The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into the University of California (UC) system to determine whether its efforts to boost faculty diversity run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.
In a June 26 announcement, the Department of Justice (DOJ) stated that it is probing whether the university’s “UC 2030 Capacity Plan” and related campus-level programs constitute a pattern or practice of unlawful employment discrimination based on race and sex, in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon, who leads the department’s Civil Rights Division. “Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.”
According to the Justice Department, the UC system’s strategic hiring plan explicitly encourages campuses to measure and increase the number of new hires by race and sex to meet internal diversity targets. Officials described the framework as potentially unlawful, citing provisions in the plan that direct campuses to recruit “diverse” faculty in line with demographic benchmarks.
The UC 2030 Capacity Plan outlines several such goals, including the recruitment of at least 40 percent of its graduate students from its own undergraduate programs and from other minority-serving institutions, including Hispanic-serving institutions, historically black colleges and universities, and tribal colleges and universities. The plan also outlines a goal to hire more than 1,100 new ladder-rank faculty members by 2030—an effort the university says will help diversify its academic workforce, noting that new hires tend to be more diverse than the existing faculty.
“Identity-based hiring is not only wrong—it is illegal,” Dhillon wrote in a post on social media. “Public employers ignore our civil rights laws at their peril.”
A request for comment sent to the University of California by The Epoch Times was not immediately returned.
A university spokesperson told The Hill that the university “is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws.”
“The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported. We will work in good faith with the Department of Justice as it conducts its investigation,” the spokesperson said.
Hellbound and Down 