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.