U.S. Justice and Education Departments Will Investigate Yale’s Admissions Policies

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate whether Yale University’s undergraduate admissions policies discriminate against undergraduate applicants based on race, according to a statement from Peter Salovey, Yale’s president.

Last year the Justice Department opened an investigation into whether Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants. A nonprofit group, Students for Fair Admissions, had sued Harvard, alleging bias against Asian and Asian-American applicants. The Justice Department has stated that Harvard’s admissions policy could be “infected with racial bias.”

The Yale investigation is based on a 2016 complaint filed by a group called the Asian American Coalition for Education, The Wall Street Journal reports. The complaint stated that Yale, Brown University, and Dartmouth College treated Asian-American applicants differently during the admissions process, and that the colleges were illegally discriminating against those applicants.