Dept. of Education opens probe into Duke University over reported racial preferences

The Department of Education on Monday said it is opening an investigation into Duke University and Duke Law Journal over reported racial discrimination in choosing new editors.

The Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education (OCR) cited a report that the Law Journal distributed a packet to school "affinity groups" in 2024 concerning the application process for entering the Journal next year. All applicants were required to submit a 12-page memo critiquing an appellate court ruling as well as a 500-word personal statement which would be graded on a point system and their first-year GPA.

But applicants from these "affinity groups" were allegedly offered the chance to earn extra points if their statements mentioned their "race or ethnicity" and as many as 10 points for explaining how their "membership in an underrepresented group" fostered "diverse voices."

The OCR suspects that this practice might be an enforceable violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

"If Duke gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants who are illegal if it's on the basis of those students' immutable characteristics, that is not only an insult to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic nature of academic achievement," Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote in a statement. "Blatantly discriminatory practices prohibited by the Constitution, antidiscrimination law, and Supreme Court precedent have become all too commonplace in our schools. The Trump Administration will no longer stand for it."

McMahon, in a joint letter to Duke University with Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., asked the university to "review all policies and practices at Duke Health for the illegal use of race preferences, take immediate steps to reform all those that illegally consider race or ethnicity to confer benefits or advantages, and give clear and verifiable assurances to the government that Duke's new policies will be executed faithfully in the future—by making all organizational, leadership, and personnel adjustments necessary to make sure that the necessary reforms will be lasting."

The department is also asking Duke University establish a "Merit and Civil Rights Committee" to aid in the resolution of additional civil rights abuses.

Fox News Digital contacted Duke University and Duke Law Journal for comment but did not immediately hear back.

Duke University has been criticized several times for racial preferences and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) pushback in the last year.

Earlier, Fox News Digital has covered a 2021 plan named "Dismantling Racism and Advancing Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the School of Medicine" for Duke Medical School. The handbook referenced standards like dress codes, punctuality and self-reliance as examples of "White supremacy culture."

Dr. Kendall Conger also informed Fox News Digital in 2024 that he was discharged from Duke University's health system after he spoke out against the university's promise not to engage in racism, which framed racism as a "public health crisis."

"It was not so much a commitment to improved medicine, as a commitment to left-wing ideology. And I felt that if I didn't speak up, I was abiding by imprimatur," Conger said back then.