The college admissions process is out of control. A return to grades and test scores should be a relief for everyone. Make a lottery for everyone who crosses a certain threshold, with some income-based affirmative action, and call it a day.
Of course admissions officers would never want to give up their precious power and delusions that they're hand picking the leaders of tomorrow.
150
Can we please implement this? The current system is not good for our children. Admissions officers seem smart. We should free them up to contribute in a useful role.
9
@Sarah No, a "return to grades and test scores" would ensure colleges are filled with nothing but dominant culture students. And, given there is no actual evidence supporting the predictive value of either grades or test scores, it would just be a way of ensuring that people of color remain "in their place."
6
@Sarah
I wonder if there are any Harvard admissions officers who are not Harvard graduates? How could any non-Harvard graduate be worthy of such a position?
Are there any Harvard Asian-American admissions officers?
Professor Boddie states, "This case could have a devastating effect. Consider a black student who grew up on the South Side of Chicago or a Hmong applicant who lives in a working-class neighborhood in Minneapolis."
Do I correctly understand that the Hmongs (of Cambodian ancestry) are ASIAN?
1
Excellent article. Thank you.
1
The trial against Harvard begins next week, I'll be very interested to hear Harvard's justification for their continued use of race in admissions. What exactly is the rationale? It seems the left could never get their story straight when it comes to justification for AA.
First, they will tell you that their justification for accepting blacks and hispanics with lower scores is because they were disadvantaged by going to worse schools, poor kids whose parents can't afford tutors and prep classes for the SAT. But then the overwhelming majority of their admitted blacks and hispanics are from upper middle class, professional backgrounds, who went to good suburban high schools and private schools, got plenty of tutoring and test prepping and still get a break on test scores and grades compared to their Asian and white classmates.
Then they invariably shift the argument to "reparation for historical grievance", which begs the question, how many of their admitted blacks were actually descendants of slaves? A large number of their admitted are scions of first gen. Nigerian or Caribbean doctors. And what historical grievance do we owe Hispanic applicants who are mostly recent arrivals, or Hispanic whites who only have Spanish last names but came from the privileged class in South America?
I'd really like to hear the real reason why Harvard continues to discriminate by race, as neither of the above justifications can stand. Hopefully this trial will shed some light on that.
23
An interesting concept...a college application that cannot show the applicant's name - because it's obviously Hispanic, or the applicant's street address - because anyone familiar with San Francisco or New York knows that it's in the middle of Chinatown.
1
Affirmative action is liberal hypocrisy on race at its finest. As an Asian I think Asian-Americans who continue to vote Democrat are truly the left's useful idiots.
16
Didn't a great American once nearly say "just imagine evaluating prospective students on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin".
11
One aspect of the story that is often overlooked in the reporting is that many of the plaintiffs are not Asian-American, but Asian, born outside the U.S. They should be classified as foreign students, not Asian-American.
Having a green card does not make one 'American', and certainly should not give one the right to try to overturn laws in order to sue one's way into Harvard.
7
@joan little
This has nothing to do with Asians who are not citizens. The numbers for this racial discrimination case are solely based on the statistics for Asian-American applicants. For one thing, the leading universities put citizens and non-citizens into different categories, and consider them according to different standards.
9
Perhaps offering a somewhat unfavorable counterpoint to the narrative here. Although I am strongly in favor of a colorblind society, the ability for underrepresented minorities to recognize their full potential in merit based scoring is hampered by the longitudinal effects of racial bias.
In a world where incarceration rates are substantially higher for African Americans, the wage gap remains at high levels, professional positions continue to be somewhat dominated by racial majorities, and schools based in impoverished districts largely correlating to minority enrollment tend to under perform and lack the scholastic exposure afforded those in more affluent districts, it is difficult for the minority applicant to embody the skill set that he/she might have been able to recognize had she encountered identical opportunities to her majority counterparts.
If by chance you are born into an affluent (often predominantly majority) district your learning opportunities will be ameliorated beginning at the Pre-K level, and your corresponding level of achievement will be reflected in the ability to take AP courses, and achieve higher test scores.
Those absent a parent due to incarceration, or because poverty requires two jobs will have less of the opportunity for an adult to read to them, provide books, take them to the library etc.
Merit based scoring alone will just lead to the perpetuation of the status quo. Neither option is fair, society needs to change not admissions offices.
2
Why not include economic information, in the form of parents’ most recent income tax returns, as part of the application instead of race? At least we’d end up with an economically diverse student body, which is where the real disparity issues lie.
10
What bothers me about this op-ed is the way the way Prof. Boddie uses "white" as this catch-all term that erases the very real differences between different ethnic and economic groups that may share a skin pigmentation, but only that. Should the scion of the 1% be considered the same as the scion of a poor, "hillbilly" family (I'm thinking here of the author of the book, "Hillbilly Elegy")? Should Northern Irish Catholics and Northern Irish Protestants be included in the same category (I'm guessing they would say no). There's a lack of nuance here that's really worrisome and undermines the author's credibility.
7
Questions for progressives:
1. Is Harvard discriminating against Asian-Americans because it requires AA to have statistically significant higher grades/scores than any other race?
2. Is Harvard discriminating against Asian-Americans because it systematically evaluates them lower on personality?
3. Do you believe that AA as a race have lower personality than all other races? Is that racially biased perspective allowed on any other race?
4. Why do progressives ignore obvious racism against AA?
5. Why are AAs so dedicated to the Democratic party? Look at how Mayor DeBlasio and his education chancellor have treated AAs both in practice and in words?
9
been there have had that done...the vote here is no race, no ethnicity...just qualification...capability is rather a guarantee of diversity than conformity.
It is SO telling that nearly all the most popular readers' comments to this piece - by the relatively well informed, center left readers of the NY Times - are critical of the piece and of the practices for which Harvard is being sued.
15
Imagine this is 1918 instead of 2018, and Harvard is denying applications from Jewish students (as many Ivy League schools did at the time). Can you imagine justfying such discrimination by saying, as the author does, that "expressions of racial identity are part of the fullness of our humanity" -- and more, that "it's not possible to be blind to race."
Well, gee, now that you put it that way, I guess it's alright.
13
This opinion poses the question:
"How would you feel if you were told you could not talk about your gender, your religion or your sexual orientation, that you could not discuss your disability or speak your own language?"
My answer and I suspect many other people's answer to this: I certainly wouldn't care. Gender, religion and sexual orientation should not influence college acceptance. Neither should race.
13
Boddie's editorial here is full of bigotry, prejudice and irrationality. How come race neutral is equal to "you could not talk about your gender, your religion or your sexual orientation, that you could not discuss your disability or speak your own language" ? How come color-blindness will " force race underground and turn people of color into tokens and entrenches whiteness as the default " ?
What a laughable argument.
I am Asian American and my work place is made of people from all over the world. I am color-blind and race-neutral. I only evaluate people by their own merits, not by race or the color of their skin or which country they come from.
13
Prof Boddie, you don't seem to understand the issue. You write, "Asian-Americans,.. are a very diverse group". I contend that the use of race in college admissions decisions precisely ignores that diversity and acts to cement white power.
It works like this: Asian immigrants, often because of cultural reasons, are very academically successful. However, with each progressive generation, they become Americanized and begin to perform more like whites. But they are forever held to their Asian heritage and are held to the standards set by immigrant children. They are assumed to share the cultural values of immigrants, solely because of the color of their skin, their appearance. They are not allowed to compete against whites - their test scores are compared to other Asians. So, yes, Asian immigrant Johnny goes to Harvard but Johnny's kids and grandkids don't stand a chance.
I am not against affirmative action for disadvantaged groups, but open your eyes people, and see what this twisted version of "diversity" is really about. It admits token minorities while firmly keeping successive generations from actually competing with whites.
3
It is true that taking a person's race into account (to make up for poorer educational opportunities in k-12) ends up depriving students from better funded & equipped schools with more experienced & higher paid teachers. But so do athletic scholarships &"legacy" policies. Many seats are taken away from perhaps better academically qualified students to keep the alumnus contributions of parents & grandparents of legacy students flowing. The same is true of depriving more promising students of seats in order to fill the arenas & stadiums of the school (& bring in more alumni donations). To single out only affirmative action & ignore athletic & legacy admissions is the height of hypocrisy - and racism. I agree that Asian-Americans are suffering from a reverse form of discrimination that is wrong. In California, Asian-American students, on the whole, are better students than their white counterparts & make up a larger proportion of college admissions than their percentage of population. This angers racist whites as much as affirmative action does & is likely the root cause of Harvard's inexcusable discrimination.
In the early 1930s, my father, who graduated first in his class in Philadelphia's elite all-boys Central High, was rejected by both Harvard & Yale. They both wrote that their "Jewish quota" for the year was already filled. He got into Penn under the wire & ended up 2nd in his graduating class & 1st in class at Penn Law School.
7
Chief Justice Roberts wrote: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
That was true in 2007, and still is true today. If racial information is not known, one cannot discriminate on its basis.
31
@mikecody
I think you don't understand why there is affirmative action.
It's not to stop what you call discrimination.
It's not even meant to help all black people.
It's meant to help those who because they are black did not get a good education with the hope thy will do better when they get s better education
That is their idea.
I think it is a bad one.
If these individuals lack some skills because the school they went to they should go to some program before they enter collage that if they smart enough to do the work will give them the skills they need to do well and actually get into Harvard without affirmative action.
eith av better education
Asians are most certainly not penalized or victimized in any fashion by affirmative action policies. Given that, this lawsuit is absurd and they should lose, based on the merits. Affirmative action policies seek to solve significant problems often proactively by granting access to individuals who otherwise would not have it. That means an interview for a job, not the job itself; an application for college reviewed, not necessarily matriculation. Generally to get the job or earn the seat in college, the member of the protected class has to be significantly better qualified and more impressive than their competitors.
1
@Anne
You are being naive in an environment where proof of discrimination can be based solely on the outcome of the process. The problem here is Harvard's use of a racial quota system to cap the number of applicants of that race that are accepted. By definition Harvard has implemented a racist selection process. It may very well result in a student body make up you approve of but that doesn't make it any less racist.
5
Professor Boddie dismisses Asian claims of unfairness, but this is in fact a complicated issue. I would point out two things that she and some of the comments fail to recognize. One is that Harvard and other private hyper-elite universities are not meritocracies; their admission policies are, by definition, hierarchical and discriminatory, and serve institutional goals and interests and reflect how power and status is distributed in American society. (The preferences given to children of celebrities, elite families and donors is an example). Two, whiile they have merit, the diversity and "Harvard would not be Harvard if it were 50% Asian" arguments mirror closely the arguments that Harvard President Lowell made in favor of a ceiling on Jewish students in the earlier part of the 20th Century.
12
Statistics have shown that Harvard and other Ivies are denying admissions to AA students on a statistical basis (the very definition of disparate impact).
Prof. Boddle now states that "The proportion of Asian-American students in Harvard’s admitted classes has grown by 27 percent since 2010, and they make up nearly a quarter of the admitted class of 2022 (overall, Asian Americans make up about 6 percent of the United States population.)"
This is verbal sophistry at its best - the same scores for an AA give a lower chance than any other race by a statistically significant margin.
If Harvard and others create transparent methods of evaluating students outside of grades/scores that is quantifiable, AA will excel and still be on top. Instead, what Harvard has done is use a non-transparent/highly subjective criteria and THEN judged AA to be lacking in personality.
That is pure racism and Prof. Boddle and others should be ashamed. It is also deeply un-meritocratic.
26
Harvard may vigorously deny, but does not change the facts.
I am sure they denied discriminating against Jews a century ago,
21
If all you need is good grades to get into these institutions, then in a few years their student body will be 80% Asian. Can't wait for the outrage that will follow.
2
A chatty little article that never seems to get to core of the problem of minority students being rejected for being Asian. A fuller discussion can be found here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/15/the-rise-and-fall-of-affir...
8
What did I just read? Harvard marks Asian students down on their personalities? Without knowing any of them? Entirely on the basis of race? That is, undeniably, the epitome of racism.
19
It’s lawyerly misdirection to describe the lawsuit against Harvard as an effort to destroy affirmative action (AA) or to
stop Harvard from using race as an identifier for applicants.
We are only against Harvard’s upside down way of applying AA to discriminate against Asian American applicants. AA means “owing to historical reasons, the white applicants are to give minority applicants an advantage.” But Harvard compels Asian American applicants to give an advantage of 140 SAT points to white applicants.
The main point of the lawsuit is about stopping Harvard from discriminating against the New Jews — the Asian Americans.
10
Redaction isn't ideal, but it's the only possible solution to rid us of the overtly racist policy called affirmative action.
Harvard, for example, by default gives Asian kids lower personality scores for no reason other than their last names, without even bothering to interview them.
The only way to stop racism is to not be racist. AA is on its face racist - an abomination to our values.
China justifies the mass incarceration of Muslims in pointing to our overtly racist policies against Asians.
There are many ways to help African American kids. Government funded afterschool programs and tutoring is just one idea. It would help many kids, and let the best get into top colleges on their own merit. Much better than artifically letting underserving students in
9
One doesn't stop being racist by ignoring race. The only beneficiaries of that would be white people, who would remain the default in every situation.
First. why is academic achievement to be the sole admission criteria. No economic diversity, regional diversity, extra circula activities count. Blum is trying ti adversely impact race relations, not improve them. Back in the day, every college application required a picture of the candidate. The surname or First name will certainly identify certain ethnic groups. Or what about the adopted Asian child now with an Anglo surname. The list is endless. The fact that the number of Asian students well exceeds the share of population shows there is no anti-Asian bias as there were when Jews hd quotas at Ivy schools. Blum's goal is to spread racial division and stoke animosity.
3
Wow! Love these top comments, the NY Times really does have fair minded readers who think outside of the progressive box and can look at real life facts on the ground. A pleasure!
