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Description ‘raised questions regarding compliance with the university’s nondiscrimination requirements,’ campus attorney says
A partnership to support “minority-owned, Black-owned, and women-owned businesses” has been paused by University of Illinois officials following a federal civil rights complaint.
The joint venture, Project MicroBoom, involved the public university’s College of Media and Our Tech LLC.
The latter promotes “the idea of digital neo-activism to create a conglomerate of Afrocentric platforms where the voices and ideas of any underrepresented community, business, and student can be heard.”
Project MicroBoom aimed to start on Thursday and included a four-week marketing program specifically women and non-white business owners. Participants would be guided through branding, website design, and social media marketing plans.
However, the original post advertising the Project MicroBoom event has now been taken down after a complaint from civil rights activist Mark Perry and media inquiries. The College Fix first asked Perry for his insights on the program, based on his extensive history of civil rights activism.
Perry wrote to the Department of Education and called the event a “joint venture in illegal discrimination.”
Since the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign receives federal tax dollars “the University of Illinois is not allowed to engage in this type of race- and sex-based discrimination in violation of Title VI and Title IX,” Perry wrote. He shared a copy of his complaint with The College Fix.
The Fix also emailed the university, the college of media, and Our Tech via email and voicemail asking for any concerns about potential legal problems.
Though none responded, university attorney Collin Richmond told Perry the school’s involvement has been paused.
“The university will not move forward with the proposed project unless its terms and eligibility requirements comply with nondiscrimination laws and university requirements, consistent with the university’s commitment to equality of opportunity,” Richmond told Perry in an email reviewed by The College Fix.
Promotion of the partnership was premature, Richmond said.
“Information about the project, including references to involvement by the College of Media, was published before any agreement for the project was signed,” he wrote in his Sep. 18 email.
Perry told The Fix programs regularly get promoted without an attorney reviewing them for legal compliance.
Economists, business experts question value of business program
An attorney and former business school dean agreed the program is legally problematic, and also questioned the economic benefits of “limiting participation.”
By doing so, “the university also gives up the opportunity to generate additional constructive outcomes,” Allen Mendenhall told The Fix via email.
The economic researcher for the Heritage Foundation said “[]people who are excluded might have benefited more from the program, put its resources to better use, contributed new ideas, improved the program itself, or collaborated more effectively with other participants.”
Mendenhall added: “if participants are taught to view the program as an example of sound economic reasoning, while the program itself reflects poor approaches to risk, liability, scarce-resource allocation, and deadweight loss, it may inadvertently reinforce the very economic misconceptions it should be helping them overcome.”
Economist Walter Block also criticized the premise of the program, that discrimination must be driving female and racial underrepresentation.
Block argues that the flaw is in thinking that the reason females, non-whites, are not proportionately represented in this field is due to racial or sexual discrimination.”
Block cited his decades of research on the topic and recommended the works of scholars such as Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, and Heather Mac Donald.
MORE: ‘BIPOC students’ program info scrubbed by Morgan State U.
