UPDATED
Legal group says program violates law
Northern Arizona University’s president is personally behind a scholarship that appears to only be available to black students.
The W.E.B. Du Bois Emerging Scholars Fellowship Award offers $5,000 to “conduct research, creative scholarship or an innovative project under the guidance of a faculty mentor.”
“Students from historically underrepresented backgrounds, especially those who identify as Black or African American, are strongly encouraged to apply,” the scholarship page states.
The university’s NAU Review reports that President José Rivera (pictured) and his wife, Rima Brusi, started the scholarship to “make transformational learning opportunities equitably accessible to talented undergraduate students of all backgrounds, identities and lived experiences.”
Brusi is a professor in the school’s honors college.
It is going into its second year and will receive part of a $1 million donation from other supporters.
While the scholarship language at the Flagstaff university suggests all students can apply, other comments from the university indicates the primary goal is to provide funds just to black students.
“With the establishment and growth of the W.E.B. Du Bois Emerging Scholars Fellowship Award, [the university] has increased its endowments in the past year to support African American students by more than 70%,” according to NAU Review.
One winner, Cassie Bonah, used the funds to “organize a Black Fashion Show,” according to NAU Review.
Representatives at Northern Arizona University did not respond to two requests for comment via email and another via phone call regarding potential legal issues from The College Fix in the last two weeks.
The Phoenix chapter of 100 Black Men of America, which supports opportunities for African-Americans, initially responded to a request for comment but has not provided another response after a follow-up attempt more than a week ago.
The Arizona-based Goldwater Institute says all Arizona universities must comply with the state constitution on matters of racial discrimination.
“The intent of the Arizona State Constitution is crystal clear: our state-operated educational institutions absolutely may not discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity, and any attempt to justify doing so under federal or state law would have to be rejected outright,” Director of Public Policy Matt Beienburg wrote in an email to The Fix.
While the program does not explicitly restrict applications to any particular race or ethnicity,
Beienburg says it violates the state constitution in practice.
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“Any admissions criteria or scholarship program that excludes students due to skin color or gives preferential treatment on account of race is in direct violation of the state constitution,” he said. “Even where application criteria are officially neutral, we have seen institutions across the country infuse discriminatory practices into the actual evaluation rubrics used to judge applicants.”
He also said “[s]imply allowing students of any race to apply on the front end doesn’t necessarily mean that a program is legal if the university simply turns around and discriminates against members of [disfavored] identities on the back end.”
Other programs with similar language to this have been pulled by universities due to legality concerns, such as one scholarship at the University of Maryland.
After The Fix revealed the potential legal issues, the school took down the page and rewrote it to be less particular about the “underrepresented” groups they “encouraged” to apply.
Although appreciative of the school’s commitment to scholarship opportunities, Beienburg considers NAU’s award to be “unacceptable.”
“Providing scholarship opportunities to students is a worthy cause, but conditioning public aid on a student’s skin color would be unacceptable.”
Editor’s note: A quote from Beienburg has been corrected.
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IMAGE: Northern Arizona University
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