“On September 2, 2020, you admitted Princeton’s educational program is and for decades has been racist,” the letter notes. “Among other things, you said ‘[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton …’ and ‘[r]acist assumptions…remain embedded in structures of the University itself.’”

“Because of racism, you announced race-based ‘diversity’ measures for hiring, procurement, teaching, fellowship, and research funding,” the letter adds.

“Based on its admitted racism, the U.S. Department of Education ic concerned Princeton’s nondiscrimination and equal opportunity assurances in its Program Participation Agreements from at least 2013 to the present may have been false,” the letter explains. “Finally, the Department is further concerned Princeton’s many nondiscrimination and equal opportunity claims to students, parents, and consumers in the market for education certificates may have been false, misleading, and actionable substantial misrepresentations in violation of” U.S. law. . . .

The Princeton president’s statement

Taken at face value, Eisgruber’s statement does justify a DOE investigation. The university president did indeed confess to propping up “anti-Black racism,” but he clearly did so as a rhetorical weapon. By confessing to institutional racism at Princeton, Eisgruber can then claim that American society as a whole is institutionally racist.

Referring to the perceived police abuse of force in the cases of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Rayshard Brooks, and Jacob Blake, the Princeton president wrote, “This outrageous and awful violence has revealed yet again, and with searing intensity, the long, painful, and ongoing existence of anti-Black racism in America. Racial justice demands the scholarly and practical attention of this University.”

“We must ask how Princeton can address systemic racism in the world, and we must also ask how to address it within our own community,” Eisgruber wrote. “That is true even though, for at least the past fifty years, this University has committed itself to becoming more inclusive. At a University that, for most of its history, intentionally and systematically excluded people of color, women, Jews, and other minorities, Princetonians— from the oldest alumni to the newest undergraduates — now take pride in the diversity of our community.”

“Racism and the damage it does to people of color nevertheless persist at Princeton as in our society, sometimes by conscious intention but more often through unexamined assumptions and stereotypes, ignorance or insensitivity, and the systemic legacy of past decisions and policies.  Race-based inequities in America’s health care, policing, education, and employment systems affect profoundly the lives of our staff, students, and faculty of color,” the president argued. . . .

Eisgruber seized on a supposed racial inequality in Princeton’s departments, overlooking the history of the Western heritage and the basic fact that so many aspects of modern human flourishing — science, free markets, limited government, and universities themselves — did develop in European societies. This is not to say institutions like Princeton should not study African, Asian, North and South American, and other cultures, as well. But Eisgruber engaged in needless self-flagellation, suggesting that studying Western heritage more than other cultures is somehow racist.

“Anti-racism”

Yet this kind of thinking falls in line with the “anti-racist” movement. In his book Stamped From the Beginning, scholar Ibram X. Kendi explains the basic logic of “anti-racism”: People of all races are inherently equal, but some races have more money/prominence than others, therefore the society must be racist.