Princeton, MIT end race-based policies

Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have both responded with policy changes to criticisms of the race-based admissions criteria used for some of their summer programs. Princeton officials decided last week they would either end or revamp the university's Junior Summer Institute program, which in the past has only been open to minority students. And yesterday, MIT officials announced that the school would open up its two pre-college summer programs to students of all races, according to a news release. Previously, the two programs, Project Interphase and Minority Introduction to Engineering, Entrepreneurship and Science, were only open to members of specific ethnic minority groups. With the University of Michigan currently defending two affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court, criticism of the program comes at a time when many issues have been raised regarding the factoring of race into admissions policies. "In the current legal climate the university does not believe it can continue to offer a program in which admission is restricted by race," Robert Durkee, Princeton's vice president for public affairs wrote in last week's statement. On Jan. 8, Princeton received a letter signed by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute that cited the illegal nature of the race-based admissions policy for the program. "We thought it was legally indefensible, and they agreed," said Roger Clegg, general counsel for the Center for Equal Opportunity, concerning Princeton's policies. MIT faced similar criticism, and the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights had been investigating a discrimination complaint against the school's policies, according to the news release. "Our best [legal] advice was that for racially exclusive programs, our chances of winning were essentially zero," MIT Dean of Undergraduate Education Robert Redwine said in the university's news release. "We'd be much better off putting our energies into redesigning our programs to achieve the goals that we want, while opening it up to other students." Princeton's summer program, run through Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, was founded 17 years ago and has always been open to minority students only. Each year, Princeton accepts about 30 minority students from colleges and universities across the country to study public service at the Wilson School for seven weeks over the summer. "The program was initially designed to encourage students of color to consider graduate work and careers in public and international affairs," said Durkee. "We remain committed to the goals of the program but decided that we would have to achieve them in a different way." According to a statement Durkee issued last week, Princeton has not yet determined whether the program will be continued under admissions criteria not restricted by race or eliminated completely. Clegg said he hopes Princeton will not end the program, but instead choose to open it to all students or revise admissions criteria so that they are race-neutral. "For instance, they could admit only students who are the first in their families to go to college or who come from low income families, as long as they are not discriminating on the basis of race and ethnicity," Clegg said. Minority students have already been admitted under the old admissions criteria for the summer of 2003, and the program will be held as planned. "The Wilson School's commitment to increasing the number of minority students who choose to enter careers in public affairs remains undimmed," wrote Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of the Wilson School, in an e-mail. "We will pursue every legal avenue possible to achieve that goal."