Skip to content
LPBN-Icon-v1 (1)
The Right Coast
A Member of the Law Professor Blogs Network

Wall Street Journal Publishing Company Favors Race-Based Admissions? Gail Heriot

By Thomas A. Smith

A few months ago I posted something about the New York TImes’ insistence that Ivy League admissions decisions ought to be based solely on SAT scores and other strictly academic indicators.  (No, not recently, the statement was made back in 1960.  Today the folks at the NYT are wholehearted devotees of the “comprehensive review” system mentioned in the post.)

In fairness, I should point out that the Wall Street Journal (or rather an affiliate of its publisher Dow Jones & Co.) hasn’t been playing to type either.  And its inconsistency is of a much more recent vintage.  Despite the WSJ’s editorial stance favoring race-blind decisions, the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund has apparently been operating an urban journalism program at colleges around the nation that is open only to minority students.  One applicant–Emily Smith–was originally accepted into the program, but when Dow Jones found out she was white, her acceptance was revoked.  She sued. Fox News reports that the case has now been settled by her attorneys at the Center for Individual Rights on terms favorable to Ms. Smith.

Race will not be used as a criterion for enrollment in more than two dozen urban journalism programs nationwide under settlement of a lawsuit filed for a white high school student who was rejected.

Dow Jones Newspaper Fund, which sponsors the programs, and other principals agreed to the settlement in return for the legal challenge being withdrawn by the Center for Individual Rights, both parties said Wednesday.

The center filed the class-action lawsuit in September on behalf of Emily Smith, 16. She said she was accepted last spring to the Urban Journalism Workshop at Virginia Commonwealth University, but one week later was rejected after program sponsors learned she was white.

The settlement requires VCU and other programs sponsored by Dow Jones to select students “without regard to race.” The programs also agree to publicly acknowledge they will offer no preferential treatment or discriminate against any prospect “on the basis of race or ethnicity.”

Neither VCU, Dow Jones nor any of the principals admitted any wrongdoing. VCU agreed to pay $25,000 to Emily and her attorneys and admit her to the program next summer.