U.S. Justice and Education Departments Will Investigate Yale’s Admissions Policies

Stan Godlewski, Getty Images

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate whether Yale University’s undergraduate admissions policies discriminate against undergraduate applicants based on race, according to a statement from Peter Salovey, Yale’s president.

Last year the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants. A nonprofit group, Students for Fair Admissions, had sued Harvard, alleging bias against Asian and Asian-American applicants. The Justice Department has stated that Harvard’s admissions policy could be “infected with racial bias.”

The Yale investigation is based on a 2016 complaint filed by a group called the Asian American Coalition for Education, The Wall Street Journal reports. The complaint stated that Yale, Brown University, and Dartmouth College treated Asian-American applicants differently during the admissions process, and that the colleges were illegally discriminating against those applicants.

In a letter sent to the Asian American Coalition for Education, the Education Department wrote that it is investigating Yale partly because the allegations noted details of an Asian-American applicant’s experience there, the Journal reports.

In his statement, Salovey denied that Yale discriminated against Asian-American applicants. “I write now to state unequivocally that Yale does not discriminate in admissions against Asian-Americans or any other racial or ethnic group, to share information about our undergraduate admissions practices, and to affirm our unwavering commitment to diversity as a pillar of this university,” he said.

Salovey also touted the diversity of the Yale student body in his statement.

“The creation of a diverse academic community has not come at the expense of applicants of any racial or ethnic background,” Salovey wrote. “For example, over the past 15 years, the number of Asian-Americans has grown from less than 14 percent of the incoming first-year class to 21.7 percent in the Class of 2022.”

Fernanda Zamudio-Suaréz is breaking-news editor. Follow her on Twitter @FernandaZamudio, or email her at fzamudiosuarez@chronicle.com.