Investigation finds no anti-Asian bias at Princeton

The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has cleared Princeton University of allegations that it discriminates against Asian and Asian-American applicants in admissions, writes Peter Schmidt for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Princeton, which announced the civil rights office’s findings last Wednesday, had come under the scrutiny of the federal civil rights office as a result of separate discrimination complaints filed by rejected applicants with Asian backgrounds, in 2006 and 2011. The rejected applicants, who asked the federal government to investigate Princeton after being denied admission, argued in their complaints that the university had treated them differently because of their racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Such suspicions have been common among Asian and Asian-American students who believe that selective colleges are either discriminating against them outright or holding them to substantially higher standards than applicants who are black, Hispanic, or Native American. Asian-American advocacy groups have been on both sides of the debate as the US Supreme Court has weighed the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions policies, and Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been accused of anti-Asian bias in lawsuits filed last year in federal court.
Full report on The Chronicle of Higher Education site