Following reports that Yale University leadership has been negotiating a possible settlement with the Trump administration over federal allegations of admissions discrimination, members of the Yale community are urging the institution to reject a deal.
“This investigation is a transparent effort to chill lawful efforts to build diverse academic communities and to pressure Yale into abandoning its own academic judgment,” said Stand Up For Yale, an alumni group.
“Indeed, in even trying to settle, we fear Yale has accepted a losing premise: that pieces of our community are Yale’s to bargain away,” wrote the Yale College Council, the undergraduate student government. “We reject that premise.”
Leaders from the national organization of the American Association of University Professors, the Yale chapter of the AAUP, the Connecticut chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, and the AFT national organization joined together in a Monday letter to Yale President Maurie McInnis and the university’s board of trustees.
“The choice before Yale is not simply whether to settle one investigation,” the letter reads. “It is whether to participate in a broader campaign to turn civil rights enforcement into a mechanism of political control over higher education.”
The possible Yale settlement is the latest in a volley of attempts by the Trump administration to influence higher education, including at Brown University, Columbia University, and the University of Virginia.
The U.S. Department of Justice in May accused Yale’s medical school of “intentionally discriminating based on race in its admissions, in clear violation of federal law,” saying the university’s practices were hurting white and Asian applicants.
At the time, Yale said admitted students “demonstrate exceptional academic achievement and personal commitment.”
Daniel Martinez HoSang, professor of American studies at Yale and president of the Yale AAUP chapter, disputed the Justice Department’s assertion in an interview Wednesday.
“The students we have on this campus, among many, many deserving applicants, absolutely have earned their places here,” HoSang said. “There can be other frustrations in higher education, but that's not in dispute.”
HoSang provided a memo prepared by Yale AAUP outside counsel refuting the DOJ’s findings.
“The DOJ’s findings lack any factual basis,” wrote attorney Douglas R. Jensen of New York-based law firm Sher Tremonte. “In sum, the DOJ’s factual findings are bogus—cherry-picked, statistically weak, and presented without appropriate context or support in the record.”
The memo urges McInnis to “reject what is a transparent DOJ effort to strong-arm Yale University by means of baseless allegations.”
Yale did not immediately return a request for comment for this story.
HoSang said faculty have been kept in the dark, learning about the university’s negotiations via reporting from The New York Times.
“You can imagine how demoralizing it is to have to learn that, potentially, the future of the university is being… negotiated away from the media, as opposed to getting direct communication from our leadership,” he said. “We're baffled why the university would, in the face of this widespread opposition [and] without any communications, enter into a final settlement negotiation.”
HoSang said a settlement would send the wrong message, and worries that various policies and university autonomy could be “negotiated away.”
“What happens at Yale potentially will affect universities across the country,” he said. “If Yale agrees to a settlement here, it can have implications for many, many kinds of universities, because it puts more pressure on them to enter into these settlement agreements rather than allowing courts to adjudicate and weigh the evidence.”