7
This article misses the main point of why Harvard is being sued: its policies regarding the admission of Asian applicants, are racist. Harvard's racism must stop. I have seen the impact of its actions on the hearts and minds of many great students in my high school classes throughout many years. And racism towards Asian students is pernicious with its "special" double bind: you're just too good to get in! So work harder not to get in. It's a newfangled quota system like the Jewish quotas of the 1920s. Shame on Harvard, again! I hope the law will get them and the other "elite" institutions to change their racist ways.
12
The problem here is that Harvard has been discriminating against Asian students by admitting less-qualified legacy students and white students.
7
MLK had a dream that his children would be judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Let's stop saying that everyone who wants to do so is racist. It's racist to have a system in which Asians are extraordinarily disadvantaged and African-Americans get a gigantic boost in the admissions process. If you want to know just how big a boost, look up the stats on the SAT scores of the various groups getting into Harvard. There are extraordinarily large gaps. Do you want to know why the idiot, sexist, racist Trump was elected? Well, this issue is among the reasons. Millions of Americans are tired of being called racist for wanting a system that looks beyond race to kids' accomplishments. Ditto for the anger around federal policies that favor contracts to "minority" businesses, when so often these "minority" businesses are not owned by impoverished Americans but anyone with a Hispanic last name, including recent rich immigrants from Argentina or Spain. The system is not fixing the many real problems minority communities in the US face, despite the best of intentions. Instead, these policies are increasing racial discord.
5
The author uses the word "whiteness" an awful lot in this piece. Asian-Americans are the litigants are they not? Enough already!
9
"They want to outlaw the modest use of race in admissions..."
The typical Asian student at Harvard has a 450 point better score on the SAT than the typical black student.Letting black students be admitted with an average 450 point lower SAT score than Asian students is a "modest" use of race in admissions ? Only in the nytimes and PC lala land.
18
Why is racism against Asians OK? This needs to stop.
17
Maybe the author should live life in the skin of an Asian American before passing judgement. When you are better than 80% of all applicants and still get rejected because of your race you are not going to signing hymns in praise of affirmative action, you will loathe race based admissions.
The liberals want to mandate solutions to all past ills as long as the price comes comes out of someone else's hide. Their "love" of African Americans and Hispanics end squarely in the voting booth. Anything that keeps them in power is fair game. The silver lining to this case : exposes the utter hypocrisy of the left.
11
Harvard should become 100% black until the average income and average wealth of blacks are on par with whites. Anything less is just pandering, to assuage their guilt on legacy and development admits.
3
OMG. How horrible. No race? How will they know how to unfairly select candidates? What is this world coming to? Are we actually going to move back towards that archaic dream of Martin Luther King, Jr., that we've finally stomped into the ground until its now unrecognizable and hopefully dead, you know - that one day we will judge people by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin? Because. . . because. . . because . . . that's RACIST! And you are a racist if you disagree at all. Or favor merit. Or disagree on anything else, for that matter.
Did I hit the right note? I'm new at it, but trying to learn.
11
Next up, Yale. Then Princeton, Stanford, Brown, Dartmouth.....
7
Harvard used to keep out as many Jews as they could, and now it is the Asians they want to keep out.
Nothing new here.
10
As I began reading through these comments, for a second there I thought I had accidentally wandered off to Breitbart or Newsmax, not the NYT. Ed Blum is a neocon. He is a member of the American Enterprise Institute. He does not have good intentions.
4
We did not fight a civil war or endure Selma over one's choice of which baseball team to support. Race is different.
If the people benefiting from this "modest use of race in admissions" were "white", you'd be outraged. As you should be.
There is no such thing as "racial identity"; it is an irrelevance. Giving anyone a "plus" requires that someone else suffer a minus.
Consider this astonishingly stupid assertion: "Both of them have likely had very different experiences from white applicants." Because all "whites" are fungible and had precisely the same experiences in life.
Why should anyone ever "have to be" conscious of her race? It is a descriptive, and nothing more. It's like forming an identity around being left handed.
Why do you insist on using the word "gender" when you mean "sex"? "Sexual identity", too, is irrelevant and should not be considered. Discrimination against people due to their religion is already forbidden. (The exclusion of Jews should be a painful reminder of what happens when one considers irrelevancies)
Racial divisions can only be decreased by express racial discrimination?! Only a race-obsessed-obsessed leftist believes that.
Affirmative action is not the source of the problem; race consciousness is. The sooner we extirpate it, the better. Anyone who considers race important is probably a moron and is hereby sentenced to writing out the text of the Civil Rights laws until he understands that no racial discrimination means precisely that.
9
Whatever the outcomes of the Harvard affirmative action law suit, immediately and over time, and whatever Mr. Blum's agendas and intentions and the people and foundations supporting his efforts, there is a critical issue which is not being raised and considered. Unexpected, unplanned for, outcomes, temporary or more permanent ones, can and do occur. For people.For values.For norms. For a range of systems.Whatever their valences; + +/- - ! This has been and remains our reality with its everpresent interacting dimensions. Uncertainties. Unpredictabilities. Randomness. Lack of total control notwithstanding the types, levels and qualities of ones' efforts, alone and/or with others. Over time. This reality doesn't mean that there is no need to stand up for one's beliefs, whatever their underpinnings, menschlich or not, because of unknown, uncontrollable risks.It does mean that being personally accountable for doing or not doing, saying or not saying, is to be considered. Personally. Daily. That this does not happen all too often is another part of reality. There are many examples at all levels of society, and daily living, of harmful voiced words and done deeds when the "sayer-doer" gets away with IT. Often enabled by complacency and complicity of many in democracies. As are a range of types of "dictators" throughout the globe. Enabled by fear and ummenschlichkeit to limb, life and spirit.What are implications of entering? Not? "Outing?" "This week's "missing" Saudi journalist?
Nonsense.
Your race should not be part of why you are selected for uni. Only your thinking and intelligence should .Anything with race is baiting and pandering to politics.
5
This lawsuit makes me angry. I know from my many years as an employee at Stanford that the school has a plethora of Asians apply who have perfect SATs, GPAs, etc., but ****so many of these folks have no concept about creativity and passion,***** thus Stanford doesn't want them. Stanford wants people who are going to contribute to the common good; it's ok if they make a mistake on the SAT if they have demonstrated a pattern of common sense, creativity and benevolence. Really, I hate to stereotype and I have so many Asian friends who I love and respect, but this lawsuit is also typical of many of this race who lives by "the book", who are legalistic and rigid and should be accountants. I certainly hope Harvard wins this lawsuit. These arrogant people filing this suit wd never make it in Silicon Valley if they tried to pull these stunts.
1
While I am retired and not applying to any college, I am mad as hell that Mr. Bannon says I am a South-Asian and Harvard would classify my grandson as an Asian-American.
I have said this many times before, here in the comments section of NY Times, I am not related to Kublai Khan or Mao or Aung San Sui Kyi, nor were my forefathers. As best as I know, they all came out of the Olduvai Gorge.
Just say I am an American. Stop hyphenating me which is what Mr. Trump wants. Harvard should definitely pay attention to non-academic achievements but it should not be based on race or gender or the part of the world the applicant's ancestors had come from three generations back.
7
As a Harvard graduate, I am hoping that the University shows, or is forced to show, some leadership in our society. People should be judged as INDIVIDUALS not based on their race. If Harvard wants to look at key factors of disadvantage, the key factor is economic not racial. It is absurd to reward a rich person because he happens to be black (or Asian or Hispanic) and penalize a poor person because she happens to be white. The real disadvantage in our country is based on economic class, not race, and that is an objectively measured factor. But the most important factor is individual merit, both in admission to Harvard and in success in the real world, which is yet under the thumb of the New Racism.
12
I’m in favor of this if and only if Harvard is also forced to completely get rid of legacy admits. If that doesn’t happen, then this would come down to keeping particular minorities out of Harvard. When I went, years ago, I knew a girl that was dumb as a rock. But she shared a last name with one of the libraries on campus. When people argue that affirmative action is hurting students that “deserve” that spot - I never hear them argue that those legacy admits are also taking up the spot of a more deserving student.
Maybe it’s just a coincidence that legacies tend to be white and rich.
3
Harvard’s discrimination against Asian American applicants is as obvious, ugly, and illegal as its anti-Semitic quotas were a century ago.
The attempt to defend that discrimination as a fight against censorship is laughable.
55
@JG
What is laughable is this idea that educational institutions in the U.S. must be forced to operate like their counterparts in China and India, where applicants are judged solely on their test scores. Students brings many many different things to a college campus - their intellect, their achievements, their creativity, their leadership, their athletic prowess and teamwork, their musicality, their empathy, their personality, etc. If students aren't concerned about joining a student body with these characteristics, then go to school in India.
1
@JG
Well said.
Scott's reply here is sorely misguided. This is out-and-out discrimination by race. It has nothing to do with test scores per se. That is just an ugly stereotype. An Asian-American applicant must score 140 points higher on the SAT than the equivalent white applicant, all other things the same.
5
RE: The proportion of Asian-American students in Harvard’s admitted classes has grown by 27 percent since 2010, and they make up nearly a quarter of the admitted class of 2022 (overall, Asian Americans make up about 6 percent of the United States population).
What nonsense that Asian Americans make up 6 percent of the US poplulation. Not relevant at all. One needs to look at the percentage of Harvard applicants that are Asian Americans and other races and look at the acceptance rate and the SAT scores and GPAs.
Havard has tried to hide that info because it would show the discrimation against Asians in favor of less qualified blacks, Hispanics, and probably whites as well.
8
It would be nice if all irrelevant identifying information relating to a candidate could be redacted from applications. No names, race, gender, religion, or anything else unrelated to the applicant's likelihood of success at the university. No discrimination! On any basis!
All that being said, there is widespread support for affirmative action based on class/income. That makes much more sense than giving racial preferences to, say, Malia Obama.
6
While not unique amount elite institutions, Harvard has a median family income of 168k, 15% of its class from the top 1%, and less than 5% from the bottom 20%. Only 35% of students come from families in the bottom 80%.
Where is the outrage at the lack of economic diversity?
Most POC that I know who attended Harvard were far more privileged than I was (a middle class white guy from Michigan). They were the children of people like Professor Boddie or cuban doctors from Miami or wealthy international families ect...The truth is, for both poor and middle class white and black students, the deck seems stacked against them.
3
Sorry here's the link to that Crimson article: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/11/15/fighting-for-depth-peipei-...
I applaud colour-blind admissions, and believe it to be absolutely consistent with the core character of the country itself (eg the American Dream, the pursuit of excellence, hard work will be rewarded...)
American society is completely comfortable with rewarding the best performers, those who who work the hardest to achieve, irrespective of colour:
- for example, the country demands the best with its amateur and professional sports teams, irrespective of colour
- similarly, the performing arts make determinations based on virtuosity and experience (should the sympathy fill a first chair violinist based on colour?)
As such, I would ask that Harvard, Stanford, et al, craft an application process (grades, test scores, essays) that they believe best positions the school to select the most qualified, highest achieving students. If it ends up that the student body is 50% Asian (or 5% Asian, for that matter), who cares? Do we care about the racial make-up of the Super Bowl Champion or the Olympics gymnastics team or the symphony orchestra?
Fundamentally, the author believes there are too many Asian at Harvard, just as De Blasio believes there are too many Asians at Stuyvesant.
Presumably they believe that providing an opportunity to applicants of other ethnicities is noble and fair, but what of the cost of systemic demotivation of those who worked their entire lives to excel?
Their grand experiment for optimising race based admissions isn’t progressiveness, it’s racism.
7
You mean students "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character."
What a great idea!
7
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
Dear Prof. Boddie,
The good Rev. disagrees with you.
5
Trump-hating, Obama-loving progressive liberal here. I have to say, affirmative action has has its time. The proper admissions criteria should be academic and social achievement, combined with economic, geographic and family circumstances as a perspective factor for achievement. Not color of skin. This is the wrong hill for progressives to die on, because it's simply wrong to use skin color as admission criteria.
8
Discriminating on the basis of race is wrong, period.
It was wrong yesterday, it is wrong today, and it will be wrong forever.
Asian American applicants to elite Universities deserve to be judged on an equal footing as their peers without being held to a higher standard on account of their race.
In Harvard’s case this is reminiscient of their policy of artificially limiting the number of successful Jewish applicants during the last century, another woefully wrong policy.
Note that Harvard also practices affirmative action for the mostly white and wealthy by way of legacy admissions, how can they justify that perversity? Like they need the money?
7
Harvard and the rest of the Ivies have been taking race into account for years and it has resulted in schools that churn out privileged kids that still somehow don’t look like America.
GW Bush has degrees form Harvard and Yale. Trump from Penn. Kushner from Harvard. Kavanaugh, Yale.
All children of the rich or legacies or both, one even a senator’s son, like that old CCR song Fortunate One. Funny, when I was young I thought that song was too cynical.
But there they are, certainly not the flower of America, yet with their Ivy tickets punched, their lives were put on the glide path to success.
Obama is the most “diverse” of the bunch. Is that how this plays out? A bunch of rich white kids and a few black kids from single parent homes?
Can you understand why I’m not impressed by the results of the focus on race?
Maybe it would be best to take out all the references to race and family and gender after all.
It might work out better for the white and Asian kids who grew up in tough circumstances...
6
you're right, it's important for colleges to know race and ethnicity, how else can they continue their proud tradition of discriminating against Jews by discriminating against Asians. peculiar that both groups were scored down for "personality" but not everyone can have the vivacious wit of a rich white Protestant like Brett Kavanaugh. Harvard and Yale should just admit that they use race and religion to select their class and stop the "personality" smoke screen. what's happened to veritas that I see plastered all over their tee shirts?
10
Heaven forbid that Harvard should enjoy the same population mix of high achieving students as is presently the case at Bronx Science, Stuyvesant, and Brooklyn Tech. But not to worry, NYC's mayor and his allies will soon see to the elimination of race blind merit based entrance testing. The results should be outstanding and litigation-proof....not!
