University of Minnesota is under fire for offering summer internships that exclude white students

The taxpayer-funded University of Minnesota has been criticized for a paid summer internship program that allegedly excluded white students.

On Monday, school representatives confirmed they were re-evaluating the graduate studies program after Cornell University law professor William Jacobson filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.

The stage was set out earlier “prepare students of color and Native Americans for graduate school,” and includes a $6,000 stipend for participants, according to a description on the school’s website.

Professor Jacobson, 64, with his Conservative nonprofit organization The Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation filed the complaint with federal officials last week.

“There’s an increasing trend where people think it’s okay to discriminate based on race, as long as the discrimination is against whites or Asians or others, and we don’t accept that,” Jacobson said in a recent interview.

The taxpayer-funded University of Minnesota has been criticized and a Cornell University professor has filed a complaint

In their complaint, the Equal Protection Project asked the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to immediately halt the “discriminatory” program at the University of Minnesota

According to a previous listing on the University of Minnesota website, the Multicultural Summer Research Opportunities Program is “an intensive 10-week summer program in which undergraduate students of color work full-time with a faculty mentor on a research project.”

The application for the program requires students to fill out demographic information.

After drawing attention to the program, it appears that the university dropped the eligibility requirement that an applicant must be Native American or a person of color. Now the requirements only say that participants must be US citizens or permanent residents.

During a conversation with the New York PostJacobson said he believes the University of Minnesota has no legal right to discriminate against students based on their race.

He called the policy “regressive” and said school officials are “undoing progress on civil rights” and taking the US “back to the 1940s and 1950s.”

In a statement to The Post, a university representative said the program is being re-evaluated.

The school “regularly reviews the selection criteria for thousands of different scholarships, grants, and other financial awards that are given to our students each year.”

The representative added administrators would “evaluate the criteria for this student support program as part of this routine process and make any necessary updates.”

The Cornell law professor added that he believes there are other ways to attract students of color to other community programs.

“What you can’t do is put categorical racial barriers to participation, and that’s what they’ve done,” he said.

“There’s an increasing trend where people think it’s okay to discriminate based on race, as long as the discrimination is against whites or Asians or others, and we don’t accept that,” Cornell professor William Jacobson said in a recent interview.

The internship was previously designed to “prepare students of color and Native Americans for graduate school” and includes a $6,000 stipend for participants, according to a description on the school’s website.

The language of the program appears to have been updated to remove the “students of color” eligibility requirement

In their complaint, the Equal Protection Project asked the Federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to immediately remove the “discriminatory” program.

“We are urging the US Department of Education to fully investigate how pervasive segregationist practices are in U. Minnesota. Federal funding should not be used to promote educational opportunities that are limited by skin color,” Jacobson said Fox News digital.

“Federal funding for U. Minnesota needs to be reevaluated,” he continued.

The Cornell professor also alleged that the University of Minnesota was playing “word games” after they initially claimed that the summer research program was not paid for.

Jacobson responded to that claim by stating that a $6,000 stipend is a payment.

He said he would also like university officials to understand the discriminatory ways of the internship.

“If this was a program that limited participation to white people, there would be an absolute shake-up and we would be a part of that shake-up,” Jacobson said.

DailyMail.com reached out to the University of Minnesota for comment on the complaint, but officials did not respond in time for this report.