Universities oppose Trump over affirmative action plan

Huffington Post 13 July 2018

At least a dozen top universities in the United States have turned their back on the Trump administration’s rollback of Obama-era affirmative action directives. These universities, including five Ivy League institutions, say they plan to continue to use race as a factor in admissions to bolster diversity, writes Michelle Lou for the Huffington Post.

Between 2011 and 2016, then president Barack Obama issued several guidelines recommending colleges use race as a factor in admissions to boost the number of underrepresented minorities in higher education. Last week, the Justice Department announced the rollback of the guidelines as part of the elimination of 24 federal guidance documents, saying they were “unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper.”

Colleges that defy federal guidelines could be subject to a federal investigation or lawsuit or lose funding from the US Department of Education. Harvard University plans to buck the federal government’s new guidelines to ensure the diversity of its student body. “Harvard will continue to vigorously defend its right, and that of all colleges and universities, to consider race as one factor among many in college admissions, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court for more than 40 years,” a Harvard spokesperson said.
Full report on the Huffington Post site

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