6
The evidence of overt racism in the Harvard case is overwhelming and Bruni's claims are disingenuous.
1
Harvard should just do what the GOP and many of its alums would no doubt prefer and admit only legacy applicants.
2
Everyone should read this 2006 piece in the Harvard Crimson, explaining how Asian Americans -- like Jews before them -- face discrimination based on their purported "personal qualities."
Jewish quotas came under attack during the Cold War, when America's establishment realized they could no longer afford to limit elite education to those with "personal qualities" they liked; we needed the best scholars period.
America faces the same kind of global challenge today. Elite college admissions departments need to focus on excellence rather than the culture of storytelling -- e,g. "choosing to write about icons like Dolores Huerta" -- in vogue today.
6
Race is a social construct. It doesn't even exist! Unless you're a minority, and your race can be used to obtain some sort of advantage. Because race is a central defining characteristic! Race should be celebrated! Unless we're talking about European heritage. That's toxic! Anyone who even thinks of keeping European societies majority-white should be ashamed of themselves! This isn't who we are!
Because we are stronger together! Diversity is good! But it is bad when wealthier whites and wealthier Asians move into lower income black communities, and displace some or even most of the original inhabitants. This kind of diversity is BAD!
All of this is perfectly clear! There are no contradictions in any of this! I am not insane, and neither are my fellow travelers on the left! We are completely, 100% in control of our emotions and we have a healthy grasp on reality!
And I for one stand strong with this author; people who make decisions based on race are BAD! This is RACISM! The only people who should be allowed to make decisions based on race are the GOOD PEOPLE, the ones who act as gatekeepers at places like Harvard. When they make decisions based on race, it is GOOD! Case closed!
1
"If a lawsuit over affirmative action is successful, would-be college students may have to hide their race."
Leaving aside the obvious fact that it is impossible to hide the ability to make race-related inferences from the types of data on affiliations and backgrounds that a typical application must provide, I can't stop laughing over the fact this author -- and NYT's editors -- think that "hiding race" is a problem.
Want to **not** be a racist? Just obviate the need to consider race. Period.
7
Surely Harvard wouldn't admit a student who prefers the Yankees!
1
It's quite telling that for many, the default assumption is: African-Americans, followed by Hispanics, are the *only* ones benefiting from affirmative action - so the Asian-American plaintiffs should prevail.
But note from a prior NYT article: "University officials did concede that its 2013 internal review found that if Harvard considered only academic achievement, the Asian-American share of the class would rise to 43 percent from the actual 19 percent."
So Harvard will be 43% Asian. You're not picturing that, are you? You're thinking striking down AA will benefit white Harvard applicants - with a "pleasant" mix of, say, 25% Asian, 70% white, 5% "Other" - aren't you?
Nope. Not gonna work that way! And watch and see: Some (white) people who are all gung-ho about AA will change their tune real quick:
"Study finds that when white people are told of the success of Asian applicants, their commitment to basing admissions on grades and test scores drops"
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/08/13/white-definitions-merit-a...
...in a survey of white California adults...the white adults favor a reduced role for grade and test scores in admissions, apparently based on high achievement levels by Asian-American applicants.
...When asked about leadership as an admissions criterion, white ranking of the measure went up in importance when respondents were informed of the Asian success in University of California admissions."
4
I guess we're headed toward quotas.
Much better end the US Census Bureau's archaic system of classifying us as proposed in detail by Professor Kenneth Prewitt in "What Is Your Race?..." and by Professor Dorothy Roberts in "Fatal Invention..."
There is one race, the human. All the rest are the political inventions of racists.
Only-Never in Sweden.Blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
3
The trouble with racial reference is that it often, if not mostly, benefits real or imagined members of a non-Asian minority( i.e. African American, Hispanic, Native American) who have no personal history of diminished opportunity. An upper middle class black student from a top tier suburb will get preferential treatment over a white student from a working class background simply because of his pigment. Likewise a fake "Indian" will gain admission and go on to become a US senator and presdential hopeful based on a spurious claim to be Native American. Meanwhile a supremely qualified Chinese student is shunted off because , as a group, Chinese applicants tend to work harder than most others.
7
While it’s true Harvard turns away applicants with perfect SAT and grades, none are ever black. While it’s true Harvard has increased Admissions for Asians the last few years, it is only because of the lawsuit. (It’s Working!!). Before this lawsuit there was a 18% cap on Asians for over 20 years.
Harvard scores Blacks first, Latinos second, Whites third and Asians dead last for “personality” across all 10 deciles. How can this rank order possibly be without blatant discrimination against Asians?? If I scored personality this way for job candidates, you don’t think there would be a justified EEOC lawsuit??
8
Professor Boddie, This Country did not outlaw racial considerations in all things to have people like you claim it is now imperative to balance out society based on population levels you see as indicative of some form of hidden racism. The studies you cite are as ridiculous as you advising institutions on racial quotas, something Advocates usually cite as adverse to society. You can't have it BOTH ways.
5
I have no fear of a future America run by bright young asian americans, do you?
There's a dishonest vein in this editorial it ignores the elephant in the room — legacy admissions.
Every year Harvard and the other Ivies humiliate their ingenious hard working staff by asking them to waste their time and genius on rich dullards — tens of thousands of them. People like W. and much worse, almost all of them white.
If we want intelligent minority children to have a better chance at reaching their potential, how about taxing Harvard's enormous endowment of stocks and bonds and using the money to fund state universities or even public high schools.
Race blind admissions is a good idea. It's time has come. The legacy admissions however need to stop.
The Ivy League can be a rich country club for an elite with low IQ's or it can be schools based on merit cultivating the leadership we need. The idea that blacks and hispanics are advanced by the Ivy League is risible. It only selects the most intelligent few to use for PR purposes. Meanwhile it's real purpose is to act like a private corporation and consolidate wealth and influence — this fliis in the face of the mission of education.
7
The gender should be redacted too.
1
Seriously ill-informed article pandering to minority social justice theme. Issue is Harvard proactively discriminated against a race / set of people. If the solution is to go blind to race in admissions, that is beneficial to all. What really needs to be done away with in this country is legacy based applications.
5
Can only black people discuss the blacklivesmatter movement? Can only gay people attend a gay pride parade? Can only Asian people make Asian culture a large part of their identity? (the large number of anime fans and white people living in Japan says no)
Why then, would making admissions race-blind prevent people from talking about cultural activities in their application? Isn't assuming that if you participate in a cultural activity, you must be that particular race a low level form of racism?
3
"To understand what this case is really about just look at who’s orchestrating it ...".
Wow, I'd be absolutely ashamed of myself after pressing submit, should I be so intellectually cheesy as to state this in an article meant as advice to the public. It's how you talk letting off steam to friends who understand you are just venting. It's the judicial equivalent of obscenity. It's neither ethical, or intellectually sound. How ironic in a piece on ideas in education!
3
It is disingenuous of an academic to speak of the "modest use of race" in college admissions. It is probably the most important factor. Everyone knows instances where an upper middle class child with one black grandparent is accepted to multiple Ivy's while white and Asian kids with better stats from the same graduating class get rejected from the same schools. Get rid of legacies too while you're at it.
12
So Elise Brodie is in favor of government sanctioned racial, gender, and ethnic discrimation as long as it's candycoated as "affirmative action?" Ask all the males, whites, and Asians who lost jobs or school slots to less qualified females, blacks and Hispancis how "affirming" it is.
6
God forbid race wouldn't be a factor. Oh, the wails of injustice!
3
As a white person who is half-WASP, half Italian-American, going the direction of being "race blind," is completely idiotic. Koreans are not Chinese, are not Vietnamese, are not Thai, are not black kids from Chicago, from Baltimore, from LA, from rural West Virginia, from the tony suburbs of Williamsburg like the young lady I tutor three nights a week who is more privileged than my own kids!
Asian is not Asian is not Asian, black is not black is not black. All Asians don't "look alike" and all hispanic kids don't have the same culture just like the Italian-American experience was nothing like the WASP-American experience. Prohibiting applicants from taking about it is going to make Harvard's Freshman class worse--more homogeneous--in bad ways, not better. Harvard's Admissions staff will just figure out other ways to "cook" the mix so that there doesn't end up being a vast over-representation of any one racial group to the complete exclusion of others.
Meanwhile, heaven forbid some Straight A student has to go to Carnegie Mellon instead of Harvard!
3
The sad thing is the former applicants to Harvard being used to further the cause of opponents of affirmative action.
1
Apparently there are a lot of people who think they can tell the ivy league how to run the admissions process. Many of them are particularly focused on telling the ivy league how to define"merit." Given their history and success at the top of the education business, these attempts are ironically pathetic and self serving, not to mention malicious and racist. I hope these tossers don't succeed in spoiling 300 years of the right stuff. But even if they do, that is all they will have done: spoil the right stuff.
1
"They want to outlaw the modest use of race in admissions..."
Modest? I don't think a 450 point difference in SAT among racial groups is modest, do you?
12
Sorry. Denying someone admission or employment based on race is racism.
8
On the Harvard case I think it is unfortunate that Asian-American students are being used as pawns to advance the agenda of those who want to make Affirmative Action go away because they benefit minorities, including Asian-Americans.
This is the sort of disingenuousness that ticks people off. The typical African-American student admitted to an Ivy League school has lower academic achievement than the typical White student and MUCH lower academic achievement than the typical Asian-American student. (See: Espenshade et al) This is wrong. Public schools need to be fixed so that all students have the same opportunity to achieve; this is not the case today. But you should not correct for this inequity on the backs of high-achieving Asian students trying to get into an elite college.
9
Or, that Harvard accepted people on merit rather than race.
1
The author makes a point of stating that while Asians are only 6% of the population, they make 25% of the latest admitted student group (basically, shut up and stop complaining since Asians are overrepresented). Well, since we are 6% of the population, I would like Asians to make up 6% of professional athletes in this country. Let’s make proportional race quotas for everything! Like Congress, the Supreme Court (which has never had an Asian justice), presidents (we’ll have to bar white people for a loooong time so other races can catch up), Fortune 500 CEOs, Emmy winners, Tony winners, Oscar winners, Grammy winners, teachers, nurses, police officers, lawyers, doctors, etc.
Why stop there? We need 6% of billionaires in the U.S. to be Asian. 6% of lottery winners should be Asian.
See how this works?
7
Colorblindness, therefore, forces race underground. It turns people of color into tokens and entrenches whiteness as the default." What if the recruiter is black, does that infer all applicants are black merely because their viewed through the eyes of the recruiter.? The best way to eliminate the perception of privilege is to award admittance by merit. Life does not give you extra points because your Caucasian, it's what you make if it.
4
All this sure sounds like using African Americans and Latinos a shields to provide cover for legacy (WASP) admissions.
"This case could have a devastating effect. Consider a black student who grew up on the South Side of Chicago or a Hmong applicant who lives in a working-class neighborhood in Minneapolis. Both of them have likely had very different experiences from white applicants. "
Consider instead an Asian-American student whose entire life effort has been based on getting into the right schools, has the grades to prove it and who is told "Sorry your 'character' is wrong for Harvard. Compare this experience to say the son/daughter of a Goldman Sachs partner (who attended Harvard) and whose life effort has been Lacrosse and gets the thumbs up.
Its not about Hmongs, Somalis, African-Americans. It's about merit vs legacy. Harvard gets about $500MM in public funding every year. You don't get that to discriminate based on 'personality'. People are even less 'colorblind' about 'image' than even race.
4
Wow. Asians would benefit from the discussion, but apparently not from admission. A specious argument to say the least
1
Wait till the colleges are filled with high achieving Asia’s and Trumps kids cannot get in!
3
This "problem" has many faces. Early in the 20th century Jews were "capped" by universities (read Feynman's account). Then they were no longer capped. If pure "GPA & Test scores" are the metrics, every IVY league will turn into Stuyvesant HS. 70% Asian. And the people fighting to change Stuyvesant are not blacks, but whites.
Question: If everything is 'numbers-based', then in 10 years, 70% of Harvard will be Asian, and then whites will oppose. Blacks are lost in the shuffle and most people dont even care for discussing women.
Now, is that sort of fighting what we want in this country?
India went through this process -- and instituted "quotas". I know that will make many Americans puke. Not suggesting as a solution but it was followed.
I ask - if we can get good paying jobs for students who graduate college degrees, then people (white/black/asian/...) do not care that much for "IVY". Today, most 'prestigious' jobs (read 'high paying') jobs care for pedigree; hence the rush to the IVY.
Let there be more 'high paying' jobs - and this problem will sort itself out.
For Asians to be only 6% of the population yet they're 25% of the incoming student admitted into Harvard, I'd say they are already OVERLY represented proportionately. Careful where this could go technically and legally. Can 'o worms here.
Until we get rid of affirmative action, people will assume that African-American and Hispanic students are there because race/ethnicity, not because of their merits. Is that what under-represented minorities really want? Because that is what we all assume now.
48
@MM
Excellent point. I wonder how the author of this piece feels when people automatically assume the only reason she's teaching law at Rutgers is because of her skin color, not her achievement.
1
Harvard is racial profiling its applicants. How is that acceptable?
37
@George disregarding race - that is not profiling race.
@George - Should it be okay to profile its applicants by their athletic ability or by the fact that their parents and grandparents went there. Despite Justice Kavanaugh's strident protestations that he earned his way into Yale by hard work & did not have a single person who helped him, it turns out his grandfather was a Yale grad & Kavanaugh was a legacy.
3
It’s not about diversity it is about fairness. In this day and age race should have absolutely nothing to do with admission to Harvard or anywhere else.
36
@Tony Francis - that's fine. But first, in the name of fairness, we have to rebuild our public school system in this country to assure that each & every student gets the same opportunities to learn. As long as the playing field is so grotesquely slanted, we will never be able to even judge fairness in college applicants.
