Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process
npr.org
npr.org
Every time the SCOTUS hears one of these cases they acknowledge that, but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing field. So the end goal even according to SCOTUS is for these measures to eventually become unconstitutional.
So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Is there a specific goal? Or is it something unachievable like "when income inequality is fixed".
There simply is not a quick easy solution and those who are not oppressed simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem. I encourage every person who feels these programs are unfair to spend time volunteering in poor minority communities.
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/)
>The requirement that all race-conscious admissions programs have a termination point "assure[s] all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself." Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S., at 510
>But such measures, the Convention instructs, "shall in no case entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate rights for different racial groups after the objectives for which they were taken have been achieved." Ibid.; see also Art. 1(4) (similarly providing for temporally limited affirmative action); Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, Annex to G. A. Res. 34/180, 34 U. N. GAOR, 34th Sess., Res. Supp. (No. 46), p. 194, U. N. Doc. A/34/46, Art. 4(1) (1979) (authorizing "temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality" that "shall be discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved").
Difficult to answer, and honestly not at all a priority to have an answer.
Also related: California Alien Land Law of 1913 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Alien_Land_Law_of_1...), targeting mostly Asians (Japanase, Chinese, and Koreans). SCOTUS reaffirmed this law in 1923, it was finally invalidated in 1952.
And Jewish people are a protected class, even defined by SCOTUS as a race for purposes of Civil Rights/Anti-discrimination laws
No, that is not the justification being used.
The argument used to justify this racism is that a rich education requires exposure to diverse people and ideas, and so the educational mission of the school requires that they bring in sufficient numbers of otherwise-underrepresented racial groups. If they can't do this, they say, they won't be able to give their students a good education.
[Note that I'm just playing devil's advocate by citing their view; I actually think it's bollocks. Sure, being surrounded by diverse ideas is important in education. But if they were truly interested in this, then they'd be trying to recruit based on that actual argument, by looking for Protestants and Catholics and Mormons; tall and short people; introverts and extroverts; right-handers and left-handers; city folk and country folk. The fact that the only dimension along which they measure diversity is race reveals that the justification they give is nothing but a convenient rationalization.]
Similarly, coming from a minority religious or cultural background can also be a plus for a college application. Perhaps your complaint is that the process by which these benefit an applicant is less systematized than it is for race? Or that racial preferences are too systematized?
The other categories you mention are likely to be diverse by default---colleges already have a pretty good distribution of short and tall people, and the hand dominance distribution is also pretty representative. There aren't any mechanisms that impede the society-wide distribution of these traits from replicating itself in the student body.
Do they present any evidence to support this claim? I'm only aware of studies like that of Robert Putnam showing that diversity is extremely detrimental to community engagement and cohesion, among many other things.
This shouldn't be an acceptable justification, "righting historical wrongs" is a highly subjective policy goal which shouldn't be relevant to a verdict of "constitutionality".
But that's not what's at stake here. Chad is doing great, legacy admissions are alive and well. Meanwhile Cletus and Liu are being discriminated against on race despite their real history that flies in the face of your framing.
Why must they be thrown under the bus? Why not Chad?
This is actually incorrect. The only rationale SCOTUS has ever accepted for affirmative action is to create diverse student bodies. They have never accepted past discrimination as a rationale. For what it's worth, I'm a (former) lawyer. But you don't have to take my word for it! See https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/#tab-opi...
Actually, SCOTUS specifically identified this motivation ("right these historical wrongs") as improper and affirmative action programs premised on it are illegal. That is why affirmative action programs instead talk about "diversity" -- SCOTUS blessed "diversity" as an exercise of judgment by the school that would allow otherwise impermissible race-based admission.
Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003) (link: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/539/306/)
>The requirement that all race-conscious admissions programs have a termination point "assure[s] all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself." Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S., at 510
If it were about diversity as you claim, rather than righting historical wrongs of inequality, there would be no concept of a termination point of these programs as diversity would be an ongoing concern ad infinitum.
I don't know about silly, it certainly looks unlawful to me.
