Economist: Harvard Under Fire For Alleged Asian Admissions Quotas
excerpt:Nov 29th 2014
Affirmative action Harvard under fire
Does the university impose silent quotas against Asian-Americans? Nov 29th 2014
IN 1978 the Supreme Court, in the Bakke case, struck down racial quotas in higher education. Summing up, Justice Lewis Powell called the undergraduate admissions policy at Harvard an “illuminating example” of a better approach. The elite Ivy League institution did not reserve a specific number of places for poor minority candidates. Instead, it considered race as one of several “plus” factors in a student’s file. Thirty-six years later, Harvard’s method of reviewing candidates is being challenged in a federal district court in Boston. The plaintiffs claim its admissions policy is a quota system in disguise that discriminates against Asian-Americans.
This is the latest legal challenge to affirmative action—and the first to target a private university—hatched by Edward Blum, an activist bent on dismantling Bakke. Among other campaigns, Mr Blum’s organisation, the Project on Fair Representation, recruits students who believe they have been unfairly rejected from universities that use racial preferences.
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excerpt:Nov 29th 2014
Affirmative action Harvard under fire
Does the university impose silent quotas against Asian-Americans? Nov 29th 2014
IN 1978 the Supreme Court, in the Bakke case, struck down racial quotas in higher education. Summing up, Justice Lewis Powell called the undergraduate admissions policy at Harvard an “illuminating example” of a better approach. The elite Ivy League institution did not reserve a specific number of places for poor minority candidates. Instead, it considered race as one of several “plus” factors in a student’s file. Thirty-six years later, Harvard’s method of reviewing candidates is being challenged in a federal district court in Boston. The plaintiffs claim its admissions policy is a quota system in disguise that discriminates against Asian-Americans.
This is the latest legal challenge to affirmative action—and the first to target a private university—hatched by Edward Blum, an activist bent on dismantling Bakke. Among other campaigns, Mr Blum’s organisation, the Project on Fair Representation, recruits students who believe they have been unfairly rejected from universities that use racial preferences.
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- Edward Blum 2008 he helped launch the case of Abigail Fisher, a white woman with a high B+ average who was rejected by the University of Texas at Austin. Ms Fisher lost, and lost again last summer and is petitioning the justices for yet another hearing.
- Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a new vehicle for Mr Blum’s campaign. The SFFA has an impressive poster-child: an unnamed offspring of Chinese immigrants with perfect scores on three college admissions tests who graduated first in his (or her) class at a competitive high school, captained the tennis team and volunteered as a “fundraiser for National Public Radio”.
- This may be hard to prove. Harvard rejects thousands of students with perfect SAT scores every year.
- Jewish quotas: at Harvard from the 1920s to the 1950s, but draws no direct link to discrimination against Asian-Americans now.
- Increase in Asians And a table in the SFFA’s own brief shows that between 2007 and 2013 Asian-American enrolment at Harvard went from 15% to 18%, an increase of a fifth that may be hard to reconcile with charges of a silent quota. [But Hu studies in mid 1980s show they were at 15%, and trends showed a sudden cap in both Asian and Hispanic admissions, the two fastest growing up, and almost no growth between 1985 and 2005]
- Asians have lower admission share than applicants: Asian-Americans made up over 27% of the applicant pool at the three most selective Ivy League colleges from 2008 to 2012, they comprised only 17-20% of the students admitted. This, the SFFA contends, constitutes [well, it could be a sign, but does not prove] “intentional discrimination” in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
- if the plaintiffs manage to prove that Harvard sets “a cap on the number of Asians who get in”, Mr Primus says, the university will lose and “admissions at elite colleges will probably change in substantial ways.”
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