Prestigious Law School Under Investigation for Alleged Reverse Discrimination
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
January 20, 2004
(AgapePress) - The U.S. Department of Education is investigating Seton Hall Law School for allegedly discriminating against white law students.The Department's probe is focused on a minority mentoring effort called "Partners in Excellence" and a minority job fair held by Seton Hall University. According to the Wall Street Journal, Seton Hall told students they were not allowed to attend the job fair if they were white.
The school's website, in describing the job fair, stated that "students must be eligible to participate, i.e., they must be students of color," and emphasized that the fair was "to ensure that additional opportunities were created for students of color" [emphasis in the original].
Roger Clegg, vice president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, believes the two law school programs were unconstitutional. He says in past rulings, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it "very clear" that an across-the-board ban on students of one color or another from participating in a program is illegal.
"Needless to say, even if it weren't illegal, it would be extremely unfair to tell some students [they] are not allowed to participate in this program because [they] have the wrong skin color," the attorney adds.
According to a report in New Jersey Law Journal, the dean of Seton Hall Law School says the two programs do not discriminate against whites because they are only a small part of the school's overall career offerings, and should not be viewed in isolation. But Clegg says it is foolish for Dean Patrick Hobbs to defend the programs.
"If he's arguing that [they] have some programs for black students exclusively, and other programs for other students exclusively, then he's basically making an argument of 'separate but equal' -- which, of course, the courts rejected in Brown v. Board of Education fifty years ago," Clegg says.
Although Clegg's group is not the plaintiff in this investigation, it has filed similar complaints against schools such as MIT, Virginia Tech, and Washington University in St. Louis.