I quoted wrong number. It's 25% vs 40%.
https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics
Affirmative action doesn't actually bother me as much as legacy based admissions. Just absolutely idiotic that it's accepted.
The major factors pushing down that percentage are legacy admissions and the vague "personal rating," which seems to be the knob Harvard admissions turns to get the demographic ratios it desires. Asians are systematically given a far lower "personal rating" than other demographics.
Source: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/10/harvard-admissio...
Secondly, why doesn’t Harvard just admit Asian Americans that score poorly to bring the Average down and chalk it up to amazing character?
If a higher court overturns your decision, then there should be consequences.
End
An appellate court could find that this fact, combined with other circumstantial evidence, indicates that quotas were used — even if not put in writing.
Also, it is well known that "strict scrutiny" is interpreted differently in the context of affirmative action than "traditional" discrimination. So when a judge says something survives strict scrutiny, the analysis provided may be more akin to intermediate scrutiny (applied to sex-based discrimination) or rational basis (applied to pretty much everything else).
- Diversity is good
- Discrimination is bad
When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both promote diversity and not discriminate?
Is that the case? I always thought that the case is brought on because the diversity candidate is NOT often "equally qualified,"
But the reality is that it's more of a spectrum, and in general universities usually want to take the most qualified people they can, just like companies want to get the most qualified job applicants.
Absolutely discrimination. Unless the definition of discrimination has changed significantly that is.
The difference is when it is systematic. It is currently systematic in most universities and schools.
Stop treating it like an exclusive club that hands out occupational licenses for an elite class of the well connected few and give as many people as you can a quality education. With the money that these universities receive that should be possible. If increase in the amount of students would have even remotely kept pace with funding we wouldn't have the need to treat this like a zero-sum race game.
I think the name 'Race Conscious' is not a great description where it actually means race and oppression.
Hasan Minhaj did a pretty informative episode on the lawsuit against Harvard affirmative action -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm5QVcTI2I8
Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x)
Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x)
Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x)
Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x)
African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x)
Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x)
non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x)
[2] https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat...
[3] https://features.thecrimson.com/2016/freshman-survey/lifesty...
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews, upper estimate used
> They said that only about a third of the students were from families in which all four grandparents were born in this country, descendants of slaves. Many argue that it was students like these, disadvantaged by the legacy of Jim Crow laws, segregation and decades of racism, poverty and inferior schools, who were intended as principal beneficiaries of affirmative action in university admissions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/24/us/top-colleges-take-more...
Also international students are counted separately from the race/ethnicity categories. This is due to how the government classifies and collects information about race and ethnicity (see IPEDS definitions below).
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/report-your-data/race-ethnicity-de...
I used to work at Harvard as an institutional research analyst. I actually submitted the final reports (institutional demographics and other stats) to US Department of Education. If anyone is curious, a large portion of the aggregate demographic statistics is open and available to the public: https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/use-the-data
I think these should be able to add up to more than 100. E.g., someone who is both Hispanic and Black.
The average age of people who identify as two races is markedly lower than other groups though they're a relatively small group, so not sure how that works out. But there's roughly as many people who identify as both white and native American as just native American. If Harvard only lets them choose one, which I guess they must if it adds up to 100%, then that could have a big impact on those numbers depending on how people react to that.
Harvard doesn't consider all US born students. They have an academic floor. Most of the US population does not meet the academic floor. Low achieving students are effectively not in the applicant pool even if they apply.
A more accurate representation of the applicant pool would be the USA demographics that meet the 10th percentile SAT score at Harvard. However, even with this more accurate pool, the accepted population would differ because different races have different average scores within this pool. The races with lower averages would be expected to be underrepresented in the accepted pool compared to the applicant pool.
See page 45. Asians have a much higher bar and lower probability of getting in after balancing for same academic level. Seems like discrimination to me.
And how does harvard assert the "race" of someone in the first place?
This is all extremely confusing.
I find that the black community (including myself) will quickly point to the reason of Affirmative Action, and what it is trying to accomplish. I find it fair if a historically marginalized group require over-representation to "break" it's cycle. Yet I find something troubling.
