Harvard Law Review Forcefully Denies Racial Discrimination Accusations That Sparked Federal Inquiry

Following up on my previous posts (links below): Harvard Crimson, Harvard Law Review Forcefully Denies Racial Discrimination Accusations That Sparked Federal Inquiry:

The Harvard Law Review disputed allegations that it had illegally considered race in selecting editors and articles for publication — one month after two federal agencies opened an investigation into the claims.

The Law Review first came under scrutiny after the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, published leaked documents that showed Law Review editors discussing applicants’ demographic profiles. The Department of Education and the Department of Health and Human Services opened investigations into Harvard days later, repeating the Free Beacon’s allegations.

Since then, the federal government has seized on the Free Beacon’s materials to argue that Harvard permitted anti-white discrimination — including in Education Secretary Linda McMahon’s letter disqualifying Harvard from future federal grants and a Tuesday draft letter from the General Services Administration that would pull Harvard’s remaining federal contracts.

But on Tuesday, Harvard Law Review President G. Terrell Seabrooks released a fact sheet that contained detailed information on the Law Review’s internal structure and article selection processes. The fact sheet cast doubt on the Free Beacon’s claims and accused news reports of having “mischaracterized” the journal’s procedures.

Seabrooks wrote in a “State of the Review” message accompanying the fact sheet that no federal agency had directly contacted the Law Review about the investigation. He added that the leaders of the Law Review “categorically deny” allegations of race-based discrimination at the organization and are “committed to complying with all applicable laws.”

Both the Free Beacon and the two departments suggested that the Law Review may have violated Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on race and national origin at federally funded programs and institutions.

Seabrooks declined to comment beyond the Law Review’s public statements for this piece.

The Free Beacon and a press release announcing the federal investigation claims that the Law Review engaged in race-based discrimination when it considered applicants’ personal statements in determining its membership.

Each year, of the 54 new second-year HLS students admitted as Law Review editors, 30 are chosen through a writing competition, focused on legal arguments, or a combination of the competition and their grades from their first year of law school. But the remaining 24 students are selected through a holistic review process that considers an additional personal statement. …

The Tuesday fact sheet is the Law Review’s first public statement on either the reported allegations or the federal investigation. But the Law Review has quietly changed some other public-facing materials since the first Free Beacon article was published on April 25. Its online prompt to holistic review applicants was changed — sometime after the last available snapshot of the page was captured on April 27 — to omit references to race.

A previous version of the prompt invited students to discuss aspects of their identity, including race, ethnicity, gender, disability, or socioeconomic status, in addition to their career goals or academic interests. Now, the prompt only mentions the latter.

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