The taxpayer-funded University of has been slammed over a paid summer internship program that would have excluded white students.
On Monday, school reps confirmed they were re-evaluating the graduate studies program after a Cornell University law professor William Jacobson filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
The internship previously set out to ‘prepare students of color Fundraising campaigns and Native Americans for graduate school’ and includes a $6,000 stipend for participants, according to a description on the school’s website.
Professor Jacobson, 64, along with his conservative nonprofit group, The Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, filed the complaint last week with federal officials.
‘There is an increasing trend where people think it’s OK to discriminate on the basis of race as long as the discrimination is against whites or Asians or others, and we don’t accept that,’ Jacobson said in a recent interview.
The University of Minnesota has come under fire for a program that appears to eliminate white students from consideration and only offered an internship to Native Americans or students of color.Dean Robert McMaster in seen a photo from the school’s website
The taxpayer funded University of Minnesota has been slammed and a professor from Cornell University has filed a complaint
In their complaint, the Equal Protection Project asked the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to strike down the ‘discriminatory’ program at the University of Minnesota immediately
According to a previous listing on the University of Minnesota’s website, the Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program is ‘an intensive 10-week summer program in which undergraduate students of color work full-time with a faculty mentor on a research project.’
The application for the program requires students to fill out demographic information.
After attention was drawn to the program, it appears the university has removed the eligibility requirement that a candidate must be Native American or a person of color.Now, the requirements only say participants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.
While speaking with the , Jacobson said he believes the University of Minnesota has no legal right to discriminate against students based on their race.
He called the policy ‘regressive’ and said school officials are ‘undoing civil-rights progress’ and taking the US ‘back to the 1940s and 1950s.’
In a statement sent out to The Post, a university rep said the program was under re-evaluation.
The school ‘regularly revisits the selection criteria across thousands of different grants, scholarships and other financial awards provided to our students each year.’
The representative added administrators would be ‘evaluating the criteria for this student support program as part of this routine process and make any appropriate updates.’
The Cornell law professor added that he believes there are other ways to entice students of color into other community programs.
‘What you can’t do is set up categorical racial barriers to participation, which is what they’ve done,’ he said.
‘There is an increasing trend where people think it’s OK to discriminate on the basis of race as long as the discrimination is against whites or Asians or others, and we don’t accept that,’ Cornell Professor William Jacobson said in a recent interview
The internship previously set out to ‘prepare students of color and Native Americans for graduate school’ and includes a $6,000 stipend for participants, according to a description on the school’s website
The program’s language appears to be updated to remove the ‘students of color’ eligibility requirement
In their complaint, the Equal Protection Project asked the federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to strike down the ‘discriminatory’ program immediately.
‘We urge the U.S.Department of Education to fully investigate how pervasive segregationist practices are at U. Minnesota. Federal funding should not be used to promote educational opportunities restricted by skin color,’ Jacobson told .
‘Federal Grant funding applications for U.Minnesota needs to be reevaluated,’ he continued.
The Cornell professor also claimed the University of Minnesota was playing ‘word games’ after they initially claimed the summer research program was not paid.
Jacobson responded to that claim by stating that a $6,000 stipend is payment.
He said he would also like to see university officials understand the discriminatory ways of the internship.
‘If this was a program that restricted participation to whites, there would be an absolute uproar, and we would be part of that uproar,’ Jacobson said.
DailyMail.com reached out to the University of Minnesota for Funding opportunities comment on the complaint, but officials did not respond in time for this report.