I'm concerned that many of the flagship arguments that are still often brought forth by this community have propositions that continue to look less and less stable.
There is a perpetual cycle that the average African-American faces, often said starting from slavery. It has frequently been said that starting with proper education, will this cycle begin to unravel. Though there's been significant attempts to equalize opportunity of education for decades, yet there's been virtually no improvement in the racial performance gap (Black-White).
The main reason I commonly see for this gap is socioeconomic status and parental education. College Board prompts every testing student for their family income status, race, gender, etc. I'd love CB to dump every categorical statistic they've collected, but they do provide a summary every year. Every year they're able to give basic statistics on performance of the different groups based upon the groups stated above.
What I find really interesting was for 2 separate years (2003, 2008) College Board made public test performance by race x income. College Board had also released 'Reaching the Top: A Report of the National Task Force on Minority High Achievement The book' (1999). The book generally stated that black students whose parents were college-educated scored lower than white students whose parents did not graduate high-school. Both datasets show that black students from high socioeconomic families were scoring comparatively to white students from low socioeconomic families.
I see this as deeply troubling. Though there is an large list of variables that are not publicly accounted for, it would make more sense for discussion to be shifted towards the discovery of the cause of the gap.
I fear that Affirmative Action is inherently unjustified and examples like similar to OP's post will continue to hurt the opportunities of the talented.
(2008) [JBHE] https://lesacreduprintemps19.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/why...
(2005) [JBHE] http://www.jbhe.com/features/49_college_admissions-test.html
[Teachers College Record] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280232788_Race_Pove...
Extra bit, attempt to model 1995, caution on the rhetoric but quality article: http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/testing.htm
Tables start at page 40.
How strange - are these people allowed to benefit from affirmative action?
In particular with respect to Harvard and Boston I'd think Catholicism might deserve a mention if we're going to bring religion into this.
In the end I think religious diversity is important but it doesn't belong in the same conversation. You can choose your religion and also turn it on/off at different phases of your life. You also can't see religion from the outside (with some exceptions for example a Sikh turban).
That's not true for race.
The Supreme Court has ruled that in fact Jewish people are a race...at least for purposes of Civil Rights/anti-discrimination laws.
I genuinely am not trying to break out the praeteritio, and say I'm not calling it a 'positive' stereotype, but at a certain level you can't have such a cultural focus on education, and then be gobsmacked when it has statistical significance in things like school admissions.
Like, if I told you that Utah had the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in the US, it's not liable to blow anyone's mind.
Heck, one of the reasons Harvard came up with its holistic admissions process in the first place was targeted at Jewish kids applying. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/9/19/admissions-laws...
Also just a lazy google, I'd hazard to guess you're right about catholic representation being higher than expected. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2015/09...
Judaism as an identity class has a lot more to it than mere religious affiliation.
I have to suspect that if the representation were 0.5x, rather than 5x, then its consideration would strike you as more natural.
If people don't think that breaking "whites" down into Jewish/Non-Jewish and nothing else is strange then I don't think we can discuss this topic rationally.
I would bet that your average Ashkenazi Jew (it is worth noting there are multiple different Jewish ethnic groups) has more genetic commonality with an average person of Ukrainian descent than that Ukrainian person has with someone of Irish descent. So why are the Ukrainian and Irish person both white while the Jewish person isn't?
And also let's point out that there is no distinction for any other group of Middle Eastern people. They instead have to choose between being Asian, African, or European.
Neither did the Nazis, btw.
"According to The Harvard Crimson, 43.2% of legacy students and 20% of athletes in Harvard’s Class of 2019 come from households that earn more than $500,000 a year, compared to just 15.4% of the overall class.
Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said that many of the legacy students applying to the university would be in the most desirable applicant pool regardless of their status.
“Their applications tend to be well put-together," Bacow told NPR. "They have deep knowledge of the institution. So it's a self-selected pool, which, as a group, by almost any metric, looks very, very good relative to the broader applicant pool.” "
https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/09/penn-upenn-philadelphi...
What I really want to know is what ratio they are balancing towards and why that particular ratio is better than any other.
