The Massachusetts Institute of Technology faces a federal civil-rights complaint alleging that one of its undergraduate programs violates federal non-discrimination laws.
The complaint, filed Monday by the nonprofit Equal Protection Project, focuses on the Creative Regal Women of Knowledge program (“CRWN,” as MIT calls it), which states as its mission “inspir[ing] undergraduate women of color to move confidently as visionaries, grounded in excellence, empathy, and support for one another.” The program, according to its website, defines “women of color” as “Black, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and other minoritized ethnicities,” while the word “women” includes “transgender women, cisgender women, and non-binary women.”
The program is designed “to enhance and strengthen community amongst WOC at MIT” and “to enhance and increase opportunities to pursue and participate in academic excellence and professional development opportunities at and beyond MIT,” among other forms of academic and professional assistance.
Students in the program have access to networking and mentoring opportunities, as well as “financial assistance for pursuing academic and professional development goals,” and as the complaint notes, applicants to the program must identify their race, skin color, and gender identity in order to gain acceptance.
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.
“At least as described in the administrative complaint, the CRWN program facially violates Title VI. It appears to be an MIT program. MIT receives federal funds, The program expressly qualifies and disqualifies students for participation based on their race, color, and national origin. That’s an open and shut violation, unless — and after SFFA, maybe even if — they have a compelling purpose, which they don’t,” Morenoff said. “It also facially violates Title IX, which bars sex discrimination, by disqualifying men categorically, unless they assert a female ‘identity.'”
The 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard Supreme Court decision, which Morenoff referenced, held that race-based programs violate the Equal Protections Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Morenoff argued that, in sustaining a program that runs counter to the Civil Rights Act and the Supreme Court’s Fourteenth-Amendment ruling, MIT has opened itself up to further problems.
“It’s like MIT is trying to maximize the number of valid triggers for its defunding available to a new administration come January,” he told NR.