A legal advocacy group wants the Trump administration to step in to probe CUNY‘s Black Male Initiative over claims it discriminates against women and white students.
The Equal Protection Project claims the CUNY program violates federal civil rights laws by giving preference to minority male students while shutting out others.
“It’s not a difficult case – CUNY explicitly is recruiting based on race and ethnicity and preferring certain racial and ethnic groups over others,” said William Jacobson, president and founder of the group, which filed a complaint with the Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon.
In 2012, the Obama Department of Education determined that the initiative was consistent with federal law.
“The discrimination in the program should have been stopped almost 15 years ago,” Jacobson said. “Only a legally ridiculous 2012 decision by the Obama Department of Education allowed the discrimination to continue. It is time for DOJ to correct this injustice.”
The mission of the Black Male Initiative is to bolster the enrollment, retention, grade point average and graduation rates of minority male students in 22 senior and community colleges within the CUNY system.
It has been in place for 20 years.
In its complaint, EPP claims the program also violates state and city anti-discrimination laws. But since New York’s lawmakers have allocated millions of dollars over the years to fund BMI, Albany and City Hall won’t investigate.
CUNY defended the program as legal and appropriate.
“For 21 years the CUNY Black Male Initiative has focused on improving the educational success of underrepresented students and is open to all students regardless of race, gender or national origin,” a CUNY spokesperson said.
One CUNY source said Sunday the Male Initiative is a well-intended program to address the dearth of young minority men attending and graduating from colleges.
The group admitted in its complaint that the initiative has educational benefits, but they should be applied to all students who need assistance regardless of race, color or ethnicity.
“However, BMI’s goals, programming, and promotional materials repeatedly identify favored racial and ethnic groups and communicate that the program is intended for those groups,” the complaint said.
“If CUNY had a ‘White Male Initiative’ structured similarly to BMI such race-based recruiting would not be tolerated much less funded and promoted. It is up to DOJ to ensure that the civil rights laws are enforced in a race-neutral manner.”
The complaint said such discreet race-based or ethnic programs are on even shakier ground now after the US Supreme Court ruled in 2023 that college and university affirmative action programs that consider race a factor in admissions are unconstitutional.
President Trump opposes race-or ethnicity-based educational policies, often referred to as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI.
EPP has filed cases against more than 120 institutions challenging over 550 discriminatory scholarships and programs — including at the State University of New York campuses, the New York State Education Department, as well as Fordham and Rutgers universities.
