Justice Dept. Plans to Take On Affirmative Action.

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• The US Justice Department wants to crack down on affirmative action policies at colleges and universities, according to a new memo that was leaked last night. [NYT / Charlie Savage]
• Memos obtained by the New York Times indicate the department plans to investigate and sue colleges and universities for “intentional race-based discrimination.” [NYT / Charlie Savage]
• “The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on ‘investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.’ The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, ‘intentional race-based discrimination,’ cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minorities to university campuses. Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.”
  -- “Two people familiar with the internal discussions at the Justice Department’s civil rights division said that the move came after career staffers who specialize in education issues refused to work on the project out of concerns it was contrary to the office’s long-running approach to civil rights in education opportunities,” Sari Horwitz and Emma Brown report. “As a result, political leadership within the department decided to run the effort themselves, these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.”
  -- The news prompted some on social media to recirculate this ProPubica story from November: “The Story Behind Jared Kushner’s Curious Acceptance into Harvard,” by Daniel Golden, who wrote a 2006 book entitled “The Price of Admission.” “My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. … I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision. ‘There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,’ a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me.”
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• The DOJ’s argument is that schools are discriminating against white students by rejecting them in favor of students of color, even if both demonstrate similar academic achievement. [Washington Post / Emma Brown and Sarah Larimer]
• It could also refer to Asian-American students — who are increasingly seen as the "victims" of affirmative action among groups that oppose these policies. [Vox / Libby Nelson]
• This move should come as no surprise, given that affirmative action is a huge conservative issue and has been for decades. [The Washington Post / Philip Bump]
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• That the Justice Department will seek to curb affirmative action has energized Trump’s base – rallying conservatives around the issue at a time when the administration has struggled to deliver on core Republican priorities. Sari Horwitz and Robert Costa report: “Sessions’s apparent intention to prohibit ‘intentional race-based discrimination’ is also a window into the direction he is pulling the department’s Civil Rights Division in his effort to reverse Obama administration policies on a range of issues, including criminal justice, policing and voting rights. 
• For a Republican Party still searching for consensus in the Trump era, Sessions’s moves signal that the administration is embracing the base during a time of turbulence and tension, with heavy attention being paid to the concerns of the white voters who lifted Trump into the presidency.Some Republican operatives also see the affirmative action initiative as a strategic play by the White House to rally middle-class and upper-middle-class white voters, especially as the Republican agenda on Capitol Hill has stalled.”
• The issue came up most recently in 2016, when the Supreme Court upheld an affirmative action program at the University of Texas that was challenged by a prospective white student who was not accepted there. [CNN / Ariane de Vogue]
• Affirmative action proponents, on the other hand, argue that the policy evens the playing field for minority students. In the University of Texas case, the university argued that giving more minority students access to higher education would lead to more diverse leaders in government and business. [The Atlantic / Alia Wong and Isabel Fattal]
• Some education experts say that rather than such an intense focus on race in colleges and universities, the federal government should be turning its attention to inequality in K-12 education instead. [Inside Higher Ed / Scott Jaschik]