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Department of Education Probes Harvard’s Legacy Admissions

The probe comes just weeks after a Supreme Court decision effectively killed affirmative action.

The Department of Education has opened an investigation into Harvard University’s legacy admissions policies, which give preferential treatment to children of school alumni. The probe comes just weeks after a Supreme Court decision effectively killed affirmative action—which ultimately placed legacy admissions in the public’s crosshairs as another preferential treatment scheme. Several high-profile universities have dropped their legacy admissions policies in an effort to fill the gap that ending affirmative action created. The DOE notified Boston nonprofit Lawyers for Civil Rights on Monday that it was looking into the organization’s complaint that Harvard “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.”