1
Identity politics are ruining most top universities. It is not only race. Try being an average male applying to a top engineering program. I have reason to know first hand that an Asian Salatorian of a top 5 NYC highschool was denied admission to my top 30 school, presumably because the school is trying to acheave a 50% female freshmen class in engineering.
Rejection does not always come in the form of denial. It is most often in the financial aid package which makes it possible for a middle class kid to attend something other than the local state school.
4
The Plaintiffs want Harvard University to stop artificially lowering the "personality" score given to Asian applicants just because they're Asian, and then to let the chips fall where they may in admissions decisions. Disallowing admissions essays about the the applicant's background isn't the issue. The issue is that Harvard University has instituted a de facto Asian quota by giving Asians low personality scores.
6
As an Asian-American who has been as liberal as they come since my days at another Ivy League university, this is why I'm voting Republican from now on. "Civil rights activists" like Ms. Boddie would gladly throw Asian-Americans under the bus to benefit so-called under-represented minorities. It is the Democrats who are supporting and maintaining the only policy in the U.S. that is specifically discriminating against and harming Asian-Americans.
While Ms. Boddie and her ilk feel entitled to awards and opportunities solely because of their race instead of merit, Asian-Americans are not asking for any special entitlements; they are just asking to be treated fairly and not to be discriminated against because of their race.
56
@A L So you will ignore the entirety of the stone age, head-in-the-sand policies espoused by the Republican Party because you disagree with the Democrats about Affirmative Action? I have rarely seen a better example of cutting your nose off in order to spite your face. I am a liberal voter because I know that it is not all about me.
@A L - Nobody is throwing Asian-Americans under the bus. With the exception of this wrong-headed attempt by Harvard to "cure" what it sees statistically as an "over enrollment" of Asian-Americans. Switching to the Republican party will put you in the company of legions of privileged trust-fund babies who went to the Ivies solely because their parents could afford to put them into elite private prep schools - just about all of whom are conservative Republicans who think they are the automatically privileged elite. Having attended West Nottingham Academy (the oldest still operating prep school in the country, dating to 1744), which has educated signers of the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution, as well as Benjamin Rush, the father of American medicine, is as close to the classic British elite academies like Eton & Harrow as you can find in America. While there I dated a girl who was a direct descendant of 2 of 2 signers of the Constitution. There was a drunken "frattie" clique there just like at Georgetown, but they were a small, very conservative, self-appointed elite. Even in the late '60s, we had a goodly share of African-American, Asian-American, Hispanic, & even Native American students as the school even then was dedicated to providing its students contacts with a diverse cross-section of the world's people. I then did my undergrad study at an Ivy, but went to a top technical university for my masters & doctorate in CS. I have never voted for a Republican.
@A L
We are an Asian-American family, too. My wife and I met at the other school in Cambridge. I agree that this is remarkably unfair. We don't, however, see this as a Republican-Democrat thing. If we look at the socioeconomics, we see something very different. The poor and working class have never had more than a miniscule number of seats at the leading private and public universities. Over the past three or four decades, the middle class has lost almost all of their seats. Now more students come from the top 1% of families by wealth and income than come from the bottom 60%. The Republicans are sorely mistaken, due to thinking that is, sadly, rooted I'm afraid in racism. To put it plainly, they believe this case will help white applicants at the expense of black applicants. In fact, Asian-Americans, if treated fairly, would mostly take their additional seats from white applicants. One prominent example of the sort of applicant who would lose their seat is the rich white Mr. Kushner. The teachers of his own high school have publicly stated that he was a mediocre student who was not qualified for Harvard. His father, however, gave them several million dollars, and promised many millions more. You can be 100% against this Harvard idiocy but still be 100% a Democrat.
5
All admissions decisions should be race neutral or they are, on their face manifestly unfair — only the economic class of the applicant should be considered—e.g. 4th economic quartile kids should receive favorable consideration. Otherwise underperforming black kids from middle class families will have a better chance of being admitted than high performing lower class white kids. This phenomenon is one of the key reasons Trump is President.
5
I am a full supporter of affirmative action, but this editorial makes it seem like Asians are OVER-represented at Ivy League schools, when it is now unquestionably more difficult to be accepted as an Asian student than as a white student. Find a way to change that-- maybe by not accepting legacies and other politically-connected white students in the mold of Brett Kavanaugh and Jared Kushner? This white Harvard alum could get behind that, entirely.
27
@Jonathan I'm devastated about Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation but he was the #1 student of his class and an excellent varsity athlete. Bad example. And his grandfather was an alumni and I don't think that counts.
@Jonathan - the "problem" is that Asian-Americans, like Jewish-Americans, tend to perform better than the white majority in school. This is most likely because of the two societies' very heavy emphasis on education of the young. Jews (my father included) ran into terrible Jewish quotas as far back as the 1930s. Asian-Americans, who also dramatically out perform white students on average are also "over-enrolled" throughout California's state university system, though, to my knowledge, except for rages from conservative white republicans, has so far not instituted a quota system.
1
Hiding race or not. What to do. If my children are fastidious about answering the Hispanic question they're Hispanic. When the admissions officer sees their last name and meets them, she'll think they're fibbing.
I'm a Harvard senior from a middle-class Mexican-American family, and I've made the Dean's List for 3 out of the last 4 years. Whether or not affirmative action played a role in my admission into Harvard, I don't know, but I do get tired of people (such as many of the commenters here) implying that I took someone else's spot because of my ethnicity, or that my mere presence here is evidence of a decline in standards.
77
@Diego
It’s affirmative action policy that’s leading to your anger and frustration. It implies that certain students aren’t as well qualified and taints the accomplishments of all students in the intended beneficiary class. Without affirmative action, no one could reasonably dispute your qualifications.
22
@Bob
Nowhere in my comment did I say that I was "angry," and by implying that, you are simply perpetuating a negative cultural stereotype. It's not affirmative action, it's ignorance that causes some people to dispute my qualifications (which speak for themselves) or view them as "tainted."
1
@Diego So you would support redacting any reference to race on applications? If that were done, no student of a minority race would ever have to wonder whether affirmative action played a role in admission - and no one else would ever be able to assume such.
1
The problem with Harvard's definition of "diversity" is, they are only interested in diversity of skin color, not diversity of thoughts. Applicants are screened by their essays and extra-curricular activities. If you interned for a Republican senator or governor, or heaven forbid, worked on the Trump campaign, better not mention it or you're out. If you interned for a Democratic senator or governor, or Bernie Sanders, you hit the jackpot, better trumpet it all over your application.
Same goes for ECs. If you are president of the Gay-Straight Alliance, by all means trumpet it. If you are president of the Young Republicans Club, Farmers of America or 4H, you'd be wise to leave that out.
"Diversity" is only skin deep in our elite colleges. They want students who all look different, but think exactly the same. That's why 75% of the Obama admin were Ivy Leaguers, 25% from Harvard alone, all properly indoctrinated by the left wing academia running amok in our elite institutions. You begin to wonder if individual thoughts are still allowed on these campuses.
4
Harvard $300K for four years. and you still have to fund a dining hall mybucks app.
Army - free for four years, meals included.
1
@Told you so
Very few - almost no middle to upper income students pay a single penny to attend Harvard.
For families making less than $65,000 a year it is absolutely free. If you came from a family making between $65,000 and $150,000, you typically have to kick in 10% of your family income or less.
It is staggering to see the number of people who don't understand how diversity truly brings strength to an institution, and is thus a quality to be pursued. A college should not select students simply based on grades or test scores; all sorts of qualities come into play when attempting to select and build the best possible student body. Th take an absurd example, no college wants to have an incoming class of 1500 white males named Steve from Massachusetts who want to play tennis and major in physics, even if each of those applicants was the valedictorian of his high school class and had perfect SAT scores. Diversity has many aspects: geography, academic interest, gender, race, religion, non-academic interests, learning disabilities, and so much more. Those students who brought the suit on the basis that selection should consider only test scores are simply wrong. And if they think that life can be quantified to that level, they are in for some pretty rough decades ahead.
46
@RoyDiversity is good but the role of colleges is to educate not to diversify.
NBA should diversify?
4
Easy to say except if you have, as I do, a white son named John from Michigan who plays soccer and runs track, scored a 35 on the ACT, is a National Merit semi finalist, has a 4.5/4.0 gpa and has to seriously worry whether he will be accepted to our state school, the University of Michigan. That’s just not right.
31
Diversity should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.
1
Trying to fix the inequalities of education at the college admission level with race-based affirmative action is foolish because the inequality between races begins much, much earlier. If we aren't satisfied with the number of Hispanic and black kids applying to and attending college, then we should be doing more to improve their access to quality education from K to 12. Make it so that racial diversity at the college level is accomplished on its own without artificially raising and lowering the bar for certain racial groups. This is no doubt the harder solution and it will certainly take time, but it must be done.
36
This is the unofficial, un-PC story from a college admissions officer I know right here in the Bay Area.
During the 1990s Asian student started to outscore Caucasians in college admissions. There was a big increase in Asian student admissions.
However Asians did not do as well as the lower scoring Caucasians in the harder subjects nor in careers on leaving. There was an understanding that all that coaching and studying was good at getting high scores but crushed and filtered out the innovative and more brilliant but lower scorers. The smartest often did not get the highest grades. They found studying too boring.
Now you can argue that there was racism in employment leading to the poorer employment outcomes for Asians but in there was an understanding that scores were not a reflection of their true intelligence.
Another way of putting it is that Caucasians or Hispanics or African Americans lower scores were not a reflection of their true intelligence either.
So the admissions officers started to unofficially weight against Asian students in a bid to get the most able students rather than the highest scoring ones. And they believe that doing so is in fact more selective of the ones who will perform best in ways that count later.
1
I would love to hear Ta-Nahesi Coates's views on this case.
"How would you feel if you were told you could not talk about your gender, your religion or your sexual orientation, that you could not discuss your disability or speak your own language? Silencing discussions about race silences people whose lives have been shaped by race."
Unwittingly, the author of this piece exposes the weakness of her argument. I wold not dream of talking about any of these things were I making application to a college. Why should race be any different? Our lives are shaped by countless circumstances, all of which are relevant to our day to day struggles. Should upper-middle class white and Asian applicants be given special consideration for their dysfunctional families, their histories of illness, the absence of books in their homes, or their lack of winsome looks.
Clearly though, applicants should not be forced to hide activities that demonstrate the breadth of their interests and accomplishments just because they also might reveal their races, ethnicities, religions, sexual natures, or disabilities. There is a difference between being proud of these aspects of identity and using them to gain unfair advantage.
3
"This case could have a devastating effect. Consider a black student who grew up on the South Side of Chicago or a Hmong applicant who lives in a working-class neighborhood in Minneapolis. Both of them have likely had very different experiences from white applicants."
perhaps the good professor can tell us why they can only describe their experiences by mentioning their race?
4
Since around 40,000 applicants meet the academic criteria required, doesn’t that suggest the bar should be raised?
1
If Asian Americans are outperforming other groups, they should be admitted in larger numbers.
It does other minorities and poorer students no favors to give them preference. It certainly does education no good to populate classes with less prepared people.
Communities that are not performing as well need to fix it. That won't happen as long as they are given passes.
I support this suit.
This column is bereft of important facts & is intellectually dishonest. According to a recent NYT article "Asian-Americans scored higher than applicants of any other racial or ethnic group on admissions measures like test scores, grades & extracurricular activities, according to the analysis commissioned by a group that opposes all race-based admissions criteria. Harvard consistently rated Asian-American applicants lower than others on traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness & being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of more than 160,000 student records by a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university." This is racist at least admit that much. It’s very evident that this is why Harvard fought furiously against the release of documents. What can be more telling than the fact that “Harvard’s own researchers cited a bias against Asian-American applicants in a series of internal reports in 2013.” Harvard ignored the findings and never released the report. Why? What this lawsuit has exposed is Harvard's complete hypocrisy when it comes to admissions. Imagine would happened if it were African-American applicants who were consistently rated lower than any other race on personal traits like “positive personality,” likability, courage, and being “widely respected." Using "personality" as a factor during a college admission interview is arbitrary at best & outrageous at worst. Harvard will lose this case.
5
It’s time for someone to say the US is not racially blind and that attempts to redress past and continuing bigotry are crucial to the health of the entire nation. When the country is color blind in housing, jobs, income, policing, voting, health care people can worry about reverse discrimination in education. Until then; shame on you.
By all means, hide racial identity. Ms. Boddie thinks otherwise because she will not deal with an essential fact: applicants include their race because they think, accurately, that it will give them an advantage. They are right -- and Asian students realize, also accurately, that its incorporation on application forms will discriminate against them. Ms. Boddie, do you really believe that skin color is an appropriate credential for college? If so, please join those who openly discriminate with just that in mind.
4
Let's leave consideration of race as it is, but do away with bias of legacy admissions. Legacy admissions are without doubt affirmative action for rich white applicants who parents attended Harvard and other Ivy league schools. They are a large part of the problem of why many highly qualified Asians and many other more qualified applicants are not admitted.
2
There are many an applicant with perfect test scores, who cannot debate or interview. Who can't work well in teams. Who stand for nothing.
Test scores and showing up at some high school club mean nothing to me. Who are you, how do you think, DO YOU THINK? These are important questions. More important is what you have accomplished and against what obsticles. Give me any kid who has written a book, invented something, or had a deep insight about anything, over some kid who's mom drove them to math club.
One reason there are so few seats for those with perfect GPAs and test scores is that so many openings are set aside for legacy admissions, who tend to be white and wealthy.
1
I would like to see how admissions to universities are handled in other countries. What is the representation of non-white minorities in Britain, France, Germany and Italy?
.
England now has a substantial population of African, Indian and Pakistani ancestry. What is the representation of those groups in higher education. Do other countries use a form of affirmative actions to increase the number of minorities in college?
.
The NY Times has the resources to explore these issues. Let's see some good reporting from its journalists.
