DOE Investigating Princeton After University President Acknowledges Structural Racism

The Department of Education is now investigating Princeton University after the school’s president said in an open letter that “racist assumptions from the past” remain “embedded in structures” of the Ivy League institution, according to the Washington Examiner. The DOE reportedly claimed in a letter to the school that Princeton President Christopher L. Eisgruber’s letter suggests the Ivy League university has been given federal funding that runs afoul of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Based on its admitted racism, the U.S. Department of Education (“Department”) is concerned Princeton’s nondiscrimination and equal opportunity assurances in its Program Participation Agreements from at least 2013 to the present may have been false,” the DOE letter state. “The Department is further concerned Princeton perhaps knew, or should have known, these assurances were false at the time they were made.” 

In the open letter earlier this month, Eisgruber detailed steps the university is taking to address systemic racism after hundreds of faculty members penned a missive that pointed out how “Anti-Black racism has a visible bearing upon Princeton’s campus makeup.”