Harvard College on Sunday was slapped with a federal grievance over a “race-restricted” scholarship program that’s restricted to college students of shade, The Submit has realized.
The grievance faults the Ivy League establishment for actively selling and supporting the Union Students summer time scholarship program, which is designated for “college students of shade” and offers 10 candidates a $4,800 stipend and $6,000 need-based help.
“What doesn’t Harvard perceive about not discriminating based mostly on race?” stated William Jacobson, president and founding father of the Equal Safety Venture, a authorized watchdog that filed the grievance, to The Submit.
“The US Supreme Court docket informed Harvard to cease; now it’s as much as the Division of Justice to make Harvard cease,” stated Jacobson, an alum of Harvard.
Harvard was on the heart of a landmark case in 2023 when the US Supreme Court docket decided that affirmative-action packages for admission are unconstitutional.
The Equal Safety Venture filed its grievance about racism within the scholarship program with the Justice Division’s Division of Civil Rights.
The grievance comes in opposition to the backdrop of a broader Trump administration effort to stress Harvard to scrap its Variety, Fairness and Inclusion insurance policies, be extra inclusive to conservatives and stamp out antisemitism on campus.
“The Harvard Union Students Program supplies very worthwhile advantages to college students, and it needs to be open with out regard to race,” Jacobson stated.
Technically, the Union Students program is run by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Workers, or AFSCME, however the grievance contends that Harvard actively helps it.
“Harvard isn’t a bystander; it hosts the orientation, supplies help, and promotes this system,” added Robert Fox, a lawyer for the Equal Safety Venture.
“By placing its identify on a race-restricted alternative, Harvard is partaking in illegal discrimination.”
AFSCME, the most important public sector commerce union within the nation, created the Union Students Program in 2003 at the side of Harvard Legislation Faculty’s Heart for Labor and a Simply Economic system.
College students in this system are anticipated to partake in a six-week “discipline placement on a union organizing marketing campaign.”
On one webpage describing the trouble, AFSCME calls it “a summer time internship program for college kids of shade enthusiastic about social justice and staff’ rights.”
However The Equal Safety Venture’s 11-page grievance insists, “The Union Students Program is explicitly race-restricted.
“Its eligibility necessities state that candidates should ‘[b]e a school pupil of a traditionally marginalized neighborhood.’ The phrase ‘traditionally marginalized neighborhood’ is commonly used as a substitute for ‘underrepresented minority.’ ”
Functions for subsequent 12 months’s program are nonetheless beneath means, with a Feb. 28, 2026, deadline.
The Equal Safety Venture, which targets discrimination in larger training, pointed to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which restricts establishments of upper training that intentionally discriminate on the premise of race from getting federal funds.
The watchdog is asking on Assistant Legal professional Common for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon and her staff to probe whether or not Harvard’s involvement within the Union Students Program is a Title XI violation.
“Contemplating that Harvard litigated the problem of race-based admissions all the best way to the Supreme Court docket and misplaced, immediate and aggressive DOJ motion is warranted,” the grievance added.
Trump has threatened to chop off billions of {dollars} for analysis and different functions from the elite faculty over its refusal to acquiesce to his calls for to scrap its DEI and race-based insurance policies.
A Boston-based federal choose handed the college an enormous victory in September after concluding the threats had been unlawful.
Different elite faculties resembling Columbia College have reached a cope with the Trump administration over its calls for.
Neither Harvard nor the AFSCME responded to Submit requests for remark.
“I’m a Harvard Legislation Faculty graduate,” Jacobson stated. “I absolutely perceive the vanity and self-righteousness of the college.
“However sufficient is sufficient in the case of the usage of race in admissions, whether or not to the college or to its packages.”