What's going on here? Now applicants have to hide who they are. This issue is forcing more deviousness, more dishonesty, more deceit and more divisiveness. Not great values to teach our youth. This is a no-win situation. There is an incipient worm infecting the woof and warp of our social contract. Sad.
A very thoughtful argument against this misguided lawsuit.
1
I've known dozens of Harvard undergraduates over the last few years. All have been either white or black (few Asians and Latinos live in my area).
All have been exceptional, though the wealthier ones with institutional connections tend to be less so. All have been engaged with the world in unusual and notable ways, and I'm sure all were chosen because they would make Harvard a richer and more vital place. Few had the highest scores on standardized tests.
Applicants that have lots of 5's on their AP tests and perfect SAT scores are boring no matter what race they are. Harvard has the luxury of creating an interesting group, and we shouldn't hassle them for it.
How about the applicants names? Most last names are based upon ancestors countries of origin. Maybe there should be a government application clearing house that assigns random numbers and letters for identification of applicants to conceal real names?
1
Sorry, this is not about affirmative action but organized and legal racial discrimination. Afirmative action can be achieved through policies that utilize economic demographics, they don't need to use race as a formula. Race doesn't exist, until we reject the ability to separate or chose according to race, racism will never end. The Democrats consistently put the tools the right needs in their hands.
Do want to fix racism or not?
3
Diversity measures are just another word for discrimination measures against Asian-Americans and Caucasian Americans.
We need to stop always bringing up race, all it does is start issues and hurt feelings on all sides. People should be given a job or collage admission because they are qualified, not because they belong to a certain race.
5
Censor applications - damaging bid Yikes - crazy. This is giving everyone equal means equal treatment based on academics. It is correct and the time is right for this needed disregard of any race at all. All races and colors matter. EQUALLY
2
I’ve never seen so many decontextualized, ahistorical and implicitly bigoted (they just don’t do as well despite all that help...) comments in one place. Many of the arguments bring made here work in the theoretical however when placed in the context of The history if the USA they are patently absurd. Many here pretend that certain groups in the country did NOT routinely receive explicit rejection letters from institutions SOLELY based on race. I believe this paper published an example of such a letter in the not so distant past. It in no uncertain terms praised the applicants accomplishments and went on EXPLICITLY to state his RACE was the sole cause of his rejection. Decades if not centuries of racial exclusion, neglect and direct targeting cannot and will not be corrected and remedied by a single 40 year old program that was under attack from the beginning. This shows that neither “side” was or is serious about a remedy for real injury.
"Race" is known to biology for practical purposes as a nonentity. As an identifier it is useless, because few people in America live some definitive race-based life, and what a race is has changed over time. Germans, to Churchill, were a race as were the British.
What you have here is control freak neomarxist ideology being played forward by this author as though it were universal truth. It is not. You can include and consider race or identity in an admissions system and you can ignore them, neither program is perfect. Occam's Razor wisely suggests; "do not unnecessarily multiply contingencies" & that this social engineering is at best highly suspect. History suggests it's a path to peculiar petty totalitarianism.
1
I support fully and completely the removal of any indication of race from college applications forms for all student and for all schools. The inclusion of race just paves the way for another form of discrimination. I would also favor the elimination of all "legacy" criteria for admissions. Let's make all admissions to all schools blind.
Let us not turn college or any school admissions into its own racial gerrymandering or means for misguided social engineering.
Essay aside, how can you argue with taking race out of the evaluation of objective grades and test scores?
It is a fact: Asian Americans are discriminated against, as the Harvard admissions data produced in this litigation show. No honest person who knows the game is surprised by this. Now, with that out of the way, time to decide whether we want a meritocracy (a cornerstone of the American Dream) or transparent quotas because we believe it is a societal good to help an ever expanding list of minority groups (just not Asians because they are too smart and work too hard) to promote an increasingly amorphous and fragmented "diversity" ideal. Time to put a fork in the current hypocrisy.
3
I'll be devil's advocate: do poor whites get a break? Anyone who'd argue that there isn't a generational white poverty class just hasn't lived outside of middle-class or upper-class neighborhoods very much. A white person from a poverty background is stigmatized by their speech and mannerisms just as much as any other group and their schools are just as bad.
At some point, when do we expect folks to compete? Do Asian students all come from higher income groups? It would be nice to see how Asian students attending poor schools do in testing and other areas.
Is attending a top school a right? Is it fair to block a more talented student?
This is not an easy issue and framing it as "racist" vs "non-racist" just isn't helpful--- or accurate.
Race-free applications seems perfectly reasonable to me. For example, these days, professional classical music orchestras have blind auditions, the applicant is behind a screen. The judges listen. No bias by race, gender, age, orientation etc. It works. Back when my Dad went to college, fine private schools had strict quotas on Jews (with preference for the few spots given to the wealthy). That only changed in the last 50 years. In fact, the introduction of personality tests at Harvard was specifically designed to lower the number of successful Jewish applicants (as recorded in memos from the Dean of admissions at the time) . Now, the same thing is being done to Asians. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. If an institution wants to make extra space for alumni children, or blacks, or Hispanics or whatever, let it be blunt about it. Any other position is disingenuous, racist, and fraudulent.
5
Should we also take into account regional diversity? Should the kid from Montana have to have the same SAT and AP test scores as the kid from Manhattan or Palo Alto?
If we let him/her in with a lower score, then we are de facto discriminating against these other applicants, are we not?
Professor Boddie and most American professors who write these "race-related" articles really need to learn more about the history of racial assignment in America and then learn what genome research has taught us about "race".
She might begin by reading the work of Dorothy Roberts who is both a professor of law and of sociology.
Ms Boddie might start with "Fatal Invention..." that opens with Professor Roberts telling us that her parents with different skin colours taught her that there is only one race, the human.
Professor Boddie apparently believes she can uniquely assign each of us to a USCB race by looking at us. She cannot do this for the simple reason that we are all mixed.
She can see that I look different from Barack Obama of course and she could use a colour chart to assign skin tone. But that skin tone: should not be the basis for assigning anyone to a fictional race.
Give us a scholar who is less committed to the use of the USCB system - please.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
4
The times doesn't understand the real issue,
I remember this was discussed almost a year ago.
This isv what I remember.
This is not about affirmative action.
It's about what happens after affirmative action.
Let me explain.
Lets say there are 2000 students admitted every year and the applicants are given a rating that tells where you are on a list of names going from the best to the worse.
If there was no affirmative action then the top two thousand would be picked.
If there are 100 admitted because of affirmative action then of this 2000 number 1900 would get in and 100 would not.
The real issue is how do you pick that 100
Do you pick from the lowest of the two thousand who would have been admitted if there were no affirmative action.
If all the Asian students that apply are part of the top 1900 then all of them will get in and the Asians would not have a issue.
If there are other criteria like having some type of quota than even Asians who are in the top 1900 may not get in.
It is the possibility that the latter method will be used that this suit is being brought to the supreme court.
Is it the case that a
"Committee of 40"
in the Harvard Admissions Office
look at each of the 40,000 applications ?
If applications are reviewed from January to April that
allows around 100 days.
That would mean the committee, as a whole, somehow evaluates 400 applications a day.
Where do they find the time ?
Even if the 40,000 application are divvied up among the
"Committee of 40", that is 10 per day.
Then the ranked "Best and the Brightest",
not to mention
the "most Personable"
must be 'fairly' sorted through
by this "Committee of 40" to produce -
the "Best Possible Freshman Class"
that Harvard can have...
save to make sure it is
never more than about 20 % Asian.
Is no one amazed that the
"Committee of 40"
manages to keep the percentage of Asians
to around 20 % of the entering class each year ?
Professor Boddie,
you and Harvard are prejudiced against
a fair and just representations of talented Asian students
at Harvard.
At least have the common decency to admit
such prejudices are not justified under
Affirmative Action.
3
The Answer is simple. The left claims that people have the right to "identify," as whatever they choose. The differences between genders far exceed the differences between races.
Therefore, I would advise any student who is applying to university to "identify" as whatever race, gender, or sexual orientation that receives the greatest number of Affirmative Action points. Problem solved!
They could all imitate Cory Booker in his Spartacus moment and stand up and declare "I'm Latino!," or "I'm Trans!", or I'm Native American !" Then scream bloody murder when the admission thugs invade your privacy with questions.
1
Boddie doesn't explain exactly how limiting Asian overrepresentation today is different from limiting Jewish overrepresentation in decades past. There's nothing here that late Harvard president Abbott Lawrence Lowell, architect of Harvard's Jewish quotas, would disagree with.
4
This piece uses "potential censorship" artfully protest against a specific outcome. racially blind admissions are a possible result of the Harvard lawsuit. Doesn't "need blind" admissions" sound good? In actuality, there is a push to increase the number of poor students to address a historic and systemic bias. The author should provide an honest critique of the existing practice. Asian applicants are judged poorly on "personality" to create"balanced" demographic in university. Doesn't that "balancing" which originated in an attempt to reduce jewish %'s at Harvard seem possibly unfair. The author paints a highly critical view of a new outcome. A Blind admissions process is surely better than one that targets and punishes a specific ethnicity.
1
If Harvard did some more work, thought-work, and changed its current admissions factors into factors that:
1] Specifically focused on Harvard's Unique Qualities. 2] Followed Admissions Practices from Higher Ranked Schools than Harvard/Ivy League (yes they do exist) and 3] Spent more time with each Individual Applicant -------- then Harvard would not have this problem.... and might even not be able to fill all spots, due to the significant narrowing down of what it means to be qualified.
It is like a Poem that still needs another draft, needs more editing. A new President is starting at Harvard, and I suggest he contact Top Tier Headhunters who can help him with my suggestions. With Harvard's endowment, I am sure Harvard can afford to hire these people to streamline Admissions and thus, make it more Intelligent. After all, isn't that what Harvard is about: Intelligence?
I would do my best to dissuade my children from choosing a school that didn't get the highest SAT scores. Among the highest scorers, there are so many that you can choose to have every type of student, without regard to race. I can tell instantly which of my students have 7-800--and those who score lower. The high ones are simply smarter. Their personalities may suck but, so does every other scoring group. I had a close friend who used to insist that I should choose friends based on how nice they are instead of how smart. Duh. I answered that they are not mutually exclusive. It's possible to be both. Same with Harvard. If they are all of the same "color" (they never are in fact), fine. Different, fine. As long as they're nice and smart. Color blind all the way.
We now codify that syndrome that my Dad told me about back in the '50s: Republican Blindness. Remembering is now frowned upon. Context is passé. How bland can we get?
I guess Ms. Brodie does not agree with Martin Luther King
who longed for the day when individuals would be judged
by the "content of their character rather than the color of their
skin." Shame on her.
3
Affirmative action is supposed to be a system where disadvantaged students are given a fair evaluation, despite not having the resources and privileges of the Brett Kavanaugh's of the world... I personally think people throw around the word "racist" a little too much in today's society, and as a result, true racism ends up being overlooked, specifically the kind racism expressed by Professor Boddie in this article, to somehow imply that Black and Hispanic equal disadvantaged, merely for being Black or Hispanic, would seem to be the epitome of stereotyping and racism... Affirmative action should not be abolished, but rather evolved in to a system based on who is disadvantaged and not based on race, and guess what, in many (maybe even most) instances, the results would be the same, but in some others it would (deservedly) bring to the forefront many of these Asian students, whom not only have top scores from hard work and ability, but also come from just as much of a disadvantaged situation like many Blacks and Hispanics... in short, of course, race as a factor for admission, needs to go away, and a system for giving extra "points" to those who are truly disadvantaged, irrespective of the color of their skin, put in its place... this would be a fair system, a system without racism...
1
There is no group more disadvantaged than Asians, the most impoverished group in our country.
Hopefully this will go to the supreme court. Justice John Roberts has wisely said the way to end racial discrimination is to stop discriminating based on race.
"Catching Up to To Pauli Murray" is a must-read essay NYRB 10/25 just read by me after submitting 2 or 3 comments from my upper-deck "office" on Bus4You crossing Sweden. Never heard of her? Me neither. The essay ends with these words: "It is past time for Paul I Murray to become a household name."
I agree and will write later to Professor Boddie to tell her that her re-education might begin by reading the essay and then Murray's autobiography.
Murray was a woman "seen as black" but, in her own words "product of several generations of a generous intermixture of African, European, and Native American stocks."
She went on to get an LLM from Berkeley and a JSD from Yale.
Were she now just now to be a girl applying to Harvard what "race box" would Professor Boddie have put her in?
Just asking that question after learning of Murray's lines of descent and learning of her family history shows how utterly ridiculous the American university system of putting people in "race boxes" is.
Do you agree?
Pauli Murray was a giant. No box would be big enough to hold her.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Citizen US SE
A simple question to all. Does each of you/some of you believe that each individual who applies to an American university can be uniquely assigned to race A or B or C so that the admissions office can create a freshman class with the desired percentage of race A, race B, race C students?
My impression from reading the column is that many of you including even the author hold that belief.
Enlighten me please by replying or sending Email address at:
Only-NeverIn Sweden.blogspot.com
I thought admissions were about adjudicating whether a student was offered a place at Harvard, not baking a cake that requires exact percentages of "ingredients".
I guess the author just thinks too many well qualified and disciplined Asian-American students would spoil the confection. A shame that.
6
As I've already stated, the author fails to advocate for Asian American students and ignores their arguments. However, the suit errs in pretending that to stop discrimination against Asian applicants all race-conscious affirmative action must end. Affirmative action of the kind upheld by the Supreme Court in Bakke is compatible with addressing discrimination, and the suit wrongly contends that if we ignore race-consciousness and discrimination in America they will somehow, magically, disappear.
