Has Title VI Been Deep-Sixed?
In its Overview of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Department of Justice states:
Title VI, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d et seq., was enacted as part of the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. It prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance. As President John F. Kennedy said in 1963:In an interesting article today on the decidedly mixed results that have been achieved by several institutions that announced with great fanfare several decades ago their determination to increase the numbers of minorities on their faculties, the Chronicle of Higher Education noted Duke had cited the “pipeline” problem — not enough highly qualified minority candidates in many fields. “The university,” it said,
Simple justice requires that public funds, to which all taxpayers of all races [colors, and national origins] contribute, not be spent in any fashion which encourages, entrenches, subsidizes or results in racial [color or national origin] discrimination.If a recipient of federal assistance is found to have discriminated and voluntary compliance cannot be achieved, the federal agency providing the assistance should either initiate fund termination proceedings or refer the matter to the Department of Justice for appropriate legal action....
is taking small steps to widen the pipeline. Duke has financed two postdoctoral positions for minority candidates each year, with the hope that it will eventually hire some of them for tenure-track faculty positions.Was Title VI repealed when I wasn’t looking? Is Podberesky v. Kirwan, 38 F.3d (4th Cir. 1994) (discussed here), which barred the University of Maryland from creating an honors scholarship limited to blacks, not still good law in the Fourth Circuit?
Oh, wait. Duke is private. Maybe it’s free to discriminate because it doesn’t receive any public funds.
Nope, that’s not it. A quick check of FedSpending.org reveals that in Fiscal Year 2005 Duke received $454,076,071 in federal assistance.
Has our idea of “simple justice” so eloquently stated by President Kennedy in 1963 really changed so much since then?
Say What?
John asks: Has our idea of “simple justice” so eloquently stated by President Kennedy in 1963 really changed so much since then?
In Bakke, it was argued with some cogency that Title VI was meant to be enforced simply by government action: cutting off federal funds from non-complying institutions.
I have wondered, but never checked, whether pre- or post-Bakke, the feds EVER held discrimination IN FAVOR of racial minorities, by institutions receiving federal funds, to violate Title VI.
I have also wondered whether most of the Congress, when voting for Title VI, simply assumed that the only enforcement needed was against discrimination favoring whites over minorities, not vice versa.
Posted by: Curtis Crawford | September 22, 2008 11:40 AM
The University of California operates a program similar to Duke's
http://www.ucop.edu/acadadv/ppfp/
Posted by: revisionist | September 22, 2008 12:17 PM
These types of things are all over the place. The bigger violator of our freedoms in this regard is the federal government itself:
The Directorates for Biological Sciences (BIO) and Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE) of the National Science Foundation (NSF) jointly sponsor this program of Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellowships and related supporting activities. The term "minority" as used in this solicitation refers to those ethnic groups that are significantly underrepresented at advanced levels of science and engineering in the U.S., i.e., Native Americans (including American Indians and Alaskan Natives), African-Americans, Hispanics, and Native Pacific Islanders. This program is an effort by the NSF to encourage underrepresented minority or other doctoral scientists to apply for postdoctoral studies, thereby contributing to the future vitality of the Nation's scientific enterprise. Approximately 25 fellowships are awarded each year.
or this one:
Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Program
Synopsis of Program:
This program is aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of students successfully completing science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) baccalaureate degree programs, and increasing the number of students interested in, academically qualified for and matriculated into programs of graduate study.
Posted by: ACF | September 25, 2008 7:25 PM