On August 12, 2024, Cornell Law Professor and Founder of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, William Jacobson, blew the whistle on the Ithaca City School District (ICSD) in New York.
The Foundation’s Equal Protection Project is listed as a plaintiff in a complaint filed with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR). The case overview of Equal Protection Project v. Ithaca City School District states:
“[ICSD] systematically excluded white students from SOCU [Students of Color United] Summits with the knowledge and the participation of dozens of teachers and administrators, knowledge of the Board of Education, and despite multiple complaints about the racially discriminatory practices from members of the community.”
The SOCU Summit—which took place in 2021, 2022, and 2023— excluded white students from participating in an event that was held on May 31, 2024. SOCU’s Frequently Asked Questions page offers a response to the question “Why aren’t white students invited?” (See below).
The Equal Protection Project found that ICSD’s involvement with SOCU Summit violated the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment as the program primarily discriminates against students based on skin color. The Project requested an OCR investigation to hold the district accountable for “creating and promoting” the segregated summits.
The ICSD’s board of education and Superintendent Dr. Lovell Brown claimed the district received “racist and threatening messages” following the OCR complaint, The Cornell Daily Sun said. Details about the annual SOCU events were further revealed in the Equal Protection Project’s letter to Brown and ICSD Board President Sean Eversley Bradwell. The organization requested remedial action for its blatant discriminatory practices.
On August 19, Jacobson’s organization lodged another complaint with the OCR against the University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign (UIUC), alleging 42 civil rights violations had occurred. The OCR document claims the university illegally discriminated against scholarship applicants based on race, sex, or both when selecting scholarship applicants. The following breakdown was included in the complaint:
Jacobson—who also launched the website CriticalRace.org— told The Daily Illini, “We have never seen a university with this many discriminatory scholarships…It’s really astounding that there were 42 here, which leads us to believe there is a systemic non-compliance here.”
Jacobson further called UIUC’s actions a “real diversity of discrimination” that raises questions about the university’s intentions.