I could pick any arbitrary ratio. How about a ratio that matches the modern demographics of Cambridge? Or Massachusetts? Or the United States? Or North America? Or all of Earth? Or the demographics of the US in 1636 when Harvard was established? Or the demographics some designer thinks looks good in pictures? Or the demographics of the wealthiest 5% of US citizens? Or the demographics of the poorest 5%? So on and so on.
What is the incentive? Is it political? Is it just a ratio that Harvard admins think will keep them safe from political criticism? That clearly didn't work. Are they getting a kickback somehow? Is it a personal agenda to promote education in places the admins agree lacks it? Is it simple bigotry?
I doubt the answers would change my mind, but I'm still very interested.
But now I don't really care. Even if you don't get into your favorite top school, if you're actually a strong applicant you're likely to get into at least one, or if not, somewhere like Berkeley. Not getting into the tippy-top schools only hurts you if you want to do high octane finance (which these days is less attractive than tech IMO), and maybe puts you slightly behind where you could have been regarding internships or where you land your first job/grad school.
I felt like I had "caught up" to where I would have likely been if I had got into Harvard by the time I hit 23. I had to work a bit harder and smarter than if more opportunities were handed to me on a silver platter, since I went to a slightly worse school, but it wasn't a big deal. Meanwhile there are probably people who got into Harvard for which it was actually a completely make-or-break, life-changing event in their lives. Arguably, they deserved, and certainly needed it, more than someone like me.
Also, some number of years out of college, I think the test scores aren't actually worth much except as a broad way of bucketing applicants. They are a poor proxy of key qualities like resilience and self-awareness, which, in my experience as both a job interviewer and alumni interviewer, show up much more in the work history/extracurriculars and the way they write/talk.
If Harvard wanted to admit 1,000 kids with perfect test scores and perfect grades they’d just take the first 1,000 applicants and call it a day.
They can be and are much choosier than that. Why wouldn’t they be? If you have the choice between a 4.0/1600 kid and a 4.0/1600/world-class pianist, who would you take?
When applying to Harvard grades and test scores aren’t even worth mentioning. If you’re counting on those to get you in then you’ve got almost no shot.
I agree it is about more than grades and test scores, and I did have other stuff too, but that's beside the point. Arguing about that is missing the point of what I intended - what I meant is that if you are one of the better applicants, which I do think I was quantitatively (obviously not good enough lol), you don't need to go to Harvard. Whereas for some of the people getting in who might not have without affirmative action, getting into Harvard is actually life changing.
Which would be fine.
Unfortunately, they take the 3.4/1420/Tennis Player instead.
All of these schools have been proven over and over to reduce their standards when an athlete is involved.
Luckily, the world still follows the laws of physics.
I also think the presupposition that an increase in "diversity" is always "good" isn't necessarily always "true".
The "oh wow, that's odd" part:
"The most shocking number in the paper is this: Of the white students admitted to Harvard, more than 43% are in the so-called ALDC category — that is, they are recruited athletes, legacy admissions, applicants on the “dean’s interest” list and children of Harvard faculty and staff. Furthermore, in the model constructed by the authors, three quarters of those applicants would have been rejected if not for their ALDC status."
How about we build our own Harvards where anybody who wants to study can come and learn whatever they want? And the network comes from being surrounded by other people who cared enough to learn.
We don’t need these places anymore. We’ll find our own funding and do our own research and screw the system. We’ll build our own system.
I personally think that the education aspect of colleges is massively overrated, that the quality of the university pretty much all comes from the quality of its recruitment (its students). The teaching is typically very average (researchers aren't necessarily good professors). But if the game is that this badge is required to land a high paying job, a kid today doesn't really have a choice. It's kind of a prisonner dilemna.
We could have a system where the name of the university wouldn't matter that much. That's pretty much how Germany works if I understand correctly.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_California_Proposition_20...
...with blackjack and hookers!
oops, is that not inclusive enough? I would like to rephrase then:
yes person!
The SAT should transition to something like the National Exam in other countries. Offered only once a year, entirely free, very rigorous, and encompassing all subjects. This will provide both the carrot and the stick for the next generation to apply themselves to education. We need a culture that loves education and learning, not just sports and drama.
