advice and recruit in person.
A Harvard spokesman told the Crimson the program “wasn’t doing any of these activities in recent years” and that the activities “will continue to no longer occur in the unified undergraduate admissions group.”
Harvard was put under a microscope by the Trump administration in March when it accused the school of failing to address antisemitism, continuing to use illegal race-based admissions practices, and inaccurate foreign funding disclosures. Harvard has since vowed not to comply with the administration’s demands to settle the dispute, setting its sights on defeating the federal government in court. Recently, the Trump administration was forced to return over $2 billion in federal grants it attempted to strip from the university for noncompliance.
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. Despite this, some universities still attempt to skirt federal law and the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling against affirmative action by using proxies for race or creating new recruiting methods that target minority students.
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