Berklee College of Music scrubs ‘Black Alumni Weekend’ info following federal civil rights complaint

UPDATED

Berklee College of Music appears to have removed information about its “Black Alumni Weekend” following a federal civil rights complaint.

The private university in Boston originally sent out an email welcoming “Afro-diasporic (Black) students” to the second annual “Berklee Black Alumni Weekend,’ according to a complaint filed by Do No Harm senior fellow and University of Michigan professor emeritus Mark Perry. The school scheduled the celebration for Sept. 19 and 20.

Following Perry’s complaint, filed with the Department of Education and shared with the university, the school removed some of the information, according to information the civil rights activist provided to The Fix.

The original link for the event now redirects to a website for the school’s Africana Studies Department, Perry pointed out to The Fix via email. The school also removed or deactivated Instagram links for the event registration and RSVP form, and made the Black Alumni Weekend website available only for “Berklee students, staff, faculty, alumni, and trustees.”

Perry, who obtained the invitation from a Berklee College alumnus, called the event a “violation of Title VI,” in his complaint.

He also alleged the weekend is “a racially discriminatory event being offered exclusively (or at least primarily and preferentially for Black alumni) for Black alumni, while excluding and discriminating against non-Black alumni, including alumni who identify as Asian, Hispanic, White, and Native American based on their race, color, or national origin.”

Perry’s complaint urged the Office for Civil Rights to “investigate Berklee College of Music for race-based discrimination.”

The invite, sent to Berklee alumni, asked former students to “celebrate, network, jam, and visit with the Berklee community, while witnessing the exponential fruit of generations of student, staff, and faculty advocacy and activism.”

In an email with The College Fix, Perry described how Berklee covered up online evidence of the event after he sent the administration a copy of his civil rights complaint.

While the school didn’t provide public information about the 2025 event, the archived website from the 1st annual “Berklee Black Alumni Weekend” described a “Black Joy Block Party,” and a session on “The State of Black Lives @ Berklee” featured in the original event.

Perry’s complaint recommended that the school either “discontinue” the event or “remove the word Black from the event name, remove all references to Black alumni, remove all racial eligibility restrictions, and open the event to all individuals and alumni regardless of race, color, or national origin.”

He told The Fix the university “is hiding evidence of its planned illegal discrimination from the public and from OCR.”

His message included in the courtesy copy of the complaint sent to the school’s general counsel and president called attention to the school’s Notice of Non-Discrimination, which says the school “does not discriminate on the basis of … color … national and ethnic origin, … … or any other characteristic protected by law.”

“Just as it would be illegal and unethical for Berklee to host, fund, and promote a White Alumni Weekend, it is equally illegal and objectionable for Berklee to host, fund, and promote a Black Alumni Weekend,” Perry told the school administration. He also requested that the school’s “General Counsel conduct a parallel internal legal review of [its] planned illegal race-based discrimination later this month.”

According to an email with The Fix, Perry has filed “992 federal civil rights complaints with the Office for Civil Rights for more than 2,500 violations of Title VI (race-based discrimination) and Title IX (sex-based discrimination) at approximately 850 US colleges and universities.”

He told The Fix events like this “could be described as a form of leftist and liberal bias because of the hypocritical double standard for the enforcement of federal civil rights laws.”

“While illegal discrimination and special preferences that favor racial minorities and females are allowed at colleges and universities,” Perry says that “illegal discrimination against Whites, Asians, and males is tolerated and often actively promoted. “

He told The Fix that “there are no ‘if you have good intentions’ exceptions to Title VI’s prohibition of race-based discrimination,” and that “discriminating based on race in favor of Black alumni” is “legally prohibited” in spite “of its possible good intent.”

Perry says that the courtesy copy of a federal complaint to a school’s leadership “often motivates them to promptly take corrective action to resolve their non-compliance with federal civil rights laws,” long before the OCR resolves “violations.”

Perry told The Fix that  “self-correction of Berklee’s Title VI violation would allow [him] to withdraw [his] complaint, and [he] would be happy to do so.” 

The Fix received no response to media inquiries sent out to members of the public relations team and the Africana Studies Department at Berklee College of Music in the past two weeks.

The Fix reached out to the media relations team at Berklee College of Music by email on Sept. 15 and Sept. 22, leaving a voice message with the media relations phone number on Sept. 22. The Africana Studies Department did not respond to two emails in the same time period, nor did the Department of Education.

Following publication of the article, The Fix received further comment from Joe Mobley, an ambassador for Project 21. The group advocates for black conservativism and is a project of the National Center for Public Policy Research.

“This complaint must succeed, and the federal government must make good on Trump’s threats
to defund any institution that continues to practice woke, anti-science, anti-reality, and inherently
prejudiced practices, such as black only spaces and events,” Mobley told The Fix via email. “The administration can no longer deal in half measures, as they have proven completely ineffective. If this time of increasing hostility and uncertainty has taught us anything, we must learn that half measure are useless against an endless march toward the more radical fringes.”

Mobley, who is black, added further comment on the problems with what Berklee is doing.

“Prejudicial practices like the one on display at Berklee sow seeds of doubt, division, distrust,
and, in increasing numbers, hate,” he said. “

“This was not the dream of the Civil Rights leaders who came before us.”

Editor’s note: The article has been updated with comment from Joe Mobley.

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