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Title VI investigations review George Mason, UNC and Newark public schools

In December alone, 21 schools joined the list of institutions facing scrutiny for claims of discrimination.

George Mason University
The Fairfax campus of George Mason University. Credit: Nicolas Tan/George Mason University via Wikimedia Commons.

The U.S. Department of Education opened three inquiries last week into two colleges and one K-12 school system for potentially violating Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prevents “discrimination involving shared ancestry.”

These institutions include George Mason University in Fairfax County, Va.; the University of North Carolina, whose flagship school is in Chapel Hill; and the public-school system in Newark, N.J.

Other recent Title IV investigations started earlier this month for such schools as Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City; the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia; and Cornell and Columbia universities in New York state.

In November, the Department of Education began reviewing Rutgers University in New Jersey; the University of California, San Diego; the University of Washington in Seattle; Whitman College in Washington state; Stanford University in California; and the University of California, Los Angeles.

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