Harvard ends long-running minority recruitment program following federal DEI crackdown
Harvard has ended its 50-year-old Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program amid federal scrutiny of race-based admissions practices.
The program has been replaced by a new initiative that allows general student contact but no targeted outreach for minority applicants.
Harvard University has ended its Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (UMRP) without announcement, a more than 50-year-old initiative designed to encourage high school students from certain racial backgrounds to apply.
The program officially closed in May, amid heightened federal scrutiny of race-conscious practices in admissions. By 2012, the program reached 75 to 90 percent of minority students who eventually matriculated to Harvard, The Harvard Crimson reports.
While the UMRP did not influence admissions decisions, it served as a targeted recruitment tool to expand the applicant pool.
[RELATED: Nation’s largest medical residency accreditor closes DEI department, retires mandates]
The program’s responsibilities have been absorbed into a new initiative, the Harvard Recruitment Ambassadors, which allows prospective students to contact current undergraduates but does not include in-person outreach or target specific student groups.
“I would say that these recruitment programs are really a form of soft affirmative action, where they’re designed to increase the pool of highly qualified applicants,” Lisa M. Stulberg, a professor at New York University told The Harvard Crimson.
“Even just the idea of recruiting is a symbolic one that indicates to students that they are welcome on campus and that Harvard wants them there,” Stulberg added.
The Trump administration has attempted to cut down on race-based affirmative action through aggressive federal oversight. Earlier this year, the Department of Education issued a notice to universities receiving federal funding, warning that programs promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) could jeopardize their financial support.
The notice stated that discrimination on the basis of race is “illegal and morally reprehensible” and condemned DEI initiatives for embedding racial stereotypes and explicit race-consciousness into campus programs.
Schools were given just two weeks to comply, with enforcement beginning Feb. 28.
The Trump administration’s policy mirrors the 2023 Supreme Court case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College, which declared that race-based admissions practices violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The court found that Harvard used race as a determinative factor for African American and Hispanic applicants, treating students differently based on ancestry.
The 2023 decision reaffirmed that racial distinctions must be strictly scrutinized and that universities cannot use race to guarantee or favor enrollment outcomes, underscoring the constitutional limits of affirmative action. “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” the court held.
Following the Trump administration’s reforms, Campus Reform has previously reported on many schools doing away with DEI policies, such as the University of Southern California, the University of Alaska, Vanderbilt University, the University of Louisville, and Northwestern University.
Campus Reform has contacted Harvard University for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
