University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign boasts one of the largest student populations in the U.S., with approximately 56,000 students on a sprawling 6,300-acre campus located in central Illinois. The university has also drawn the attention of the Equal Protection Project, a legal watchdog that investigates allegations of illegal discrimination, according to a story first reported by The College Fix.
EPP filed a legal complaint last week with the U.S. Department of Education alleging the university offers 42 student scholarship based on either race or sex, such as eight offered exclusively to females.
Matt Lamb, associate editor of The College Fix, says EPP believes it can successfully fight the scholarships based on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year that banned affirmative action in college admissions. That ruling, a 6-2 decision, came after Asian students sued after learning Harvard University penalized them in its admissions process based on their race.
EPP is led by William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell, who founded the group Legal Insurrection.
On the Urbana-Champaign campus, Lamb said some of the scholarships are open only to various ethnic groups, such as Czech, Lithuanian, and Japanese.
The complaint alleges 19 of the scholarships discriminate on the basis of sex, another 19 discriminate on the basis of race, and another four discriminate based on both factors.
“What's curious is there are actually a couple [of scholarships] that are only available to male students, according to the complaint,” Lamb says. “Usually, discriminatory scholarships only favor women, but it appears there actually are a couple that are favoring males."
AFN recently reported that Jacobson and his EPP convinced a private university, North Central University, to drop race requirements for its George Floyd Memorial Scholarship.
