NEW YORK _ Harvard and New York University were sued by a group that claims their law schools illegally use race and gender as criteria for selecting law students to staff their most elite academic journals.
A Texas group called Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences filed the cases this weekend, saying it "seeks to restore meritocracy at American universities by eliminating the use of race and sex preferences."
The suits come amid growing scrutiny on affirmative action in college admissions and may put the policies at elite graduate schools under a microscope. Next week, a federal judge in Boston is scheduled to hear testimony in a trial accusing Harvard of discriminating against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions _ a lawsuit driven by an anti-affirmative action advocate. The U.S. Justice Department is also probing bias in admissions at Harvard and Yale universities.
The suits target the use of race and gender preferences among the criteria, including grades and performance on writing competitions, for inclusion on the staffs of the Harvard Law Review and the NYU Law Review. Membership on the journals, which publish articles from top scholars, is a credential that can boost a student's prospects for a prestigious judicial clerkship and a high-paying legal job.
The suits name the universities, law schools and law reviews as defendants, along with U.S. Education Secretary Betsy Devos.