I would say given the rapid economic growth of Asian countries, the success of Asians around the world, and the need of America to import Asian engineering labor, we have a lot to learn from Asia.
Just look at the 2012 CIA debacle in China. The entire CIA informant network in China was decapitated because China has superior engineers that hacked the CIA communication system. We need to open our eyes and realize that playing silly games have left us weak. We have a weak minded electorate that elects a weak minded president while China is racing ahead with CRISPR and rail guns.
That is demonstrably false from general experience in life.
The question is really how to add transparency and systemization to the process in a way that cannot be gamed. I don’t think everyone believes standardized testing is the answer, so what is it?
My personal opinion is that they will actually create separate admissions pools, under the cover of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The transparency will be about “Fine, for this specific program, we will simply admit the top 400 test scorers” or whatever. Each department will have its own admissions policy and students will be able to choose which to apply to. Everyone gets the same education, opportunities and degree. They will wind up with the same exact class but at least the deal being cut with students is more transparent.
I read somewhere (citation needed) that if truly race-blind admissions were used in the UC system, they'd have 98% Asian students.
(As a dead white male, that's amusing. Just shows how culture affects outcomes.)
You can't make a system that can't be gamed if there's people making judgement calls involved. You can't build a perfect system that makes everyone happy. You just need to build a system you're happy with. No matter what you do, someone with a 4.0 isn't getting into Harvard, and they're going to be pissed about that.
If I were a betting man, I'd put the odds north of 2:1 that this will be overturned if the current SCOTUS sees it.
Apart from anything else a waste of taxpayer money.
If the judge makes the ruling based on previous rulings made by the higher court, while knowing that the higher court is likely to now overturn those rulings, it is still absurd?
The way the US system works is that lower courts are generally bound by previous higher court decisions, assuming those decisions are germane to the case in question.
They need to let in the children of the ultra wealthy for the status symbol, money, and networking for students.
They need to let in the children of high paying donors (not always the same group as above) for the money.
They need to let in a lot of smart students to give legitimacy to the above groups and create new families of donors.
They need to have a demographic profile that roughly approximates the US demographic profile to not appear racist. They also need to have a balanced gender ratio, not overly favor a single region, etc.
They want to have a balanced class, i.e. not everyone studying computer science and economics, people who can play trombone, people for the Fencing team.
You can argue that it's basically all about giving legitimacy and prestige to the ultra donors and wealthy, but it's also about introducing high-achieving people from less privileged backgrounds to those from more privileged backgrounds in the hope that you will get new generations of wealthy donors.
Asians have the highest "personality" scores among alumni interviewers who meet with the applicants and the lowest "personality" scores among admissions officers who don't.
The confusing part is that Title VI prohibits actions by private entities receiving government funding that would violate the constitution, were they carried out by a state entity. The opinion uses "constitutional" as a short-hand for "is in compliance with Title VI, which means it would be fine for a public college to do it as well under the constitution".
Note the title here and at NPR originally said that the Judge said it was constitutional.
(Speaking as an old Harvard alum ('76).)
Maybe you tell them "Harvard's not the only option"?
If you have a University like Harvard and you have it whereby students are admitted strictly on merit and further if you have more people than can be accommodated by merit then is it still Harvard?
If you have a celebrity that is admitted to Harvard (or any 'top' school) is it possible that that person provides more or a better experience in some way to other students then someone who was raised or related to a less notable person?
Pretend for a second you attend school with the daughter of a US President or the son of the head of a major corporation. Do you think that that would provide in itself benefits to other students than in the environment they were raised in? Indirectly in some way?
She did. And was admitted to one of the Ivys. The school was a bit shocked when she arrived to see a 5'1 girl dressed in a way typical of Orthodox Jews.
P.S. You should look up other stories coming out of Masterman which is located in North Philadelphia. This is not even in the top 100.
A family I know (both mom/dad are children of immigrants) had a kid who got into Harvard and/or Stanford. (not specifying which one to protect identity). Both parents went to public college for undergrad and then went to top school for law/medicine.
