The College Fix

Language change does not make it legal, attorney says

A federal civil rights complaint has been filed against a Massachusetts Institute of Technology program that excludes white students.

Shortly thereafter, the school appears to have edited the webpage to state that “participation is open to all students regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin,” according to a College Fix review this morning.

However, this does not make the program legal, according to the complainant.

The program, Creative Regal Women of Knowledge, “engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and sex,” according to the original complaint filed by the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation.

It is run through the university’s “Office of Minority Education.”

The legal group asks the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to investigate MIT for violations of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which forbids sex discrimination, and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans racial discrimination in higher education.

The university appears to have edited the website soon after the Monday filing of the complaint and subsequent media coverage.

“The CRWN is designed for undergraduate women of color which includes Black, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and other minoritized ethnicities. Women includes transgender women, cisgender women, and non-binary women,” the website stated as of last Friday, May 17.

It now reads: “The CRWN is designed to inspire undergraduate women of Color which includes Black, Indigenous, Hispanic/Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and other minoritized ethnicities. Women includes transgender women, cisgender women, and non-binary women. “

There is also a new note underneath this description on the homepage.

“While our program is designed to support and celebrate undergraduate women of Color, participation is open to all students regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, and national origin,” the website now states.

But William Jacobson, who filed the complaint, said the altered language does not erase the legal issues.

“MIT altered the language on the website to assert that the program was open to everyone,” Jacobson stated in an email this morning to The College Fix.

“But that plainly is not true. The entire structure of the CRWN program is exclusionary and limited to women of color,” the president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation said. He said the changes are an “admission of wrongdoing.”

“MIT’s after-the-fact website wording change does not alter the serious violations of the civil rights laws that have been taking place for years and were ongoing in the spring 2024 semester,” Jacobson said. “The CRWN program’s exclusionary language necessarily deterred white female and all male students from applying. The OCR should open a formal investigation and impose remedial and other sanctions on MIT.”

MIT declined to comment Wednesday morning when asked about the changes, including if an attorney had advised the school to make the edits. “MIT does not, as a practice, comment on legal matters,” a spokesperson said via email to The Fix.

Jacobson, who is also a Cornell University law professor, offered to help MIT make changes necessary to satisfy the legal concerns raised by the complaint. He wants MIT to “publicly apologize” and “come up with a remedial plan.”

“MIT also needs to be transparent moving forward to ensure that the website wording change is not a public relations maneuver. The Equal Protection Project would be willing to serve as a monitor of the program in order to ensure compliance, at no charge to MIT.”

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IMAGE: MIT Office of Minority Education

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