The founder of Equal Protection Project (EPP), a new initiative to battle racial discrimination in the workplace, believes "fighting against equity discrimination is the civil rights issue of our time" and is intent on doing something about it.
Cornell Law School professor William A. Jacobson, who founded both the Legal Insurrection Foundation and CriticalRace.org, has been an outspoken opponent of the controversial critical race theory. CriticalRace.org is an extensive database that tracks which schools and universities across the nation mandate CRT training. His latest project, EqualProtect.org, is devoted to ensuring fair treatment of all people without regard to race or ethnicity.
"In many ways, forming and launching The Equal Protection Project was an outgrowth of the other work we've done tracking and monitoring what's happening with the critical race theory in the United States, how it has spread, how concepts based on critical race theory have racialized almost everything in our society," Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
"Diversity, equity and inclusion sound very nice. They're very flowery terms, but particularly the equity part, we're now seeing reports of outright discrimination against White applicants, White students, others based on race," Jacobson continued. "And that goes against everything that we stand for. We are against racial discrimination regardless of who it is targeting."
A specific incident that caused the project to come to fruition occurred in Providence, R.I., where the Providence Public School District allegedly engaged in civil rights violations with a racially discriminatory program. Jacobson said the school district is offering a teacher loan forgiveness program, but only non-White teachers can apply.
"It's not a nod and a wink, they are just open about it, and they don't seem to care that it is racially discriminatory," Jacobson said. "We have filed a complaint, which is now with the [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission] about that, and we've publicized it, and they still don't care."
The EPP’s guiding principle is that there is no "good" form of racism. The Rhode Island-based nonprofit will investigate wrongdoing, educate Americans on the situation, and litigate when needed. The project has launched a network of lawyers who can sign up to offer expertise, and over 100 attorneys have registered since EPP was launched last week.
"More racism is never the answer to racism. Fighting racism is the answer. Less racism is the answer. But we do not agree that you can remedy past racism, or even if you can show current racism by discriminating against a new group," Jacobson said.
Jacobson, who first announced the Equal Protection Project last week on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," doesn’t want to see the nation take a step backwards.
"It's the civil rights issue of our time, not only because there are people being discriminated against on the basis of race. That would be bad enough. But it goes to the issue of who we are going to be as a society," he said.
"Are we going to go back to the 1940s and 1950s, but substitute one racial group as the target rather than another? And I don't believe, and we don't believe that is where we should be heading," Jacobson said. "So equity discrimination, discriminating against people on the basis of race to achieve some sort of equal outcome really takes us back to the 1950s. And we don't want to go there. We've made tremendous progress."
Jacobson doesn’t believe America is systemically racist and has urged people fight back against such claims.
"There is no future for this country in a system where you discriminate against people in order to get even, or to take retribution on other people. That's not the answer to society," Jacobson said. "Don't give up the country to this pernicious ideology."
Fox News’ Ashley Carnahan contributed to this report.