The real problem is that Harvard secretly chose to deploy racial balancing in a manner that keeps the number of Asians artificially low relative to those who are less strong on academic measures, specifically those who enjoy the advantage of being legacy admissions. Legacy is nothing but an affirmative action policy for the rich and well-connected whose wealthy families give large donations. (Harvard sets aside nearly 30 percent of all admissions for legacies). The negative impact of legacy admissions on Asians, most of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants, is the real problem. Legacy totally distorts any debate about "fairness in admissions." On a huge scale, legacy gives preferential treatment to wealthy well-connected applicants, almost exclusively white, over all other groups, including Asians. Wealthy Conservatives backing this suit pretend that "diversity" is why Asians are disadvantaged in admissions today, when the privilege bestowed by legacy is the real problem.
1
As an Asian American, I know very well the impact of discrimination against Asians in most top Universities. I have nothing against preferential treatment of disadvantaged groups, racial or economical. What I object to is the unequal treatment by Harvard and other Universities to Asians vs Whites. Why should my children have to be better qualified than Whites to be admitted? I can't believe that I have to worry about this in 2018 America. Treat them on equal basis ( by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin)! If an applicant is not part of a disadvantaged racial or economic group, then consider this applicant on a race blind basis.
What we have are two separate issues, 1) preference for disadvantaged minorities and 2) injustice to high performing minorities. They are not the same. This cynical positioning by those who want to end preference for disadvantaged minorities and give better chances for Whites, is using us, Asian Americans, as a tool to achieve their racist goals. We need to maintain that there are two separate issues. Well meaning liberals, even some Asian Americans, have uncritically accepted the linking of these two issues, as positioned by the Right, and are arguing that in order to maintain preference for disadvantaged minorities, unequal treatment for Asian Americans should be accepted. We need to counter this faulty thinking. I am not asking for preferential treatment for my children, just equal treatment.
1
"Race" itself is a largely racist construct.
But, it is also a historical reality of human interaction.
Affirmative action as an indefinite, never-to-be-questioned institutional foundation of college admissions is also inherently racist.
However, the way to reform affirmative action is to reform it, not to try to wave it away by "abolishing" race as a statistical measure.
Judging from the comments on this article, the era of affirmative action may well be ending in the US. It is not just the political right that is out gunning for it.
I'll make you a deal. If you'd like to remove race as an admissions criterion, then I'd like to remove gender. If we removed gender from consideration, then selective colleges would be overwhelmingly female.
Many selective colleges go to great lengths to accept classes that have as much gender balance as possible, despite the greater number of highly qualified females who apply (better grades, better test scores, more AP's etc.).
Admissions odds are much lower for well qualified young women at Brown, Tufts, Wesleyan, Bowdoin - the list goes on and on. (Check Common Data Sets - its easy).
So why are Asians getting all the attention?
3
"As a leader in higher education, Harvard is trying to change this through its modest consideration of race in admissions. Its goal is to create a diverse community of students who can engage with and learn from people who are different, and carry those experiences with them beyond the university."
above from article...
Balderdash!! College should be about learning stuff, not about getting along and socialising.
1
Funny the hoops we have to jump through to achieve racial quotas:
"Consider a black student who grew up... or a Hmong applicant who lives in...."
Perhaps that Black applicant is the son or daughter of physicians who attended exclusive private schools. Perhaps that Hmong applicant is the son/daughter of a lawyer and an engineer and was sent to engineering camp when they were 13.
In order to make the original POC arguments work you have to be willing to stereotype all people of color.
While we're in the midst of #Metoo and other examinations of the ridiculously false basis of power in our society, has anyone pointed out that getting into Harvard and graduating shouldn't be the 'ticket' to the elite that it is? In my long working experience in investment banking in NY and elsewhere, I found that while some of the ivy league graduates were indeed gifted, the majority of my colleagues who genuinely deserve inclusion in the 'meritocracy' were from less revered schools. It would be far better if we spent MUCH more on our public state universities so that the 'elite' ivy league were no longer the subject of this ridiculous fetish. Let Harvard do what it wants, if applicants really do feel they have merit, they can work hard at any school and be a success.
I burst out laughing when I heard the professor's reference to black kids in South Side of Chicago! If Harvard wants students from that or another underprivileged neighborhood they can always go to the schools there and offer admission to the top 5 high school graduates.
But as others have pointed out Harvard doesn't do that; most of the African Americans they admit come from families that are wealthier than the average white or Asian family in this country.
3
If Harvard becomes more than 50% Asian will t still be Harvard? Many universities in America provide an excellent education. People go to Harvard to because of the aura of power. The people here are the children of powerful people or these people will be powerful in the future.
Asians, as a group, are about 5%of the American population. For now, Asians do not control the major sectors of the US economy (e.g., ownership of sports teams, CEO’s of Fortune 500 Companies, Congressman, Heads of Hollywood studios, etc.). Accordingly, from a networking standpoint Asians would be shooting themselves in the foot by crossing a certain tipping point.
I think the elephant in the room is racism. Let’s state it, “A less qualified black took a seat to which I am entitled.”
I think that every university should have a set of minimum qualifications but I do not think that the person with the highest SAT scores and grades is the person who will be the most distinguished Harvard alum.
From my experience the only quality that all sccessful people have is grit or perseverance.
This is no slight against any other commnity; nevertheless, I can assure you that there are many African Amercans who exemplify perseverance.
I am an African American man who came fom a ghetto but now practices law.
I am sorry that I took your spot. Nevertheless, I believe that blacks like myself have returned the benefit to our universities, our communities, and to American society.
25
@Tom Smith Schools like UC Berkeley and UCLA with no affirmative action, ~40% Asian populations and minority white populations are doing fine and are thriving and are more coveted than ever.
And no one is arguing that qualities like grit, perseverance and the ability to overcome obstacles should not be used as admissions criteria, just that they should just be used in a race-neutral way. Now the child of an African-American lawyer and doctor are given a huge admissions advantage over the child of an Asian-American dishwasher who can barely speak English living in a housing project in Chinatown. How is that fair to the Asian-American kid?
5
This is a straw man argument. Hiding race would require suppressing photos, in-person meetings, names, club affiliations, personal essays, and possibly geographic information. That's obviously impractical. Is anyone actually requesting that?
The fact is, in terms of grades, the bar for applicants is set significantly higher or lower for racial reasons, which is fundamentally unfair.
3
Either race matters, or it doesn’t, society can’t have it both ways.
Based on how schools report percent of “races” they have and how you have to check boxes saying what “race” you are, it seems it does matter.
We teach our kids race doesn’t matter, but then all the breakdowns, all the boxes to be checked.
Race doesn’t matter. And it doesn’t.
Until you apply to college and you find out, it does matter.
There must be a better way other than dividing people up into percentages and check boxes.
3
California has a law against using race in admissions and they seem to be doing just fine at Stanford, Caltech, UC-Berkeley, UCLA, etc. None of what you describe happens. You just created a strawman to knock down when there are empirical examples which contradict you.
Ironically, the push for "diversity" has led many universities to create racially segregated dormitories, student unions, orientation programs, and graduation ceremonies. There are hundreds of organizations (including entire colleges and universities) and scholarships that are strictly for women and/or blacks, Hispanics or Native Americans. There isn't a single scholarship or organization that is solely for Caucasians, not a single scholarship solely for men, and the male-only organizations are limited to fraternities, which seem to be perpetually attacked by the media and school administrators. Apparently, what colleges find offensive isn't organizations or benefits that are limited to a single gender or race, but anything that happens to benefit men or Caucasians.
If diversity of skin color is so beneficial, why isn't anyone trying to diversify the historically black colleges? Those colleges are the least diverse in the U.S. Aren't the students at those schools being deprived of the great benefits of diversity that affirmative action proponents claim? The reason no effort is being made to diversify those schools is that affirmative action is really just plain old racism hiding behind euphemisms like "diversity" and "multiculturalism." If "diversity" were really the goal, then preferences would be given on the basis of unusual thoughts and experiences, not on the meaningless physical characteristics that define race.
1
I agree that the majority of Harvard applicants are probably academically qualified and that's why we shouldn't let people decide who gets accepted and who does not because there will always be some underlying bias, whether the person is aware of it or not. I don't understand why we don't do a simple lottery system--all of the students who are qualified (e.g., meet a minimum standard of grades, SAT/ACT scores, extracurricular, etc) get dumped into a random lottery. Some will be "chosen" and some will not but it won't be because of their race why they're not chosen, it'll simply be the luck of the draw.
If Harvard does not want to reward admission based solely on meritocracy, which it appears that it does not, then the lottery system makes a lot of sense. No one wants to be told they're not good enough, and no one wants to be told "well, you're good enough but you're Asian so you need to be even better." This way, applicants know that they're good enough to be entered into the lottery system and ultimately, it's whether they get lucky or not.
1
One reality no one talks about.
This sort of diverse learning from each other melting pot schools portray couldn’t be farther from the reality on campuses.
Kids get to school, find their particular group’s student union, and build their friend group from that.
These schools shoot for diversity but then do nothing to really bring kids together, and actually unconsciously support the divisions.
And kids lost in a big place, flock together based on the divisions.
So everyone might feel good about learning from different types, but the reality is that this doesn’t happen at all.
Schools build diversity, but then do nothing to bring students together and are content to just let everyone divide up into their own student union.
The schools point to their percentages and then consider their job done.
11
@Joe
Excellent point. Didn't Harvard hold a separate graduation from black students last year at their own request? So much for learning from diversity.
How does having a black/hispanic/first gen kid next to you help you learn Physics or math?
1
Shocked by this author implying that Asian Americans are over represented at top schools and that since schools claim that they do not discriminate against Asians, there is no basis for the case - that’s ridiculous and I hope that the courts do evaluate the case on its merits. I’m an Asian immigrant who was raised by a single mom below the poverty line. Through hard work (holding down any jobs I could find since 12, doing school work and sports, and paying rent etc), my siblings and I managed to excel in school and life. I received multiple scholarships to top schools without mentioning my race - just on academic merit. If youre talented and intelligent than you should not need affirmative action. Stop discriminating based on race and let’s bring America back to a meritocracy.
12
The American educational system (both higher and lower) with respect to factors such as financial background of student, race of student, etc.?
The first, obvious thing, about the educational system is that for all rigorousness, supposed calculation of ability of student (the INDIVIDUAL passing or failing) it's hardly about the individual at all. It's not a system which is particularly good at getting at individual differences between people and developing these differences but rather a quite standardized system, a system of turning out reliable product.
Worse, because the system was never particularly good at getting at individual differences between people and developing them in the first place, when you throw together vastly different people as exist in the U.S. to point of a variety of races, ethnic groups, cultural, financial backgrounds, the automatic trend is not to head in the direction of honestly examining all the ways in which people are different from each other and developing a system which can get at individual difference and develop such, but rather to crush people together, standardize even more brutally, effectively, "smooth over" differences between people.
It appears in few people's interests, probably only the minority of bright/talented people, to have an actually rigorous and honest educational system. Politically and economically a rigorous system is divisive, against the low performing wealthy and other types of groupings alike. It's dumbed down.
I have long thought that college applications should censor race, gender & perhaps even location of applicants, at least in the preliminary stages of consideration of applicants. When the pool of applicants has been pared down to the most apparently qualified, then perhaps those data points could be revealed to admissions officers. I don't agree with young Ben Shapiro on much, but I agree with him that if applicants are equal on all other criteria, the applicant who has faced the most disadvantages should get more consideration. I also think college is not for everyone. Practical skills have great value to a society as well.
1
This case should decide once and for all if universities can use race in the admission process. When race is used someone is the winner and someone the loser because of their race It can’t be any other way. If race is not used then no one wins and no one loses because of their race. Maybe that’s they way it should be. However the decision should be made so we can move forward with clarity.
4
Asian Americans will never accept for the greater good a system of racial preferences that benefits others more than them. They shouldn't have to. Affirmative action is going to be declared unconstitutional. The tide has turned. This is isn't a Republican vs Democrat issue anymore. In poll after poll, the overwhelming majority of Americans are against affirmative action and in favor of merit based admission policies for colleges. Affirmative action was a well-intentioned policy that was poorly implemented. It has resulted in de facto quotas. We all know that. Despite being the country’s fastest-growing minority group, & despite applying to college in greater numbers, the percentage of Asians admitted at elite schools has flat lined over the last 20 years. That suggests that Harvard & the other Ivies have a hard-fast, intractable quota limiting the number of Asians that they will accept. That's wrong. There're better ways to improve disadvantaged students’ education. There're better ways to improve diversity. Improving the K-12 education in [those] disadvantaged communities would be a good place to start. But truthfully most politicians and surprisingly most Democrats don't have the will, incentive, or guts to do this. Inexcusable but not surprising.
10
The way elite colleges handle admissions is insane. The vast majority of the people accepted fit into a protected class, such as: big donor, legacy, athlete, low-income, minority. America is supposed to be the land of opportunity! Shouldn’t each of our children have the same chance to go to an elite college, especially since all colleges in America are heavily subsidized by taxpayers? Don’t we care about equality and fairness? Don’t we want the best doctors, lawyers, etc? Remember that we’re not arguing about who gets to go to college. We’re arguing about who gets to go to the best colleges.
As a parent, I’d like to be able to teach my child that hard work pays off, that opportunities will arise if you show that you’re up to it. I shouldn’t have to explain that the deck is stacked, and we shouldn’t expect an equal shot at success just because we excel.
4
The current policy essentially requires an Asian American applicant to compete with one hand tied behind her back because Asians as a group have test scores that are higher on average. It doesn’t sound at all fair to require an Asian American or white applicant to meet a higher cut off score for admission than black or Hispanic applicants. It may not be fair to prioritize standardized test scores at all. Maybe all students should have to have a certain GPA and pass a test to ensure they can handle the coursework at the university and have recommendations as talented/interesting, etc. by people who know them and then be chosen by lottery.
1
College campuses are hardly the only place where “bridges” could be built, a belief demonstrating an insular academic view. And stripping away the distractions and circumlocutions, race remains a non-merit based factor in admissions, pure and simple. One should simply focus on whether that is fair or meets some defined societal goal universities ought to meet.
