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LOS ANGELES: President Donald Trump’s administration said on Thursday it would investigate admission practices at some of California’s top universities, broadening a campaign against elite educational institutions.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had ordered probes into how students are admitted to the private Stanford University, as well as to three of the most prestigious campuses of the University of California system — Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine.
“President Trump and I are dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity across the country,” Bondi said in a statement.
“Every student in America deserves to be judged solely based on their hard work, intellect, and character, not the colour of their skin.”
A spokesperson for the University of California said the institutions have not considered race in admissions since it was outlawed in the state by a 1996 ballot measure, but clarified school applications gather race and ethnicity data “for statistical purposes only”.
Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2025
