UC Berkeley Law Review Poised To Delete All Application Records After Editors Pledged To Select Applicants Based on Race
The flagship law review at the University of California, Berkeley, is poised to delete all internal application records after the Washington Free Beacon reported on the journal’s use of personal statements to promote a “diverse membership,” sparking concerns that the journal is attempting to destroy evidence that could be used against it in the event of a discrimination probe.
The California Law Review will vote tomorrow on a document retention policy that would require the journal to delete all “Write-On application materials following the conclusion of each year’s Write-On process,” as well as any materials related to the election of the journal’s Holistic Review Committee, an eight-person body that grades applicants’ personal statements, according to a source familiar with the situation.
Members of that committee have pledged in writing to “uplift Native voices,” weigh “diverse life experience” against “technical editing abilities,” and “integrate anti-racist sentiment” into the selection process, the Free Beacon reported in August. The proposed policy would eliminate any record of those pledges, making it harder to sue or investigate the journal for race discrimination.
At least one editor has argued that the move would raise legal concerns about the destruction of evidence and could expose students to criminal liability.
“[I]t seems that the provisions relating to designated communications and to candidate statements could be construed as being intended to avoid the creation of the kind of evidence that was recently leaked to the Washington Free Beacon, and to bar editors from reporting it,” the editor wrote in an email to the law review on Tuesday. “If I were a federal prosecutor or immigration services officer, I might regard this as a system designed to enable violation of the civil rights laws by engaging in discrimination on racial and other grounds through the selection of [Holistic Review Committee] members that publicly stated their intent to do so.”