1
From a NYTimes column by Russell Baker from July 24, 1977
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive/pdf?res=F50D15FD385F117A93C6AB178CD...
“Every society needs a large supply of have nots. And the American model is no exception. Being more egalitarian than most, however, it is developing a system under which duty in the have-not division can be rotated from generation to generation.
Women and blacks have absorbed a lesson that white males have yet to learn: to wit, that it is easier to make discrimination work for you than it is to eliminate it from American life.
The question no one asks is why the country must have a large supply of people to be
discriminated against. This takes us into dangerous water indeed, for when there are enough jobs to absorb a nation's talents and enough schools to fulfill people's desires for education, the need for discrimination withers away.
The country obviously does not provide enough jobs and schools. Some say It cannot afford to and that trying to do so would destroy a system which, after all, is working pretty well. If not, if have-nots in large supply are an economic necessity, then victims of discrimination are a vital part of the system, and the cunning will make sure that the duty of victimhood passes to some¬body else. “
1
When symphony orchestras went to blind auditions it increased diversity, especially with respect to gender (so why not conceal gender as well?). But be careful what you wish for because this will serve to increase the importance of standardized testing which favor those who can afford classes in test preparation and even individual tutors. One thing I know from personal experience, having worked in an amazingly diverse work place the past eight years, is that diversity drives productivity and, in all likelihood, also improves the educational experience for those attending universities. While all colleges and universities are capable of producing good job candidates those coming from diverse institutions (like M.I.T. or Princeton) are generally of far higher quality that those from institutions that are almost intentionally non-diverse (e.g. Liberty University). So ANY admissions process that results in a student body that is less diverse cheats the students of a more complete eduction and ultimately cheats our society in realizing the talents of all of our citizenry.
5
The college admissions process is so messed up, I wonder if we would be better off if Harvard simply set a minimum SAT score and GPA, and then accepted students from that group by random lottery. I am less worried about the specific use of race in admissions essays, and more worried about what prospective students are being incentivized to do - to identify as, or to write about - in order to appear interesting to admissions officers. Let me put this differently. Imagine a different set of hoops that we could make students jump through. Like, if you are willing to amputate your pinky toe, and include it with your admissions packet, we'll bump you up in the rankings. How many people do you think would do it? I suspect, a lot. My point is that this kind of pressure, brought to bear on young minds, is simply immoral. I am guessing that, for most young college applicants, identity (racial and otherwise) is still taking shape. It would be nice to give it a little room, rather than ask desperate students to package it up and try to sell it to you through essays and extracurriculars.
1
@JK I've advocated for a long time this idea of a lottery: Let the universities select the best, best, best and brightest, and leave a certain percentage of best, best and brightest to be chosen by lottery. There really isn't a fair way to select this from this group of people, so just admit it and pull names from a hat.
I haven't read the Plaintiff's legal papers, but I strongly doubt that Plaintiffs are demanding that large swaths of an application, including anything remotely pertaining to race, be redacted, nor do I think that is a reasonable intepretation of Plaintiff's position.
Opponents of affirmative action do not want to erradicate every reference to race. Rather we think it is unfair to require a white applicant to obtain an SAT score in, perhaps, the 97th or 99th percentile to be admitted while a black applicant can, perhaps, get in with an SAT score in the 85th percentile.
Shorter men earn less money than talll men. Obese people with acne earn less money than beautiful people. Men who had fathers in the home earn more money than men who were Fatherless. Are short men, Fatherless men and people with acne given affirmative action. Your counterargument is that this country never had a policy of discriminating against short men, etc. However, when are we going to start treating people as individuals and not as members of groups.
And by the way, a Ny Times article, from 1984, said that blacks who came from families that made 40 K a year averaged the same SATs as whites who came from families that made 10 K a year, negating the argument that reduced black attainment is caused by poverty.
12
“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in 2007, “is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Color blindness is opposed by those who benefit from an unfair system, or refuse to see the real reasons for unequal achievement in the face of equal opportunity. Criminal culture, poor parenting, devaluing education and delaying gratification are obvious individual differences which vary across groups.
4
There are poor and underprivileged Asians, and there are well-privileged Asians, and the same is true for all other racial groups. The time is past when "White is the default". Our country is significantly, and increasingly, diverse. Where once it was a clumsy but useful device to consider race in college admissions, now it is a hindrance to fairness.
Colleges prioritize some applicants, such as "Legacies", children of huge donors, and athletes, and quietly discriminate against others, so the existing process is already unfair.
It would be better to simply create a lottery of all applicants above a certain GPA. That would be completely fair, and ensure diversity among all those adequately qualified who apply.
6
Harvard University admission process is highly sophisticated that bias against Asian minority was hidden in plain sight. Not until a thorough research done using Harvard internal data that people realized how Harvard had systematically denied well qualified and competent young and talented Asian American applicants in the name of diversity. For one thing that personal interview as one of the 5 critical steps in the admission process constantly gave low remarks and trivial comments to Asian applicants, thus their acceptance to Harvard. It took Jewish Americans long time to overcome their admission hindrance before. It will take Asian Americans long time and great effort to overcome as well.
4
This opinion article distorted what the Harvard law suite is about. Asian-Americans are demanding fair treatment in the admission process rather than arguing "that colleges should focus only on grades and standardized test scores." The big question is why so many young Asian-Americans with excellent academic standing and impressive CVs were rated unfavorably on their characters and lost the opportunity to study at Harvard. Why should any race be subjected to such discrimination, intentional or subconscious? The author also practiced fearmongering by imagining redacted applications and colorblinding the admission process. These are hypothetical without established feasibility. Applicant should continue to talk about their ethnic and culture root and upbringing. But the systematic stereotype and unfair scoring of young Asian-Americans must be corrected.
9
As Justice Roberts wisely said; "The way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating"
7
If race is a factor in college admissions then discrimination is part of the practice. Affirmative action is just another form of discrimination, but politically acceptable because it promotes progressive values. Not a whole lot different than Jim Crow laws that also promoted social values at the time. A very slippery slope when certain discriminations are acceptable because it is socially or political expediency. As Chief Justice Roberts has said many times, if we want to stop discrimination then stop discrimination.
10
Affirmative action is, by its very nature, discriminatory against some group. e.g. we must make room for you because --- start the list now -- and, in the process, displace someone else.
Whomever, must decide where the greater good lies, and bye the bye, what defines the greater good. Examples abound. Do I want the best surgeon or the most diverse of surgeons.? Do I need to be exposed to "whatever" to make a valuable contribution to society.? is it necessary to "make nice to every group? Think and then define. And then of course, what is the mission of the so-called "elites"? Promotion of self or the pursuit of a better society.?
It is perhaps reasonable to say test scores alone don't make the best student body overall. However, deliberately giving low "personality" score to Asian American applicants to exclude them is a horrible issue.
Why does the admission process have to require the race to evaluate non-academic accomplishments of an applicant? Use as many other criteria as you want for activities and life experiences that you seek in the applicant; just don't look at race when doing so. Anything else is simply racial discrimination while hiding behind a hollow rationale.
5
Why not just take students from low income families like Berea College? Just don’t use race.
The author has unwittingly made a case why race attached to his or her input is not necessary to evaluate a candidate. Most readers likely ran down his list of examples and said race identification is not required for any of them. An Asian or Caucasian student can be in a Latino club. He might have a girlfriend in the club, if he does not have innate interest in the culture. Additionally, I do not think the plaintiffs demand only the use of test scores. They do use the test scores as partial evidence that something is wrong in the process. They do demand the end of race identification in the admissions process.
4
Professor Boddie claims it is the consideration of race that is the source of the complaint. It is not. It is the preference for one race over another.
Harvard used a nebulous "personality" assessment and systematically gave Asian-Americans lower scores than African-Americans without interviews or knowledge of the individual. This is an unfair bias against Asian-Americans and a way to secretly give one race an advantage over another.
Imagine if Harvard had the same systematic low scores for other groups mentioned by the professor, such as LGBTQ applicants. If they were routinely given lower "personality" scores than heterosexual applicants, Dr. Boddie would be aghast.
5
Admission to college should be determined by the purpose of the institution: education. Scholastic aptitude and desire to learn should therefore be the key factors. Race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation should be irrelevant. Unless the institution is a sports academy, athletic ability is also not a criteria. Who you parents or grandparents are, that is legacy qualifications are totally irrelevant.
Harvard and other such highly ranked private schools could afford being totally need-blind for purposes of admission. If you merit admission you get all the financial ail you need. That is what the billions of tax free endowments are for. Research is already subsidized by the government and corporate interests.
So, what is this all about? Simplify the admission process by requiring grades, scores, academic recommendations and a comprehensive personal essay.
The rest is make -up applied selectively: to perpetuate advantages held by sociatal subdivisions. The Asian-Americans are being used.
1
Yes, imagine the barren industrial hellscape the world will be when race is no longer considered an important factor in college admissions. Wait, what?
This is the dark side of affirmative action: qualified candidates are being denied admission due to their race. Try as this author might, she can't skirt that basic fact, and how obviously wrong it is.
It used to be Irish populations in the US that faced discrimination and had elevated poverty and crime rates. No longer. The same thing will happen with the "minorities" of today. It won't happen as quickly as we'd like, but it will happen. Look at the progress we've made in the last 100 years.
2
My daughter, who is biracial with an Asian last name, just went through the college process. The discussion among her and her friends was how to hide their racial identify. Promoting Asian identity is basically felt to be the death knell for college applications. It was at the point where she practically resented her Asian surname.
It is awfully presumptuous for the author to state that Asian-Americans would be disadvantaged were the Harvard case be won. For those of us who are Asians, we already stifle our racial identity whenever we want to get ahead in just about anything. If anything, I believe the Harvard case would enable more Asians to discuss racial identity, knowing it can no longer be used against us.
20
In my view, this is what happens when we are near, or at, the extremes: Something akin to Godel's incompleteness theory, and Tarski in regard to truth: but applied to good ideas. Yes, it is a good idea to keep the opportunity of college education and societal advancement "equal" and available to all. Even more than a good idea, it is part of the heritage of the USA and equal treatment of the citizens. The USA had a huge war over a stupid and possibly insane idea, that somehow it was "okay" to keep people as slaves, and you would think that after all that bloodshed and destruction the idea and procedures of "equal treatment" was resolved. And the whole concept is entirely reasonable when applied to government services and governmental functioning.
Applying such a good and reasonable idea to life in general is much more difficult.
And seriously, the idea that somehow it is okay to discriminate against the most meritorious of students, in terms of objective measurements, would seem most destructive to the claim made by the school taking such action, in this case Harvard, that it's students are the best, and most qualified, (Etc.) when clearly they are not. It is, in the end, nothing more than a beauty contest, as Harvard does it.
1
Colleges like Harvard should re-introduce rigorous entrance examinations and admit the top scorers on them. No need for these ridiculous "applications", "personal statements", etc.
1
"They want to outlaw the modest use of race in admissions ..."
There is nothing modest about what Harvard and most of the other leading private and public universities are doing. According to the Princeton study, in order to have the same odds of acceptance at these schools, all other things the same, an Asian-American student must have an SAT score that is 140 points higher than the equivalent white student.
For example, an Asian-American cross-country star who was her school's valedictorian and played one of the leads in "Les Miserables" would be between two and six times less likely to be admitted than a white cross-country star who was her school's valedictorian and played one of the leads in "Les Miserables."
This has nothing whatsoever to do with the tired old stereotypes of Asian-American applicants that folks will want to trot out. It is nothing to do with whether or not the focus is on grades or test scores. It is an "all other things the same" advantage. In short, rich white applicants are being given the seats that the Asian-American applicants deserve on the merits.
The only exceptions to this that I am aware of are the University of California system, the University of Washington and Cal Tech.
7
@Robert
This argument would be more cogent if you compared the acceptance criteria of Asian-American applicants to that of African-Americans. European-American candidates are left with the remainder after the preferred racial groups are given their allocation and the dis-preferred are given their allocation. The appropriate metric to measure the racial bias is Asian-American compared to African-American.
2
@Peter Johnson
Thanks, Peter, for your reply. I am not altogether clear on what you mean by "cogent." If not too much trouble, could you explain? In any case, on a de facto basis the white applicants (the vast majority of whom are very well off) look like a relatively "preferred" group. I don't remember the study's numbers for African-Americans exactly but the following is roughly correct. Asian-American applicants must score 140 points higher than whites in order to have the same odds of acceptance, all other things the same. Asian-Americans must score roughly 400 points higher than African-Americans, all other things the same. Whites must score 250 points higher than African-Americans, all other things the same. The socioeconomic context is as follows. Poor and working class applicants have never had more than a miniscule number of seats at the leading public and private universities. That has not changed. Over the past three or four decades, the middle class has lost most of their seats. And now at most of those schools there are more students from the top 1% of families by wealth and income than from the bottom 60%.
@Robert
A 400 point SAT gap for admission (all else equal) between preferred African-Americans and dis-preferred Asian-Americans is more clear and convincing as an argument that there is race-based selection, compared to the much more modest 150-point SAT difference between Asian-Americans and European-Americans. Using European-Americans as a comparison group is not directly relevant -- they are sandwiched in the middle.
Why is affirmative action an imperfect tool? Because when put into practice it leads to quotas which are against the law. If you want to see Affirmative action's future come to California. For decades Asian Americans in here had complained that they were being short changed in UC college admissions. They not only argued that race-conscious policies were unfair but proved convincingly that they were victims. In 1996 voters amended the state constitution by voting for Prop 209, to prohibit state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in public education. By law admission to UC colleges now had to be race neutral. Post Prop-209, Asian students benefited tremendously. They are almost 50% of student body at UC-Berkeley California schools. This an almost 25% increase. Clearly in an open admissions process where affirmative action does not enter into enrollment decisions & where legacy and donor issues are discouraged, Asian-American students compete very well. In the subsequent years, the Asian community has fiercely opposed all measures that seek to return affirmative action to California. California's present is America's future. They are bringing the fight against affirmative action to the Supreme Court. This time around, there is a wealthier, more organized, & vocal group of Asians who are on board — and are very willing to play their part in ending affirmative action forever. Supporting this flawed policy isn't an option for them & soon the rest of the US.
