Trump administration launches civil rights probe into Duke’s race preference policies

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation Monday into Duke University and its law journal over claims of race-based preferences.

The investigation concerns the “use of race preferences in Duke’s hiring, admissions, and scholarship decisions.”

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The Trump administration informed the university in Durham, North Carolina, of the investigation in a joint letter from Secretary of Education Linda McMahon and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

According to the Education Department’s press release from Monday, the letter calls for Duke to “review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences” and “take immediate action to reform all of those that unlawfully take account of race or ethnicity to bestow benefits or advantages.”

The Washington Free Beacon published documents in July revealing that the Duke Law Journal prioritized applicants who wrote about their race in hiring. The law journal reportedly only sent the application prompt to “affinity groups,” with instructions not to inform other students.

The Department of Education press release cites the Free Beacon’s reporting. The department launched a similar investigation into Harvard Law Review in April.

The Department of Health and Human Services’ press release mentions “serious allegations of systemic racial discrimination permeating the operations of Duke University School of Medicine and other components of Duke Health.”

The two secretaries condemned any use of race-based preferences in higher education. 

“If Duke illegally gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants based on those students’ immutable characteristics, that is an affront not only to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic character of academic excellence,” McMahon says in the press release. 

“Blatantly discriminatory practices that are illegal under the Constitution, antidiscrimination law, and Supreme Court precedent have become all too common in our educational institutions,” she continued. “The Trump Administration will not allow them to continue.”

The Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional.

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“We are making it clear that federal funding must support excellence—not race—in medical education, research, and training,” Kennedy Jr stated in the same press release. “Today, Secretary McMahon and I are calling on Duke to address serious allegations of racial discrimination by forming a Merit and Civil Rights Committee to work with the Federal government to uphold civil rights and merit-based standards at Duke Health.”

Campus Reform contacted Duke University and the Duke Law Journal for comment but did not receive a response before publication.