Probe comes in the wake of a Free Beacon report on the journal’s racial preferences
The Department of Education on Monday launched an investigation into Duke University and its flagship law review, citing a Washington Free Beacon report on the journal’s use of racial preferences to select editors.
The department will investigate the Duke Law Journal’s 2024 decision to award extra points to applicants who mentioned race and gender in their personal statements. Candidates could earn up to 10 points for discussing their “membership in an underrepresented group,” according to the grading rubric for the essays, and an additional 3-5 points for holding “a leadership position in an affinity group.”
Such criteria likely violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the department said in a press release. The rubric was included in a packet sent to the law school’s affinity groups, which were told not to share the materials with other students. Duke has not commented publicly on whether the criteria were ever shared with the whole law school.
The department also sent a separate letter to the university expressing concern about the use of racial preferences at Duke Medical School, whose promotion guidelines for faculty reward doctors for recruiting and mentoring “BIPOC” trainees. The letter, sent jointly with the Department of Health and Human Services, asks Duke to create a “Merit and Civil Rights Committee” that will work with the government to resolve alleged civil rights violations.
If no resolution is reached after six months, the letter warns, “the federal government will commence enforcement proceedings as appropriate.” A separate HHS press release says that the agency’s office of civil rights has already begun an investigation into Duke Health.
“Blatantly discriminatory practices that are illegal under the Constitution, antidiscrimination law, and Supreme Court precedent have become all too common in our educational institutions,” said Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “If Duke illegally gives preferential treatment to law journal or medical school applicants based on those students’ immutable characteristics, that is an affront not only to civil rights law, but to the meritocratic character of academic excellence.”
Duke did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The probe of Duke comes as the Trump administration also investigates Harvard University and the Harvard Law Review over that journal’s use of racial preferences. The Harvard probe is likewise based on materials published by the Free Beacon, including more than 450 memos from the journal’s article selection process.
In some of those memos, editors suggested killing or advancing pieces based on the race of the author. In others, they complained that articles did not cite enough women and minorities in the footnotes.
The probes are part of a broader campaign against elite law reviews that is being waged by both public and private actors. Represented by former Texas solicitor general Jonathan Mitchell, a group of students and professors sued the Michigan Law Review last month over the journal’s alleged use of racial preferences. Similar complaints have been filed against law reviews at Northwestern and NYU.
Unlike the Harvard Law Review, which is a separate nonprofit from Harvard Law School, the Duke Law Journal is overseen by Duke University and has no legal existence apart from it. That structure could make it harder for Duke to disclaim responsibility for the law review’s selection process, which is “refereed” by law school administrators, according to a university website.
Duke receives nearly $1 billion in federal funding each year. Violations of Title VI, the Education Department said in a press release, “can result in loss of federal funding.”
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