According
to reports this week, Donald Trump administration is planning to investigate
and sue US universities over affirmative action admission policy that are perceived
to take discriminate against white applicants. Which could once again risk the
policies of many Universities.
Reports
from The New York Times stated that the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights
Division was searching for lawyers to carry out an investigation and possibly
sue universities and colleges over “intentional race-based discrimination”
This
move could possibly be another attack on the US higher education sector under
the presidency of Donald Trump, after recent funding cuts, putting a travel ban
on some international and putting criticism on particular campuses.
The New York Times states that the civil right division’s “front office” would be
run the Justice Department, appointing the White House political appointees to
work, rather than the staffed civil servants from educational opportunities
section.
The
assault on affirmative action was aligned in a wrong way with the longstanding
goal of widening participation in US higher education, stated by Kristen Clarke
(President of the lawyers’ committee for civil rights), to the times.
“The move is clearly disturbing”, she further
said. “The move could invite a lot of chaos and bring fear in the colleges and
universities, which would feel that the government may take action against them
and spoil their efforts to maintain a certain level of diversity in their
campuses”
Professor
Neal H. Hutchens at the University of Mississippi stated to the Chronicle of
Higher Education that the recent administrative actions could “put a chill” on
our long efforts to improve diversity on campus.
He
further stated, “The government should focus more on providing good means to
ethnic minority students, which could create a safe and protected environment,
instead of creating more hurdles for them”
The US Supreme Court already upheld a case on the
use of affirmative action admissions policy last year, voted in favor of the
University of Texas, by four to three on a particular program. However, there
are already several lawsuits pending against other institutions like University
of North Carolina and Harvard University.
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