Forbes Spotlights Equal Protection Project In Cover Story About DEI Pushback

Forbes Spotlights Equal Protection Project In Cover Story About DEI Pushback

Forbes Magazine’s cover story this week is about how colleges are responding to the pushback against DEI, Colleges Comply With Anti-DEI Mandates With Firings…And Finesse [archive].

The subheadline makes the point:

Public universities in red states have seen the biggest changes, but even private colleges in blue states need to worry about legal challenges–to targeted scholarships and other programs.

I was interviewed for the story, which ended with a focus on our Equal Protection Project. They got a couple of things wrong, but mostly got it right:

Meanwhile, the Equal Protection Project (a part of the Rhode Island-based Legal Insurrection Foundation) has barraged the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) with complaints alleging various scholarship programs at both private and public universities are discriminatory. Its recent targets include scholarships at Fordham University, Indiana University, Ithaca College and Western Illinois University.

While the OCR hasn’t appeared eager to take on these cases, EPP’s impact is being felt. William Jacobson, the founder and director of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, says that through the end of May his group had challenged scholarships and other programs it deemed discriminatory at 28 schools and that in about half the cases the schools agreed to suspend the programs or revise their criteria before an OCR complaint was even filed. [WAJ note: This is wrong, its after we filed a complaint but before OCR opened an investigation.]

The change at one small school (in this case after an OCR complaint was filed) is instructive. In March, EPP filed a complaint against Minnesota’s North Central University, a Christian university in Minneapolis, alleging the George Floyd Memorial scholarship it created in 2020 was discriminatory, because the full-tuition, four-year award was open only to Black or African-American students. At the time it was created, the University’s president stated: “Diversifying our learning environment is key to being a University that looks and acts like heaven.” Now, on its web site, North Central has removed the racial requirement and describes the scholarship as designed for applicants “who bring unique perspectives and experiences, enriching the NCU community with dedication to participation within campus multicultural student organizations, advocating for Biblical principles of justice, expanding opportunities for marginalized communities, and fostering understanding across racial and ethnic lines.”

EPP isn’t just targeting scholarships aimed at helping racial minorities, which it contends violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In July it filed a complaint with OCR against Rochester Institute of Technology’s Women In STEM award (worth $19,000 a year), offered to an “outstanding female, female-identifying, or non-binary student who has demonstrated high achievement, ability, and interest in science, computing, robotics, and/or math.’” That, the complaint alleges, violates Title IX (of the Education Amendments of 1972) which makes it unlawful to discriminate in education based on sex.

“The women in STEM program was not only open to females but also to those identifying as female. However, it excluded males identifying as male, which constitutes gender identity discrimination,” Jacobson observes. Last month, the EPP even filed a OCR complaint against an Alabama community college for offering a welding course exclusively for women.

“We don’t question diversity as a goal; we simply insist it’s achieved without violating federal, state, or local laws,” says Jacobson, who is also a clinical professor and director of the Securities Law Clinic at Cornell University Law School. “We evaluate programs based on their legality, not on who benefits. We challenge any discriminatory program, many of which are biased against whites. We don’t consider the impact, as our stance is that achieving goals must comply with the law.”

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