Bentley Joins College Presidents Opposing Department of Education’s Princeton Investigation

Chair of the Board and Acting President Paul Condrin has joined college presidents from around the country in signing a letter asking the U.S. Department of Education to stop investigating whether Princeton University is in compliance with federal anti-discrimination law, after Princeton’s president acknowledged systemic racism on campus and outlined efforts to fight it.

The letter signed by Condrin, which was initiated and written by the presidents of Wesleyan University and Amherst College, asserts that, “It is outrageous that the Department of Education is using our country’s resources to investigate an institution that is committed to becoming more inclusive by reckoning with the impact in the present of our shared legacies of racism."

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, universities around the country have carefully reviewed practices and systems on their campuses and taken actions to become anti-racist. In June, Bentley announced the creation of a new task force charged with identifying and investigating practices at Bentley that sustain systemic racism. The Racial Justice Task Force will recommend specific actions to overturn those practices so Bentley can grow as an anti-racist university. The group will produce an executive summary of its work by the end of 2020.