UMinn Reconsiders Summer Internship Designed Only for ‘Students of Color’

The University of Minnesota (U-M) is re-examining a summer internship program that was initially offered only to “students of color.”

The Pathways to Graduate School: Summer Research Program (“Pathways”) eligibility requirements have since been amended to require that applicants are either U.S. citizens, permanent residents, or possibly “those with unique citizenship status.”

U-M’s changes to the Pathways program arrived shortly after Cornell Law School Professor William Jacobson filed a complaint to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights. “There is an increasing trend where people think it’s OK to discriminate on the basis of race as long as the discrimination is against whites or Asians or others, and we don’t accept that,” he told The New York Post.

A U-M representative informed The Post that the school was “evaluating the criteria for this student support program…and [would] make any appropriate updates.”

As of this reporting, however, a small portion of the Pathways webpage still notes that the program is intended for “undergrads of color.”

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Should the university allow the Pathways race-based requirement to remain intact, a majority of undergraduate students would be excluded from the program.

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