Department of Education launches civil rights probe after lawsuit accuses Harvard of giving preferential treatment to legacy applicants

The US Department of Education has begun a civil rights investigation into whether Harvard University discriminates in its admissions process by giving preferential treatment to children of wealthy donors and alumni, roughly three weeks after a lawsuit made those allegations.

That lawsuit, filed by Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of three minority advocacy groups, alleged the students who receive that preferential treatment are "overwhelmingly White" and make up as much as 15% of Harvard's admitted students. The plaintiffs called on the Department of Education to investigate Harvard's use of donor and legacy preferences and "the resulting unjustified disparate impact."

US Department of Education Office for Civil Rights will now probe whether Harvard "discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process in violation of Title VI and its implementing regulations," according to a Monday letter from Ramzi Ajami, a regional director for the office.

"Opening the complaint for investigation in no way implies that (the office for civil rights) has made a determination on the merits of the complaint," the letter said. "During the investigation, (the office) is a neutral fact- finder, collecting and analyzing relevant evidence from the Complainant, the University, and other sources."

The lawsuit that triggered the civil rights investigation was filed just days after the Supreme Court's June decision to gut affirmative action in college admissions, ruling schools can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for accepting a candidate.

The lawsuit cited that ruling and quoted the Supreme Court's majority: "College admissions are zero-sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter."

Already, an array of prestigious schools have ended legacy admissions, including MIT, Amherst and Wesleyan University.