A Major Win at UW-Madison—And Our Ongoing Fight

Dear Supporters,

We wanted to share an update that highlights exactly why our mission is so critical—and how our steadfast pressure is forcing major institutions to change their ways.

The College Fix published a crucial report this week exposing how the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School quietly backed away from the racially exclusionary language used for its prestigious William H. Hastie Fellowship. For years, the university explicitly used descriptions stating that the program “especially encourages applications from candidates of color.”

When called out, UW-Madison quickly scrambled to disavow that language, claiming the program is open to everyone and blaming third-party sites—even though records show the university used that exact exclusionary phrasing on its own official website for years.

This pivot is an important victory, but we must look at the facts honestly: a review of the program’s 53-year history reveals that out of 48 fellows, 47 were minority candidates and not a single white male has ever been selected.

CEO’s General Counsel, Shawna Bray, put this perfectly in her interview with The College Fix:

“I see this as trying to pay lip service to the EEOC guidance that encourages employers to post jobs widely or to encourage diverse candidates to apply… I do think it crosses a line when it says, ‘especially encourages.’ [This wording] raises a red flag, and it’s probably why they seem to have deleted it.”

As Shawna rightly noted, universities have historically operated under the dangerous assumption that employment decisions could bypass federal law under the guise of higher education diversity:

“Ames clarified what has always been true under the Civil Rights Act, which is that you cannot discriminate against the majority any more than you can discriminate against a minority… [People mistakenly believed higher education carve-outs] also applied to employment decisions. That was never okay. Never allowed. Never legal.”

CEO’s Role in This Fight

When we look at this victory, we are incredibly proud of our team’s role in creating the accountability framework that makes these course corrections necessary. Our primary focus at CEO has been ensuring our organization remains the premier watchdog and legal powerhouse capable of holding these massive state institutions to account. By giving leaders like Shawna the mandate, resources, and institutional backing to aggressively monitor and publicly challenge these infractions, we are forcing universities to think twice before violating the law.

We didn’t just stumble into this moment. CEO has deliberately built a strategy centered on robust legal scrutiny and public pressure, much like our multi-decade campaign that recently culminated in the DOJ investigation into racial preferences at the UCLA School of Medicine. When universities realize that organizations like ours are watching—and are legally armed with recent landmark Supreme Court precedents—they are forced to quietly scrub their discriminatory policies to avoid the legal fallout.

To put it plainly: they are changing their language because they know we are ready to act.

This is an honest win, but it is only a partial one. Scraping discriminatory language from a website is just “paying lip service” if the actual hiring practices don’t change. We are going to ensure that UW-Madison—and institutions like it across the country—actually adhere to the colorblind standard of the Civil Rights Act. To further this work, we’ve even launched new initiatives like our Visiting Economist research project to map out and eliminate racial preferences in professional programs nationwide.

Thank you for your continued support. We couldn’t maintain this relentless pressure without you.

Warm regards,

The CEO team

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