Top California university’s tired obsession with race in the legal crosshairs — again

The D in DEI is really for discrimination. 

Once again, a leading California university is in the news over allegations that it favors some students over others.

As The California Post reported exclusively, the US Department of Education is investigating UC Berkeley over three student programs and two scholarships that might discriminate based on race — and thus run afoul of civil rights law.

The Legal Insurrection Foundation filed a federal complaint in February over the African American Student Development Office, the Black Resource Center, the Latinx Student Resource Center, the African American Initiative Scholarship and the Lloyd A. Edwards Scholarship.

Now, that complaint has brought a probe by the feds.

Good. For too long, California universities have clung to racial preferences despite clear prohibitions in both state and federal law.

It’s time that they dropped the DEI dogma, instead.

Discrimination of any kind is wrong, and UC leaders know it’s unlawful. 

The California electorate has rejected racial favoritism on state campuses, including with Proposition 209 in 1996 and Proposition 16 in 2020.

And the US Supreme Court outlawed race-based preferences on campus in 2023, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Yet somehow university administrators think they know better, and should get to decide.

That’s not how it works, though.

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Berkeley and UC need to follow the law, not flout it.

And they need to respect, nurture and support all students, not just those whose skin tones they prefer.

In fact, Berkeley, arguably the nation’s premier public university, should be leading the way academically — and setting an example administratively.

It should drop the racial biases. It should ensure that programs and scholarships are open to all students, as the law requires. 

And it should realize that universities do best as hubs of learning and open inquiry, not factories of ideology.

Sadly, Berkeley and its peers in California haven’t reached this benchmark. Per William A. Jacobson, president of the Legal Insurrection Foundation: “We do find California to be one of the leading offenders as a state.”

Cal alone faces several other federal civil rights probes into various allegedly discriminatory programs. And the US departments of Justice and Education found that Berkeley’s law school improperly used racial bias in admissions in 2024 and 2025.

It’s wrong to ask students (or taxpayers, who fund the vast majority of California scholarships) to spend tens of thousands of dollars on ideology — a poor value proposition and a big reason some skip college altogether.

If UC wants to keep its prestige in an age of AI, high costs and soaring demand for vocational training, it would do well to refocus. 

Cal’s mission is “to provide long-term societal benefit through excellent research, teaching, and public service.”

None of that’s achieved through discrimination.

The post Top California university’s tired obsession with race in the legal crosshairs — again appeared first on New York Post.