The U.S. Education Department is investigating Princeton University for a possible violation of federal civil-rights law after the university’s president made public comments acknowledging systemic and embedded racism at the institution.
Department officials expressed concern in a letter to the university, dated September 16, that Princeton, “based on its admitted racism,” was not compliant with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits institutions that practice racial discrimination from receiving federal funds. Noting that Princeton had received “well over $75 million” in federal support since 2013, the letter stated that the university’s prior nondiscrimination and equal-opportunity assurances “may have been false.”
In this case, the “admitted racism” was an open letter that Princeton’s president, Christopher L. Eisgruber, sent to the Princeton community earlier this month. In the message, Eisgruber outlined steps his administration planned to take “to address systemic racism at Princeton and beyond.”
Eisgruber’s remarks followed a summer of activism over the university’s racial climate, which were punctuated by a July letter in which about 350 professors and graduate students demanded sweeping policy changes, asserting that “anti-Black racism has a visible bearing upon Princeton’s campus makeup and its hiring practices.”
In his letter, Eisgruber referred to a “painful” and “promising” national reckoning with racism that had resonated at his university. “Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society,” he wrote, “sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies.”
“Racist assumptions from the past also remain embedded in structures of the University itself,” he continued, citing the fact that Princeton has “at least nine departments and programs organized around European languages and culture, but only a single, relatively small program in African studies.”
In its letter to the university, the department said it was compelled to act because of the “serious, even shocking nature of Princeton’s admissions” and warned that Secretary Betsy DeVos could try to recover federal funds.
The department is seeking material in nine broad categories, including records related to “Princeton’s ‘systemic’ and/or ‘embedded’ racism,” and spreadsheets with the names of people who had sustained “damage” as a result of Princeton’s actions, as well as of the names of employees and outside advisers who contributed to the drafting of Eisgruber’s letter and to the university’s diversity measures. The letter also asked Eisgruber to submit to an interview under oath and for the university to answer written questions.
Princeton said it would respond to the department’s letter in “due course.”
“It is unfortunate that the Department appears to believe that grappling honestly with the nation’s history and the current effects of systemic racism runs afoul of existing law,” the university said in a statement. “The University disagrees and looks forward to furthering our educational mission by explaining why our statements and actions are consistent not only with the law, but also with the highest ideals and aspirations of this country.”
A Common Sentiment
At a time when many college leaders have issued statements exploring their institutions’ connections to structural inequities, Eisgruber’s comments on racism at Princeton were largely unexceptional.
In an August open letter to the Amherst College community, president Carolyn A. (Biddy) Martin stated that “our historically predominantly white college still has a long way to go if we are to realize our promise of racial equity and shared ownership of the culture of the College.” In a June message, Duke University’s president, Vincent Price, said: “We must take transformative action now toward eliminating the systems of racism and inequality that have shaped the lived experiences of too many members of the Duke community.”
The investigation extends two themes of the Trump administration’s stance toward higher education: a recalibration of the federal government’s investigative muscle toward conservative social causes, and repeated scrutiny of elite colleges’ policies and practices on race.
Under DeVos’s leadership, the Education Department has threatened to strip federal funding from a Middle East-studies program over concerns about viewpoint diversity, and has made anti-Semitism a focus of its Office for Civil Rights.
The U.S. Department of Justice, meanwhile, has intervened in several campus free-speech complaints, argued that Yale University’s admissions policies discriminate against white and Asian American applicants, and issued a statement of interest supporting students who sued Harvard University over its affirmative-action policy.
Observers in academe decried the department’s letter. Donald Moynihan, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, described it as an example of “a federal government engaged in ideological coercion.”
Some conservative commentators endorsed it. Jonah Goldberg, a former editor of the National Review and now a syndicated columnist, faulted Princeton for trying to have it both ways.
Still, as commonplace as such statements from universities have become, one legal expert saw the potential for legal exposure, though he also thought such scrutiny would be limited to Ivy League and other selective institutions. “You have a Department of Education that seemingly never misses an opportunity to step into a culture-war battle,” Scott D. Schneider, a partner with Husch Blackwell, wrote in an email. “And this one is a gem.”
Don Troop contributed to this report.
