Education Department opens investigation into Harvard’s legacy admissions

BOSTON — Opening a new front in legal battles over college admissions, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a civil rights investigation into Harvard University’s policies on legacy admissions. The department notified Lawyers for Civil Rights, a nonprofit based in Boston, on Monday that it was investigating the group’s claim that the university “discriminates on the basis of race by using donor and legacy preferences in its undergraduate admissions process.” An Education Department spokesperson confirmed its Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation at Harvard. “Harvard should follow the lead of a growing number of colleges and universities — including Amherst, MIT, Johns Hopkins, the University of California, and most recently Wesleyan — and voluntarily abandon these unfair and undeserved preferences.” A spokesperson for Harvard on Tuesday said the university has been reviewing its admissions policies to ensure compliance with the law since the Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action. Sarah Hinger, senior staff attorney for the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, said she did not know the specifics of the Harvard program but “as a general matter, legacy admissions tend to benefit disproportionately, white people and wealthy people.” “Systemic racism and inequality has allowed some people to build legacies across generations of their family in the same way that systemic racism has left many families of color out of opportunities in the educational hierarchy.