Their kid went through K-12 in private school.
When their child got into the top college for undergrad, I asked how many from that same high school got into the top Harvard/Stanford.
Mom said 3 got into that college.
And later, dad said 6 from the high school got into same college, and mentioned 3 out of 6 were legacy admissions.
As far as the mom was concerned, the legacy admissions didn't even count as real admittance. :)
For instance, I don't think that matching a Universities demographics to the "national" or "global" demographics is likely to produce highest caliber candidates. What if Jewish and Asian candidates consistently outperform other candidates, why shouldn't a private school be allowed to accept more of the candidates it thinks "deserve" it more?
If people don't like the policies of institutions that do this, or think they are ineffective, over time other institutions will outcompete/outperform them.
[0] https://www.dol.gov/agencies/oasam/regulatory/statutes/title... See also SFFA's complaint: https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/wp-content/uploads/201...
To me this seems like a slippery slope.
I have never witnessed the dynamics of reparation policies. The closest thing we have in Portugal, if it could be so called, is the Jewish Law of Return, a bureaucratic shortcut for granting Portuguese nationality to descendants of 15th and 16th century Portuguese Jews that were forced to flee the country, escaping persecution.
In Portugal, the concept of race has been recognized on the fly, and only in terms of the Constitutional Rights of citizens in the case of discrimination. This might change in the near future. As such, I follow this subject in American politics and news, since the USA are an obvious case-study.
As I see it, the fact that the concept of race is meaningless in anthropological terms, as informative as it can be, is not helpful in fighting prejudice in general or racism in particular. A bit like explaining basic geometry to a flat-earther: in most cases, it is pointless. On the other hand, it seems to me that acknowledging the dynamics of the division of people by racial categories (self-reported or not) is a dead end, and one that might betray its very purpose.
At best, this strategy will sustain the social conscience of the issues of race, without eroding the poisonous constructs associated with it. As in other areas of discrimination, like gender, strategies that favour outcome in detriment of opportunity might have some value to it, as this is a kind of social bailout that could just work. In some European countries, positive discrimination works only as a temporary exception.
But unlike social concepts like gender, or nationality, whose fundamental aspects are less troublesome (there being, as far as I know, no equivalent of transgenderness in race) or whose arbitrariness (like geography) can be critically questioned in different fora, race has the problem of been deep rooted in physical appearance and prejudice.
I don't see how a humanist society can deal in a meaningful way with such a stratification without risking to reinforce racist preconceptions. Am I missing something?
Amy Chau wrote a great book on this: The Triple Package.
This is institutional racism designed to suppress one group and lift up another.
What is the difference?
Asian Americans had to put up with (among other things):
* Being ineligible to become citizens of the United States well after the passage of the 13th Amendment. There was a time in this country when both the white and black man could enjoy citizenship and voting but neither the brown nor yellow man could.
* A good portion of Asian Americans (the Japanese) who were American citizens were enslaved by the government for three years, after having all their land and businesses taken away. This was in the 1940s.
* Being victims of hate crimes. There was an entire gang in New Jersey in the 80s dedicated to beating up and murdering Indians (dotbusters). This is not a new phenomenon. The labor movement in Seattle also organized a mob to rid Washington state of cheap Indian labor in the early 1900s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellingham_riots)
* The stereotype that Asians prevent 'real American' people from achieving their wealth goals is oddly persistent. It is highly reminiscent of the blame that Hitler laid upon the Jews as preventing real Germans from achieving their potential. The Asiatic Exclusion League in the United States had its first meeting in 1907.
* Moreso than black people, Asian Americans are constantly cast as being perpetual foreigners. Americans whose families have been in this country decades are still treated as Asians, rather than 'full' Americans.
I think it is especially telling that the organizations in favor of affirmative action are also the ones that started the Asian exclusion leagues. The labor movement in this country spearheaded affirmative action. Affirmative action discriminates against asians. This continues a long line of labor movement participation in Asian Exclusion Leagues, and it needs to end now.
It seems without some sort of control the worlds most prestigious universities would only admit the wealthiest from the most populous regions - meaning white, Chinese and Indian students, no?
