MIT Program Open Only To “Women of Color” Challenged By Equal Protection Project As Violating Civil Rights Laws
“We just celebrated the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation in public education. It is sad and disheartening to see that institutions like MIT that receive federal funding are re-segregating the student body through exclusionary programs.”
The Equal Protection Project (EPP) (EqualProtect.org) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation has challenged numerous racially discriminatory programs done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. This discrimination comes in various ways, but the overarching theme is to exclude or diminish some people and promote others, based on race, color, or ethnicity. We have filed over two dozen complaints and legal actions in the year since launch in February 2023, with at least 10 schools withdrawing or modifying the discriminatory programs.
Almost all of our actions have addressed discrimination in higher education. In our latest action, however, we have filed a Civil Rights Complaint (full embed at bottom of post) with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for creating, supporting and promoting a program for undergraduate students open only to women of color.
From the Complaint:
We bring this civil rights complaint against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for creating, supporting and promoting a program for undergraduate students – called the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge, or “The CRWN” – that engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and sex. As detailed and documented below, only undergraduate “women of color” can participate in the program. Applicants who fall outside of those race- and sex-based categories are ineligible for it.
Because The CRWN discriminates based on race and skin color, it violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”) and its implementing regulations.1 And, because the program also discriminates on the basis of sex, it violates Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 (“Title IX”) and its implementing regulations.2 ….According to an informational page on MIT’s website, The CRWN “is designed for women of color” (“WOC”)3 and its mission is “to inspire undergraduate women of color to move confidently as visionaries, grounded in excellence, empathy, and support for one another.”4 [image omitted]
The phrase “women of color” is defined to include “Black, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and other minoritized ethnicities,” and the word “women” is defined to include “transgender women, cisgender women, and non-binary women.”5 [image omitted]
***
And, as reproduced in the screen capture below, the application webpage for The CRWN requires applicants to state if they are “Hispanic or Latino” and to identify their race and skin color, and also asks applicants for their gender identity.9 [image omitted]
An August 2023 guidance issued by OCR provides that “[i]n determining whether an opportunity to participate is open to all students, OCR may consider, for example, whether advertisements or other communications would lead a reasonable student, or a parent or guardian, to understand that all students are welcome to participate.”10 Here, any reasonable person would understand that all students are not welcome to participate in The CRWN.
***
This complaint is timely brought because it includes allegations of discrimination based on race, color and sex that occurred within the last 180 days and is ongoing.
The MIT website indicates that The CRWN has been operating at MIT during spring semester 2024. The program’s “Welcome Back Event” was held on the MIT campus on February 22, 2024 and was restricted “to current members of the CRWN and all women of color undergraduates.”13
***
The Office for Civil Rights has the power and obligation to investigate MIT’s role in participating in, sponsoring, supporting and promoting The CRWN program – and to discern whether MIT is engaging in such discrimination in its other activities – and to impose whatever remedial relief is necessary to hold it accountable for that unlawful conduct. This includes, if necessary, imposing fines, initiating administrative proceedings to suspend or terminate federal financial assistance and referring the case to the Department of Justice for judicial proceedings to enforce the rights of the United States under federal law. After all, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Parents Involved in Cmty. Sch., 551 U.S. at 748.
Though only filed this morning, the Complaint has received wide media coverage.
The Boston Globe [archive] ran a featured story that was on the homepage for a considerable time today:
A Rhode Island-based conservative legal group on Monday filed a federal civil rights complaint against MIT, alleging a program for female undergraduate students of color unlawfully discriminates against white students who aren’t able to participate.
The seven-page complaint was filed with the Boston office of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights by the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation based in Barrington, R.I., according to a copy the group shared with the Globe.
“We bring this civil rights complaint against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for creating, supporting and promoting a program for undergraduate students – called the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge, or ‘The CRWN’ – that engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and sex. As detailed and documented below, only undergraduate ‘women of color’ can participate in the program. Applicants who fall outside of those race- and sex-based categories are ineligible for it,” wrote foundation President William A. Jacobson in the complaint.
Jacobson wrote that his group wants the Office for Civil Rights to “impose remedial relief as the law permits for the benefit of those who have been illegally excluded from The CRWN based on racially and gender-based discriminatory criteria, and to ensure that all ongoing and future programming through MIT comport with federal civil rights laws.”
An MIT spokesperson said the school doesn’t comment on legal matters.
According to its website, the CRWN program at MIT serves undergraduate cisgender and nonbinary women of color.
