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   From: noham@nospam.com   
      
   The Department of Justice is investigating Harvard University   
   over its admissions policies and blasting the university for   
   stonewalling its efforts.   
      
   In a letter dated Nov. 17, the Justice Department threatened to   
   sue Harvard over its “delays and challenges” in producing   
   documents related to the federal agency’s investigation into   
   civil rights violations.   
      
   According to the letter, the probe is related to a 2014 lawsuit   
   that claims Harvard limits the number of Asian-Americans it   
   admits each year. Justice Department officials have been meeting   
   and corresponding with Harvard’s attorneys on this issue since   
   early September.   
      
   “In the intervening two months, Harvard has pursued a strategy   
   of delay and has not yet produced even a single document,” wrote   
   Matthew J. Donnelly, an attorney in the department’s civil   
   rights division.   
      
   The Justice Department’s Nov. 17 correspondence to Harvard was   
   first reported in The Wall Street Journal Tuesday.   
      
   While the letter is unclear about exactly what documents the   
   Justice Department has requested, it notes that Harvard has   
   already produced some of the information in the 2014 lawsuit. A   
   judge has ordered Harvard to submit admissions data by race,   
   grade point average, SAT scores, legacy, and other criteria for   
   the past six years.   
      
   Harvard will comply with its legal requirements, but it has “an   
   obligation to protect the confidentiality of student and   
   applicant files and other highly sensitive records, and we have   
   been seeking to engage the Department of Justice in the best   
   means of doing so,” the university said in a statement Tuesday.   
      
   Harvard’s attorneys in letters to the Justice Department have   
   also questioned why the agency, led by Attorney General Jeff   
   Sessions, is opening up a probe into a complaint about   
   admissions that is more than 2½ years old and one that already   
   involves a lawsuit in progress.   
      
   “The opening of an investigation in the current circumstances   
   is, to our understanding, so outside ordinary circumstances that   
   Harvard is obliged to clarify the authority and rationale for   
   the Department’s decision,” Seth Waxman, an attorney with   
   WilmerHale who is representing Harvard, wrote in an Oct. 6   
   letter.   
      
   Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit whose members include   
   students and parents, filed the lawsuit. The suit said the   
   university’s admissions practices violate federal civil rights   
   law and asked a federal judge to bar Harvard from using race as   
   an admissions factor in undergraduate admissions.   
      
   Edward Blum, with Students for Fair Admissions, said he is   
   gratified that the Justice Department has launched an   
   investigation into Harvard’s admissions practices.   
      
   “Harvard’s Asian quotas, and the overall racial balancing that   
   follows, have been ignored by our federal agencies for too   
   long,” Blum said in a statement. “This investigation is a   
   welcome development.”   
      
   Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the US   
   Justice Department, under President Trump, was preparing to   
   redirect resources from its civil rights division toward   
   investigating and suing universities over affirmative action   
   policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.   
      
   In August, the Trump administration said it was looking into the   
   complaint against Harvard, sparking worry in academia and among   
   civil rights advocates.   
      
   This year, Harvard admitted 22.2 percent of students who   
   identified as Asian, about the same as last year.   
      
   Blum has a similar case pending against the University of North   
   Carolina at Chapel Hill. And he also pushed a case brought by   
   Abigail Fisher, a student who said the University of Texas   
   rejected her because she is white.   
      
   However, the Justice Department in the past has said it is only   
   investigating one university on the matter.   
      
   Harvard has said previously that its admissions practices are   
   consistent with legal precedents set by the Supreme Court.   
      
   Just last year, the US Supreme Court, in a 4-to-3 vote, ruled   
   that college admissions officers could continue to use race as   
   one of several factors in deciding who gets into a school. The   
   decision surprised university officials and disappointed those   
   who had hoped to end race-based admissions.   
      
   But the ruling does require universities, if they are   
   challenged, to show they had no choice but to use race to create   
   diversity on campus and that other factors alone, such as family   
   income or an advantage to first-generation college students,   
   couldn’t create a similar mix of students, according to Vinay   
   Harpalani, a law professor at the Savannah Law School who   
   specializes in affirmative action.   
      
   A more active Justice Department on this front could push   
   schools to demonstrate that they are looking at other factors   
   before race, Harpalani said.   
      
   “Universities typically don’t like to make details on their race-   
   conscious policies public because the line between legal and   
   illegal policies is not fully clear . . . and because there are   
   always potential lawsuits out there, and also because this is   
   such a politically charged issue,” Harpalani said earlier this   
   year.   
      
   The Justice Department has given Harvard until Dec. 1 to comply   
   with the document request or may file a lawsuit to enforce the   
   university’s compliance, according to the letter.   
      
   Still no word on whether Harvard can ever produce Obama's   
   transcripts or any papers he wrote there.   
      
   https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2017/11/21/justice-department-   
   investigating-harvard-over-its-admission-   
   policies/LJL8KmnOZHY3qO0PjCU8LP/story.htm   
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