Federal law is clear that institutions receiving money from the government may not engage in racial or sexual discrimination. That rules out any sort of program that is open only to some students based on race or sex. And yet, colleges and universities frequently set up programs that are.

Economics professor Mark J. Perry has been waging a battle against those illegal programs for years and has had a great deal of success in making schools stop discriminating. In this interview, Glenn Reynolds talks with Perry about his remarkable success.

One surprising thing is that the federal bureaucracy that Perry has to work with when he files complaints (and he’s done hundreds of them) is actually cooperative. The Office for Civil Rights is notoriously leftist, but the law is clear and the people in OCR don’t ignore his complaints.

And why does Perry undertake this extra work? Why don’t the affected individuals who are kept out file complaints themselves? Sometimes they do, but, Perry explains, often they fear retaliation from the school even though that would be illegal.

What I’d like to know is why Secretary Cardona doesn’t send out a “Dear Colleague” letter to state clearly to all college leaders that discriminatory programs are not legal and will not be tolerated. Since that hasn’t happened, one might conclude that the Education Department doesn’t really mind “woke” discrimination.

Bravo to Mark Perry for fighting this battle.