The program’s available to second-year students and above, and they can remain in CRWN through graduation, the site says.
The goals of the program include enhancing and strengthening community among women of color at MIT, increasing opportunities to participate in “academic excellence and professional development” on campus and beyond, fostering confidence, and helping women of color “effectively and efficiently navigating the MIT experience … through general advising and group mentoring opportunities,” the site says.
Jacobson said in a statement to the Globe that the program is legally flawed.
“The CRWN eligibility requirements are openly racially and sexually discriminatory,” Jacobson said. “Regardless of the purpose of the discrimination, it is wrong and unlawful.” He said it “does society no good to inject more racism and sexism into the educational system through discriminatory university programs.”
In addition, Jacobson said, the US Supreme Court last year ruled that “discriminating on the basis of race to achieve diversity is not lawful. As Chief Justice [John] Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, ‘[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.’”
Jacobson’s foundation was launched in 2019 as an outgrowth of his Legal Insurrection blog began in 2008, according to the foundation’s website.
The foundation’s Equal Protection Project was launched in February 2023, according to the site, which says the initiative has “challenged dozens of exclusionary fellowship programs, many of which are open only” to non-white individuals.
“We have several investigations ongoing that will result in more actions in the near future, including litigation,” the site says.
Jacobson, a Harvard Law graduate, is a clinical professor of law and director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell Law School, according to his bio on the Cornell site.
ABC News affiliate WCVB ran the story:
A conservative group is filing a federal civil rights complaint against the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, claiming a program at the Cambridge school discriminates based on both gender and race.
The Equal Protection Project says the school is breaking the law with its Creative Women of Knowledge program.
The Equal Protection Project is a project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.
The complaint says the program discriminates against men and people who are white because it only allows undergraduate women of color to apply.
The Cornell law professor who filed the complaint says MIT’s program is in violation of both race and gender discrimination.
“There’s race discrimination. There’s also sex discrimination. And that violates the law. MIT receives federal funding. It has to comply with the various aspects of the civil rights laws and this violates it,” said Cornell Professor William A. Jacobson, the founder of EqualProtect.org
The program’s website says it is meant to encourage support, personal and professional development and academic success.
The program’s website says its mission is: “ … to inspire undergraduate women of color to move confidently as visionaries, grounded in excellence, empathy, and support for one another.”
The complaint asks the U.S. Department of Education to open a formal investigation and a remedy or sanction against MIT.
A spokesperson for the Education Department declined to comment, saying, “The Office for Civil Rights does not confirm complaints.”
A spokeswoman for MIT also declined comment, saying, “MIT does not, as a practice, comment on legal matters.”
The Boston Herald also ran the story prominently on its homepage.
MIT is the latest local school hit with a federal civil rights complaint, as a free speech group calls out the Cambridge campus for a “women of color” program that excludes white students….
“The CRWN eligibility requirements are openly racially and sexually discriminatory,” said William Jacobson, founder of the Equal Protection Project. “Regardless of the purpose of the discrimination, it is wrong and unlawful.
“It does society no good to inject more racism and sexism into the educational system through discriminatory university programs,” he added.
Last week was the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, ending racial segregation in public education, Jacobson noted.
“It is sad and disheartening to see that institutions like MIT that receive federal funding are re-segregating the student body through exclusionary programs,” he said.
“Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have bought into the ‘anti-racist’ activism claim that the remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination,” Jacobson added. “Such ‘reverse-racism’ and ‘reverse-sexism’ is just racism and sexism, and it is not the answer.”
In MIT’s handbook, the university’s nondiscrimination policy prohibits discrimination against individuals on the basis of race, color, sex, and more.
“Why isn’t MIT living up to its own rules?” Jacobson asked.
“MIT needs to come up with a remedial plan to compensate students shut out of the CRWN due to discrimination,” he added.
Other coverage ran at National Review:
Equal Protection Project president William A. Jacobson, also a professor at Cornell Law School, wrote in the complaint that the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge program violates federal law, noting that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any ‘program or activity’ that receives federal funding” and that Title IX of the same Act “makes it unlawful to discriminate on the basis of sex in education.”
Jacobson told National Review that it is obvious to him that MIT’s program flies in the face of federal civil-rights law.
“The CRWN eligibility requirements are openly racially and sexually discriminatory. Regardless of the purpose of the discrimination, it is wrong and unlawful,” Jacobson said.
