President Eli Capilouto says the University of Kentucky “must continue to take seriously our goal to be a community where different people and different perspectives can belong.” (Photo by Mark Cornelison | UK Photo)
A federal investigation has concluded the University of Kentucky violated the Civil Rights Act, President Eli Capilouto announced Wednesday.
This comes roughly six months after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced an investigation into the University of Kentucky and 44 other institutions for “allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary practices in their graduate programs” by participating in The Ph.D. Project.
Capilouto said the organization “promotes networking among colleges and universities to create a pipeline for minority students into graduate business programs.” The Department of Education said in March, when it announced its investigation, that the Ph.D. Project “limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”
Capilouto also signed a resolution agreement on Wednesday that ends the investigation. As part of that, the university has 60 days to file a report identifying any other organizations that “restrict participation based on race” with which it has “agreement, membership or partnership.”
Locating any other partnerships will “require a great deal of effort from a large number of people and units,” wrote Capilouto, who said he’s already asked “a team” of employees to begin the work of locating any similar partnerships.
In a letter announcing the findings, the Department of Education wrote that even though UK no longer has a partnership with the Ph.D. Project, “the university endorsed, promoted, and benefited from a program that limited participation based on race through its payment of partnership fees and the support of travel for participants in the 2022-23 and 2023-24 academic year.”
The Ph.D. Project has said it helped more than 1,500 people earn doctoral degrees since its founding in 1994 as part of its mission to diversify workplaces and broaden the pipeline of business leaders.
“Title VI and its accompanying regulations forbid the University’s participation in programs designed to discriminate against individuals on the basis of their race or national origin,” that letter stated.
“The federal government — in this letter of finding and in other policy directives — has made clear that it is closely scrutinizing what we and other institutions do with respect to our financial support of identity-based organizations — both on campus and through external agreements,” Capilouto wrote. “We must take that policy direction seriously. At the same time, we also must continue to take seriously our goal to be a community where different people and different perspectives can belong.”