Princeton's decision to nix its summer program for minorities interested in doing graduate work in public policy has been all over the news and the blogosphere. Coverage of that decision has included the tantalizing information that Princeton acted as it did because it knew of another, unnamed university that had ignored the Center for Equal Opportunity's warnings and had subsequently gotten itself reported the the Department of Education. Now we know the name of the school: MIT.

As John Rosenberg noted earlier this week, MIT also runs elite summer programs that exclude whites. Today, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that MIT has decided to open two summer programs to whites and Asians in response to the investigation the Office of Civil Rights has been conducting on that campus since last spring. MIT's programs were brought to the OCR's attention by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute after MIT ignored their attempt to convince the university to bring its exclusionary programs into line with the law. One of the programs was for minority high school students interested in science and engineering (John Rosenberg's co-blogging daugher Jessie was not allowed to apply to it because she is white); the other was designed to help entering freshmen adjust to college life.

Though MIT has shown a slower learning curve than Princeton, it has reached a similar conclusion about the legality of its programs. "We are not aware of any racially exclusive programs that have been successfully legally defended," said Robert P. Redwine, MIT's dean for undergraduate education. Jamie Lewis Keith, the university's senior counsel, was equally blunt, saying that "from a legal perspective, we did not have a lot of choice."
Lester Monts, the University of Michigan's senior vice provost for academic affairs, has called Princeton's decision "irrational" and has proudly announced that Michigan runs "many" such programs. But as MIT joins Princeton in acknowledging the indefensibility of their past procedures, it's Michigan that is beginning to look irrational.