“We just celebrated the 70th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, which ended racial segregation in public education. It is sad and disheartening to see that institutions like MIT that receive federal funding are re-segregating the student body through exclusionary programs,” he continued. “Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have bought into the ‘anti-racist’ activism claim that the remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination. Such ‘reverse-racism’ and ‘reverse-sexism’ is just racism and sexism, and it is not the answer.”
Dan Morenoff, executive director of the American Civil Rights Project and an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute, called the program a “open and shut” violation of federal law.
The Washington Examiner also covered the filing:
“Unfortunately, many colleges and universities have bought into the ‘anti-racist’ activism claim that the remedy for past discrimination is current discrimination,” William A. Jacobson, founder of the Equal Protection Project, said. “Such ‘reverse-racism’ and ‘reverse-sexism’ is just racism and sexism, and it is not the answer.” ….
“The harm from racial educational barriers is that it racializes not just the specific program, but the entire campus,” Jacobson said. “Sending a message to students that access to opportunities is dependent on race is damaging to the fabric of campus.”
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Comments
At Oberlin, in its academic excellence days, it was called “Poets’ Physics.”
Women of color
Must be a lot of applicants
Wouldn’t that be “The CRWK”?
LOL.
What the hell sort of a weird name is that, anyway?
The description on the MIT site is pretty funny (and retarded):
“minoritized ethnicities”??? WTFFF?
Lincoln Labs is working on a shrink ray.
I almost forgot (from the smaller description on the laughable MIT site):
Okey doke … so you just have to claim to be a woman … but you’re not allowed to claim to be “Latinxxx”. You need to have a notarized Latinxxx card to qualify … but a penis and testicles is not a deal-breaker.
By the way, WTF is a “non-binary woman”, anyway? A chick who likes to pretend she’s a guy? Is this the same thing as an “analog woman”?
But the government has even more trouble defining what a Latino is than they do defining what a woman is. Are Spaniards Latinos? Portuguese? Cubans? Ask a different bureaucrat and you’ll get a different answer. The Census form instructions on this point are laughable — they basically boil down to “if you feelz you are a Latino, you am.” Just like a woman, in fact, and no surprise. My government Latinx card is in the mail — slainte!
Say “colored women” and hear them shout.
Spell it coloured and they will hit the (glass) ceiling.
“There’s race discrimination. There’s also sex discrimination. And that violates the law.”
Yes. And if you or I aggressively, egregiously, and persistently violated civil rights laws, we would be bankrupted, or imprisoned, or both.
Until the admins at these universities suffer criminal consequesences for aggressively, egregiously, and persistently violating civil rights laws it will simply be a perpetual game of wack a mole in **clown world**
As far as I know there are no criminal laws against discrimination in business, only civil laws, so we would be sued and possibly bankrupted, but not prosecuted.
And the suit would be against the company, not the administrator.
since words are violence then hiring a poc just b/c of their race
is to also be a violent act against humanity
Then there’s AfroChemistry at Rice Univ.
The course description reads like a practical joke, but where’s the discrimination? The course is open to all students.
The description says it’s open to STEM and non-STEM majors. Anyone care to guess how many STEMs will sign up for this nonsense?
Too many
THE STUDY OF BLACK-LIFE MATTER, from the actual course description or babylon bee?
Actual course description. I kid you not.
“AfroChemistry at Rice Univ.”
If that rice includes Campbell’s chicken soup, peanut butter, and a frying pan, I’m in!
From the Fred Sands TV show: “Was the robber colored?” Yes. He was white..
skate park
florida
The biggest obstacle to racial harmony and equality in contemporary American society has and still is, the vile and evil Dhimmi-crat Party.
The Dhimmi-crats will never concede the obvious realities of undeniable racial progress and scant racial discrimination in American society, because it in their political self-interest to perpetually play the corrosive card of racial agitation and demagoguery propagating the contrived narrative of alleged racial discrimination and victimhood, from the bottom of their rotten deck.
“The biggest obstacle to racial harmony and equality in contemporary American society has *always been* and still is, the vile and evil Dhimmi-crat Party.”
Also, the news outlets predictably play up the “conservative” nature of Professor Jacobson’s political affiliation, as if only a “conservative” could possibly object to the notion of education programs at supposedly elite institutions weighing applicants based upon their skin pigmentation and ethnicity.
Well, yes. The idea that they should not do that is a conservative political position. The progressive left’s position is that they should do that, regardless of the law. The moderate left’s position is that they shouldn’t break any laws, but should do it to the greatest extent that they can legally get away with.