Affirmative Action

Because Whites and Minorities Should Be Equally Screwed in This Grim Legal Job Market

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The tipsters at Kirkland & Ellis who have complained about the gay cocktail party and the diversity networking forums would welcome this news, which comes from our home state. Reports Charles Toutant in the New Jersey Law Journal (subscription):

Seton Hall University School of Law has suspended its “Partners in Excellence” minority scholarship program while it considers whether it can make the selection process race-neutral, as federal regulators demand that it be.

The school has also entered an agreement with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to ensure that an annual job fair, run by local law firms but promoted by the school, is not restricted to minority students.

The actions are the result of a departmental investigation in response to a 2003 complaint that the minority programs are discriminatory. The grievant, David Wilson, a white Brooklyn Law School graduate looking for a job, came across promotions of the job fair and scholarship program online. He reported to the Department of Education that the job fair was exclusively for minority students and that the law school’s Partners in Excellence program preferred minority students.

More details about the programs appear in the full article (subscription). The tipster who sent this our way predicts: “[T]his will undoubtedly be a comments clusterf**k. Let the closet racists be heard!”
What do you think of minority-only scholarships and job fairs within the legal profession? Sound off in the comments, or take our poll, which appears below.
We could break this down into a series of more targeted questions — e.g., scholarships vs. job fairs? which minorities deserve preferential treatment? — but we’re not Gallup. So here’s a rather broad question, designed to take the temperature of the ATL readership on a very general level.

Under Federal Scrutiny, Seton Hall Puts Minority Scholarships on Hold [New Jersey Law Journal]

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