A complaint has been filed against Indiana University that alleges several “race-selective” scholarships that favor black or Native American applicants are unconstitutional.
The nonprofit education advocacy Defending Education filed the complaint April 9 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The scholarships, run through IU’s diversity, equity, and inclusion office, state the “Johnson Underrepresented Student Scholarship” and “Wilma A. and Charles E. Harry IV Family Scholarship” grant preference to black applicants while the “Bruce Shuck Family Native American Scholarship” gives preference to applicants of Native American descent.
The complaint alleges Indiana University’s guidelines represent “racial discrimination” and are “unconstitutional.”
Sarah Parshall Perry, vice president of Defending Education, said in an interview with The College Fix that she believes her organization has made a strong case, calling the state-funded scholarship provisions “violations of the Equal Protection Clause” and “overtly racially discriminatory.”
Perry said it “flies in the face of the civil rights movement” and its cause of a colorblind society.
Indiana University’s media relations division told The College Fix its members were not readily available for comment on the complaint and scholarships.
While many Republican-controlled states have forced their public universities to shut down DEI offices, Indiana has yet to pass such legislation, although a bill is under consideration.
However, the Indiana Department of Education has said it will comply with Trump administration directives to ban DEI in public schools, Chalkbeat reported.
It is unclear when and if the Office for Civil Rights will open and initiate an investigation, Perry said, adding these types of probes could take months or more. She said she hopes the office will “promptly investigate and seek to resolve” the complaint.
Recently rebranded from Parents Defending Education, her organization is “returning education to an ideologically neutral stance,” Perry told The Fix. According to its website, the group has filed over ten complaints with OCR over the past year, she said.
Likewise, Indiana University is no stranger to legal challenges.
Last month, the Supreme Court decided not to hear an appeal in Speech First vs. Whitten, a case where IU’s bias-response teams were challenged as chilling First Amendment expression.
Although not a party to the case, Defending Education participated in the litigation by filing a brief against IU. In it, they denounce IU’s approach as “ideological orthodoxy” perpetrated by the same DEI office that oversees the scholarships now challenged as unconstitutional.
The scholarships challenged are overseen by Indiana University’s Office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Established in 1999, the office expanded efforts in recent years.
According to its website, the office oversees the “recruitment and retention of faculty” and of “undergraduate and graduate students.”
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: A building at Indiana University / University of College, Shutterstock
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