\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Harvard University of failing to comply with a federal investigation into whether its admissions processes are discriminatory.<\/p>\n
The federal government alleged in a court filing that the Ivy League university has unlawfully withheld \u201cinformation necessary to determine whether Harvard, which has a recent history of racial discrimination, is continuing to discriminate in its admissions process.\u201d The Trump administration alleged in the lawsuit that Harvard \u201chas slow-walked the pace of [document] production and refused to provide pertinent documents relating to applicant-level admissions decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration said in the filing that it brought legal action \u201csolely to compel Harvard to produce documents relating to any consideration of race in admission\u201d and is not accusing Harvard of discriminatory conduct, seeking monetary damages or the revocation of its federal funding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Justice Department will not allow universities to flout our nation\u2019s federal civil rights laws by refusing to provide the information required for our review,\u201d Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division said in a DOJ news release. \u201cProviding requested data is a basic expectation of any credible compliance process, and refusal to cooperate creates concerns about university practices. If Harvard has stopped discriminating, it should happily share the data necessary to prove it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in the same news release that the Department of Justice \u201cwill continue fighting to put merit over [diversity, equity, and inclusion] across America.\u201d<\/p>\n
Applicant data sought by the DOJ includes grade point average, standardized test scores, essays and extracurricular activities, disaggregated by race and ethnicity, according to the court filing, which also noted that the federal government\u2019s initial requested deadline was April 25 of last year. Harvard provided hundreds of pages of documents in response but the court filing says it handed over \u201caggregated admissions data\u201d\u2014not \u201cindividual-level applicant data.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Harvard spokesperson denied claims of wrongdoing in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cHarvard has been responding to the government\u2019s inquiries in good faith and continues to be willing to engage with the government according to the process required by law,\u201d the spokesperson wrote to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>. \u201cThe University will continue to defend itself against these retaliatory actions which have been initiated simply because Harvard refused to surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights in response to unlawful government overreach.\u201d<\/p>\n Friday\u2019s lawsuit is the latest salvo from the Trump administration in a nearly yearlong fight with Harvard that has included efforts to cut off $2.2\u00a0billion in federal research funding and to prevent it from hosting international students. Harvard has managed to successfully fend off those efforts and sued the Trump administration last April. Harvard won that legal battle with the federal government last fall but remains in the crosshairs of the Trump administration, as the president and others have accused Harvard of permitting antisemitism, among other allegations.<\/p>\n Despite Harvard’s legal victory, rumors of a settlement have persisted for months. Any such deal would follow similar agreements struck with the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Virginia, Cornell University and Northwestern University.\u00a0<\/p>\n However, while a deal has supposedly been in the works for months, Harvard reportedly has been resistant to pay a fine as part of any such settlement. Earlier this month The New York Times <\/em>reported that the federal government had dropped its request for a fine as part of the settlement, only to be immediately countered by Trump, who demanded Harvard pay $1\u00a0billion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Trump administration filed a lawsuit Friday accusing Harvard University of failing to comply with a federal investigation into whether its admissions processes are discriminatory. The federal government alleged in a court filing that the Ivy League university has unlawfully withheld \u201cinformation necessary to determine whether Harvard, which has a recent history of racial discrimination,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1414,676,1983],"class_list":{"0":"post-44439","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-doj","9":"tag-harvard","10":"tag-sues"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44439"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44439\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/44440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}