WILL filed a similar complaint a year ago in January 2025, claiming UW-Madison had at least 60 race-based scholarships during the 2024-25 school year.
“For example, the Alliant Energy/Erroll V. David Achievement Award requires an undergraduate student to be ‘from one of the following underrepresented groups: African American, Hispanic or Latino, American Indian, Southeast Asian, or from a racial or ethnic group traditionally underrepresented in the field of engineering or business,’” the civil right complaint says.
UW-Madison has reviewed its scholarship distribution and uses a “pool and match” process to comply with the law, university spokesperson John Lucas said in a statement.
Through that process, the university offers a student funding based on “merit, need, major, GPA, or a variety of other non-identity based characteristics,” according to the UW-Madison website.
The Office for Civil Rights hasn’t notified UW-Madison of the complaint, but the university will cooperate with any review, Lucas said.
WILL:
During the 2024-25 school year, WILL discovered that UW-Madison offered at least 60 race-based scholarships to students, excluding many white and Asian students from even applying for these scholarships. To hold these actions accountable, WILL filed a federal civil rights complaint against UW-Madison in January 2025. In March 2025, the Trump Administration opened an investigation on UW-Madison’s race-based practices.
The following month, UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin, stated during a legislative hearing, “Nobody is getting a scholarship from UW Madison on the basis of the racial preference.” This is the same chancellor who authored a memo calling to rebrand DEI initiatives, later criticized by WILL.