BUZZ
Following a civil rights complaint and reporting by The College Fix, Duke University has stopped limiting its Alice M. Baldwin Scholars Program to “female-identified students” only.
Program Director Colleen Scott announced Tuesday that it will now be open to all undergraduate students, The Duke Chronicle reports.
“In keeping with Duke’s new Inclusive Excellence philosophy, which requires that all university programs be open to all individuals, the Provost has approved our recommendation that men will now be eligible to apply to the Baldwin Scholars program,” Scott told alumni in an email obtained by The Chronicle.
The language limiting the program to “female-identified undergraduate students” was removed from its website sometime over the past month, according to the student newspaper.
The program, which originally aimed to support female student leaders on campus, now states that its goal is to inspire and support “undergraduate students to become engaged, confident and connected leaders in the Duke community and beyond.”
The university also delayed the application process “by nearly a month,” the report states:
Scott said that although the program is no longer limited to female-identifying students, its mission remains the same— to promote women’s leadership.
“In line with those university-wide standards, Baldwin is broadening its eligibility to include all Duke undergraduates. To be admitted, any applicant must demonstrate the same deep commitment to women’s leadership as the program has always required,” Scott wrote in a Wednesday email to The Chronicle. “The selection bar to become a Baldwin Scholar is already very high, and we are not lowering it.”
As The College Fix previously reported, a watchdog filed a complaint in 2024 to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging the North Carolina university’s female-only program violates federal law.
In the complaint, Mark Perry alleged that the Baldwin Scholars Program violates Title IX as it “operates exclusively for female students and illegally excludes and discriminates against non-female students based on their sex and gender identity.”
Title IX does not have “unless you have good intentions” exceptions, Perry told The College Fix previously, adding that “sex-based discrimination is still unlawful even if it advantages the ‘right’ sex for the ‘right’ reason.”
Perry, a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan Flint, is a prominent civil rights advocate who has filed hundreds of complaints alleging civil rights violations at American universities in recent years.
MORE: Duke’s female-only scholars program constitutes sex discrimination, watchdog says