Edit: here it is: https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.165519/...
Also links to an SC case that will likely be cited should they decide to take up this one (which seems unlikely IMHO).
"Racism" is continuing to disadvantage a group that is already at a disadvantage -- blatantly unfair.
A "race-conscious" policy seeks to give advantage to a group that is at a disadvantage, which necessarily will disadvantage a group that is at an advantage. In this thinking, once the disadvantage goes away, then the policy can go away too.
Even if you disagree with race-conscious policies, conflating them with racism is disingenuous.
Fisher v UT (2016) gave us a look at where the justices stand, and the three most conservative justices at the time (Roberts, Alito, Thomas) wanted to strike down UT's affirmative action policy. If the new conservatives (Gorsuch and Kavanaugh) join them, we could have a new majority that believes affirmative action at a public college is always unconstitutional.
I just wanted to offer some observations from my time there.
1. Admissions at Harvard is actually more competitive than most folks realize. There was a running joke that Harvard was moving towards a 0% acceptance rate. With the common app, Harvard has seen an increase in applications every year but the amount of seats available is fixed (~2,000). This year it was about 43,000 applications. That number of available seats is not quite that. The Dean of College has a reserved set of seats that he use at his discretion. There's a set of reserved seats for athletic scholarships. So the actual number smaller of available seats is smaller.
2. Each application is looked at least twice. The entire admissions department locks itself away for about 2 weeks and reviews all the applications. Each officier is responsible for a geographic area and each application is reviewed by 2-3 different officers and scored using an internal rubric. The rubric counts many factors (some of which is discussed in the lawsuit). After meeting a few of the admissions officiers, I have a lot of empathy and respect for them. They were all kind, considerate and very patient folks.
3. I can't speak too much what goes into the admission selection (confidentiality) but there are many factors that play into it outside of just grades and scores. It's worth noting that exceptional candidates are easier to identify (Olympic athletes, students doing groundbreaking research, students with amazing life stories), but they make up small portion of the applicants. Most of the applicants are highly qualified (high test scores, gpa, extra-curriculars) and if there wasn't a limited number of seats, would have been admitted.
4. The troubling narrative that surrounds around race-conscious admissions policies is the implication that under-represented minorities would not meet admissions standards. This is simply not true. Nearly all the students considered for admissions (under represented minority or otherwise) were in in atleast the 98% if not higher. They also had high GPAs and other factors. All the students were very qualified and accomplished. I often wondered if you had a lottery system, would that be better?
5. The variation in SAT score at the upper end corresponds to very tiny percentile differences. The difference between say a 1400 (95%) student and 1600 (99.9826%)is small and honestly (my view) meaningless.
6. One of the interesting things I had to do was review the original case literature on affirmative action. A theme that folks don't talk about is the diversity is not just race/ethnicy that was actually considered in the case law. Geographic diversity and social location do play into Harvard assemement. And the underlying literature is fascinating. Cognitive development literature shows college-age young adults are still developing their world views and college is space where they will run into uncomfortable situations. When faced with the choice of challenging their views or retreating to saftey of thier lived experiences, diversity places a critical role. But not in the way might think. Having others who different from you (not just race, but geography, lived experiences and other factors) plays a significant role. So say you have a student that goes to a local college with the same geographic makeup and lived experiences as their highschool but is otherwise racially diverse, that student is less likely to exposed to experiences that challenge thier world views and help them develop.
7. Harvard and really all other elite college's admissions policies are based on scaricity and it seems outdated. I know the common argument is that scarcity is what drives prestige but Harvard Business School literally allows outsiders to buy their into its network. HBS has like 3 day executive education programs that allow you to say you're an HBS grad and have access to their alumni network for the small cost of 80k (yeah 80k for 3 days!).
Now Harvard's campus is pretty tiny and there is limited space, so that makes sense from the on-campus perspective. But it also has the infrastructure to allow students to attend remotely through its DCE program and Harvard X courses. The stigma of continuing education aside (which is complicated and often unfair), the university should open its traditional programs up. There is precedent for this in the UK at top universities like Oxford, Cambridge, and ICL all of which offer thier main degrees to remote students (of course at price). And there's many problems with this suggestion (who gets access to on-campus vs remote, pricing, fairness, etc) but it's something Harvard and others like it should consider.
Sorry ended up being so long. Hopefully it provides some other views to consider as you think about college admissions.
I'd imagine that the admissions officers, many of them alumni of Harvard or other elite schools, are bright and thoughtful. But I always wondered how they deal with donor admits. "Mmmm, I'm doubtful about this Jared Kushner fellow, but the Development Office has his application marked as a must-admit. Oh well?"
> The difference between say a 1400 (95%) student and 1600 (99.9826%)is small and honestly (my view) meaningless.
If you mean the difference is meaningless (or at least small) when SAT score is figured into the holistic appraisal of the applicant, then I might agree. But I think there's a substantial difference in SAT-taking skill between a 1600 and a 1400. A 1600 means nearly 100% correct answers throughout the test. Someone scoring 1600 knew all the necessary vocabulary, understood the reading passages, and could handle all the math. Someone with a 1400 still could deserve admission, but for excellence in other areas.
Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind. "White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and does not actively reinforce these identities.
By forcing people into these buckets we reinforce the very divisions that we want to overcome.
So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or something else again from scratch were everyone starts on even ground again, and it never mattered what bucket people were in. The simpler option is to use the buckets and say that people in the Black bucket get special benefits at the cost of people in the White bucket to right the wrong that happened, and this needs to continue until they're close to even again.
It's like if a friend steals money from you. The only way you're likely ever going to fix that friendship is if the friend at the very least gives the money back and apologizes. Pretending like it never happened isn't going to work.
An additional thing is that you still have people using the buckets for their benefit, or just because they don't know better. In order to counteract the actions of those people, and recognize who's hurt by them, you have to also use the idea of the "buckets".
"I don't see color" doesn't feel helpful to many people of color. If you believe that there are prejudices, and you want to fix them, saying "everyone immediately needs to stop being prejudice and everything will be better" isn't actually a solution we can enact. What if people don't suddenly decide it's in their best interest to not be racist?
*Edited to remove off topic comment
Those who score higher, pass. Yes, it sounds like a system that favors test takers, but there are so many seats to take that if you don't score enough you really don't deserve the place (I say this as a person who was never smart not good at tests).
Nobody will consider anything else. Sadly, I've noticed a slight shift towards a more american way of talking about things like race and sex, even in universities, but I hope the legal system is strong enough to keep having neutral admissions.
Our economy is already in a bad place, last thing we need is young people being discriminated for anything but their ability to perform a task, even if arbitrary.
So we have this in the United States but it has been accused of being discriminatory because the outcomes differ by race. You can't make this stuff up people!
> Whites should just boycott Harvard. Overall quality of Harvard grads will drop and Harvard will become nothing.
There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in tech.
If anyone is caught discriminating on employment based on race it's directly against federal law.
To bring it back to the article, imagine being a black harvard graduate. People may judge you as lesser compared to asian harvard graduates, because they know that you've been held to different standards, even if you had the merit and deserved your placement in that university.
Note: Trying to make the applicant pool more diverse is not the same as hiring someone solely because of diversity.
Walmart, for example, couldn't refuse to serve black customers and then claim, "nobody is entitled to shop here."
People are saying that they're entitled to a fair opportunity to get in, not that they're entitled to get in period.
I, for one, cannot wait for the n-gate summary of this thread. It'll be one for the ages.
I recently heard that the Spanish government is offering citizenship to a subset of the Jewish population that was kicked out of Spain during the Inquisition. Is this 'justice' for the descendants of those Jews? Is this 'fair' for migrants to Spain who have arrived legally but may be denied the benefits of Spanish citizenship? Has your child ever stomped their feet and crossed their arms when they perceived to be on the negative end of a 'fair' or 'just' ruling by you? Is it fair to the spouse and child of someone who has been committed of a crime that they are institutionalized? Is it fair to the employees of WeWork that they won't get to exercise their shares because it's CEO is a fraud?