22
Michigan, California, and Texas have laws forbidding using race as a criteria in admissions in state universities. The Michigan policy was by voter referendum and was upheld by the Supreme Court. Honest people can agree or disagree with that policy but articles like this far overstate for case for racial preferences while ignoring that there are real costs and real losers from it.
5
There is a fine line between affirmative action and discrimination depending which side of the line you stand. I understand the need to have a diverse student body but at the same time does that need trump actual merit? When does the call for diversity ever fight for asian inclusion in any facets of american life? Where is the call for more asians in high ranking executive positions in american corporations? In american mainstream media? in the nba/nfl/nhl or any other sporting body ? in american politics? The answer is that there is none. The demand for diversity is not wrong but in reality that call excludes, for the most part, asians as a whole. In the collegiate realm I argue that striving for diversity has turned into subtle discrimination against certain asian ethnic groups that just happen to excel in academia.
4
If so many of Harvard's applicants are more than qualified
to handle its academics AND there are not enough spaces
to fill the demand then what difference will not listing race or listing race matter. The same tensions and discussion over how many blacks, latins, whites, etc should compose the class will emerge under both systems. Maybe race should take a back seat to a more "nuanced "idea.-Where did you grow up? How disadvantaged is that neighborhood to other
applicants?
The case is about Harvard's use of 'Personality' to rate Asians lower than every other group, year-after-year, in order to keep their numbers from exploding.
It does not preclude applicants from talking about race, or whatever else they might want to highlight.
The arguments made in this article are misleading, to say the least.
7
"Imagine this scenario: An admissions officer sits down to read a stack of applications, but they’re heavily redacted because the college must censor all references to an applicant’s race."
It would be a lot like how applicants for openings in symphony orchestras audition behind a curtain. Or how law school tests are graded “blind” without the grader knowing the name of who took the test.
Okay, let me try to "imagine this scenario" … Hmmmmmmm … Sounds good!
Let’s do it.
12
Race-free applications seems perfectly reasonable to me. For example, these days, professional classical music orchestras have blind auditions, the applicant is behind a screen. The judges listen. No bias by race, gender, age, orientation etc. It works. Back when my Dad went to college, fine private schools had strict quotas on Jews (with preference for the few spots given to the wealthy).( His brilliant cousin from Brooklyn with a very Jewish last name was rejected by every top grad history dept in the USA that he applied to, he got his doctorate from Trinity College Dublin.) In fact, the introduction of personality tests at Harvard was specifically designed to lower the number of successful Jewish applicants (as recorded in memos from the Dean of admissions at the time) . Now, the same thing is being done to Asians. It was wrong then and it's wrong now. If an institution wants to make extra space for alumni children, or any racial (though current science says all racial groups are an anachronistic fiction) or ethnic group for that matter, let it be blunt about it. Let it make the case for discrimination out in the open, not hide behind abstruse formulae., and let's see how well that goes for it.
4
This argument about race-aware versus race-blind selection rules has been going around in circles for half a century, with no end in sight. The fundamental difficulty in coming to grips with the problem is that we are not allowed to face reality about racial differences in average outcomes. There are differences in average behavioral patterns across racial identities linked to genetic differences between ancestral lines. We need to face up to the reality of the world in which we live and then address policy issues thoughtfully and sensibly.
1
The answer to this may well be to require an in person interview or video for every applicant. What these colleges know is that perfect grades and test scores do not always equal generous, compassionate, highly nuanced individuals, which is what they want in their student body.
This case is missing that critical point. Perfection is not the goal; it does not, and should not, automatically equal admittance to the Ivy League, or any school, for that matter.
1
In England and Wales, university admissions forms don't show ethnicity, but they do show several government measures of disadvantage (socioeconomic and personal circumstances)., although they are not anonymised.
What a gorgeously eloquent piece, powerfully reasoned and beautifully argued. I feel richer for having read it, deepened by its words. Thank you so much.
2
I don't agree with what this particular lawsuit is trying to achieve (the redaction of any mention of race in college applications). However I disagree with Harvard's (and in extension some other prestigious colleges) use of race in their admissions. It's clear they are capping the number of Asian Americans all in the name of fostering "diversity." It is effectively setting a different bar for different racial backgrounds to enter Harvard (using them as an example). Put yourself in this situation: you are an Asian American applicant, and your best friend from high school who's African American both apply to the same prestigious college. You have a higher GPA, more extracurriculars than your friend but you both help each other write admissions essays. 3 months later your African American friend gets accepted while you don't. This was a personal experience of mine. And no I'm not bitter about it, but it's definitely something that's stuck in my mind ever since.
9
@Jason More to the point there is no scientific or objective way to assign an individual to a USCB race category since those are 19th century inventions of racists.
The discussion of this subject here and elsewhere shows often that American professors are firmly committed to use of this archaic system.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
1
Last I recalled the elite colleges usually include an interview. Are applicants expected to stay behind a screen or wear a mask?
3
It is undeniable that if academic performance alone were the basis for admission, Harvard would go from around 23% ethnic Asian admits to over 50%, as did the University of California when Affirmative Action was scrapped here. This suggests either that Asians are being discriminated against, or that academic capability is not the primary criterion for admission. Perhaps a little of both. We know that there is a long history of admitting legacy applicants with middling academic records--affirmative action for the white and privileged. Still, Harvard stokes the myth that its focus is on admitting the brightest.
Harvard does have some of the best minds in the country--perhaps they can figure out a more transparent process for admissions. They have resisted, claiming that their process would be damaged by transparency. Until they change their tune (and I say this as a Harvard alumnus), I am firmly on the side of the plaintiffs.
17
@charles
This has nothing to do with considering academic performance alone, or any of the other Asian-American stereotypes. All other things the same, in order to have the same odds of acceptance, Asian-Americans have to have SAT test scores that are 140 points higher. That is what the Princeton study found. "All other things the same" means that the students are comparable in all things. A white starting quarterback valedictorian jazz trombonist from a good suburban high school would be several times more likely to be admitted than an Asian-American starting quarterback valedictorian jazz trombonist from a good suburban high school, unless the Asian-American also did 140 points better on the SAT.
I agree. If Harvard does have the best minds, they ought to be able solve this, assuming they want to do so.
Charles wrote:
"It is undeniable that if academic performance alone were the basis for admission, Harvard would go from around 23% ethnic Asian admits to over 50%, as did the University of California when Affirmative Action was scrapped here. …"
2
I’m generally sympathetic to Harvard’s perspective on this (at least the result they are striving for), but I sure hope Harvard’s lawyers have something better to say about this. If this is the best defense available, I probably need to rethink this thing...
8
Race, Religion, parentage or for that matter Gender should never be the main differentiating factor during admissions. Top grades and scores are a plus point. However, most candidates who apply to Ivy League schools have top grades. Admission counselors must weigh in the overall factor including of who may be the most likely to make an impact, change society, be influencers or make remarkable contributions.
2
The Left seems to use the idea of race when it suits them. If race doesn't exist, why use it in the admissions process? If it does exist, does race say anything meaningful? If it does, then why not use it in all contexts?
13
@Mannyv Read Genome expert David Reich March 30 How To Talk About Race reply to Times readers. Professor Boddie and many commenters clearly have not read that.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
@MannyvMannyv - I perhaps am one of those on "the left" but I agree with you and all my comments make the same major point - end classification by "race".
Telling me that someone is of the Asian race tells me nothing useful or specific. Telling me the education level of their parents, their economic status and much more - SES data tells me something useful.
-see my earlier reply.
I would go further and make all applications anonymous and double-blind. Ideally the anonymous, double-blind selection process would become the norm in job applications too. There are many studies showing the unconscious biases we all have and how they affect selection decisions we make. It's much easier to remove from the process the markers that lead to biased selections than to remove the biases themselves.
15
@UA I could agree to that.
1
Is this a suggestion to choose students who are less intellectually gifted in favor of those who are diverse?
18
@No
It tends to go the othe way, does it not?
the MORE diverse and progressively politicized, the LESS intellectual? Imagine having students happy with references to arithmetic in a poli sci class....
This essay is misrepresents reality to further an agenda, an agenda that the author no doubt believes is just. Fact is no one has to leave off that she worked for Black Lives Matters or a Latina group. It would be part of their accomplishments worthy of consideration. The absence of a quota would in fact make it less likely to discriminate against a person based on race. In any event, I would argue that it is the socio-economic class of an individual, not race, that most determines admission to an elite college or university.
24
Does anyone doubt that a student would get more out of being in a course with e.g. 25 Azerbajani-Colombian bisexuals whose thinking ran the gamut from very conservative to very liberal, as opposed to 25 people from 25 backgrounds who are all part of the ILL -- illiberal left-wing? Identity is the least important thing.
7
If the Ivies had truly race-blind admissions where only the gender of the applicant was revealed on the application, their class would consist of qualified women of all races and a male student body that is predominantly Asian.
8
To paraphrase Chief Justice Roberts, if you want to stop discriminating based on race, then stop discriminating based on race.
Affirmative action is just plain wrong.
It is asking for race-based discrimination when it benefits minorities, but those same minorities demand a color-blind society otherwise.
Affirmative action is holding us back as a society.
(And no doubt I will be accused of white privilege)
16
Even if what you propose is not to promote white interests.
1
@G As a White male I have to disagree. After decades of Whites benefiting from their own version of Affirmative Action (VA loans only for Whites, legacy admissions that are, essentially, only for Whites, etc., etc.), it's about time others are getting a balancing consideration. And you are simply uninformed in claiming "those sme minorities demand a color-blind society otherwise." Sorry, but "those same minorities" realistically understand there simply is no such thing as a "color-blind society." That's just another White fantasy.
As for "accusing" you of white privilege, there simply is no "accusation" involved at all. If you are White, in this society, you get any number of unearned privileges--as do I. It's a simple reality, it's not your fault, and it says nothing at all about you as a human being. What does speak volumes is what you do with that privilege.
This lawsuit is about purported discrimination against Asian students. Yet this piece, like every other piece against this case is mostly an attack on 'white privilege'. How about focusing on the matter at hand: Asian students being discriminated against by Harvard.
44
Well, if race truly is an unbridgeable gap between people, why are we wasting our time trying to build a functional multiracial society? Since white people have their own ethnic identity, why should they fight against "white supremacy"? Why should they trust other ethic groups not to oppress them? Why wouldn't they be willing to use extreme violence to protect themselves and uphold this system?
Unless we start finding a way to come together, the U.S. will break up the way Yugoslavia and Iraq did.
6
Good Grief! Of course Harvard, MIT, etc. are selecting against Asian Americans to some extent. Why else would Asian Americans be bringing this suit? Duh. If Harvard or MIT were to go to race blind admissions does anyone believe that the percentage of Asian Americans would do anything but go up?
Ironically, Asian Americans are an affirmative action group. Meaning Asian Americans are considered an historically discriminated group in education and employment under AA like other minorities. I know because as a hiring manager in the 1980s Asian Americans counted as an AA hire just like African Americans.
What is so unusual about this suit is that Asian Americans who once benefitted from AA especially in the 70s and 80s want AA done away with because it works against them now, especially in trying to get into elite schools. This law suit really is about allowing more Asian Americans into elite institutions not fewer.
8
@Shend
I doubt anyone applying to Harvard at least undergrad was alive in the 70s or 80s.
1
Race should have no rule in a college admissions policy. If you think it should then do an equal quota where you have 20% white, 20% black, 20% Hispanic, 20% Asian, and 20% other. And then apply the same qualifying standards across all the students and make the admissions office work harder to get the seats filled. The problem is everyone has a complaint about subjective factors, ie they are inherently subjective!
5
Good idea. Only bigots care about race.
Massachusetts formerly made it illegal for a college to require a photograph on its application forms. The purpose was to reduce the chance that evaluation of the form would be affected by racial prejudice. It's not perfect---if you have a Chinese name, you are almost certainly ethnic Chinese, and ethnicity can often be inferred from names alone---but it is better than nothing.
Even better would be "blind" admissions, in which names and other identifying information (name of high school, etc.) is stripped from applications. Some scientific journals do this when reviewing submitted papers---the reviewer doesn't know the names or institutional affiliation of the authors.
15
"Under Harvard’s current admissions process, they could discuss the role
race played in their lives. A white applicant might also want to share her
experiences with race. But in the plaintiffs’ alternate universe, that
would be illegal for an admissions committee to take that into account."
Professor Boddie,
Do you EVEN hear what YOU are saying?
OF COURSE it should be ILLEGAL to take that into account.
CANNOT DO THAT in HOUSING OPPORTUNITY
CANNOT DO THAT in EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY
CANNOT DO THAT almost anywhere, nearly in any situation in this great country.
What exactly makes you think it's suddenly okay to judge by RACE in School admission????
Doesn't RACE play a critical role in forming the person BEFORE her/his employer?
Doesn't RACE play an important role in guiding the person as the person looking for housing?
Just how ridiculous to even frame the argument the way you did in your op-ed.
When acting and thinking self-righteously for too long, some of us have not only ceased to be able to tell moral right from wrong, they've also lost the minimum sense of seeing logic true or false.
44
Using the example you are using regarding a black kids from south side of Chicago, say vs a Asian kid from NYC Chinatown with restaurant worker parents. For simplicity sake, say family incomes are equal also. Wouldn't they be equally disadvantaged but Harvard would clearly favor one of them? This only shows the wrong assumption of Asians, or Whites, are automatically "advantaged". If Harvard reveal their data, I wouldn't be surprised to find that black kids from Washington DC's lawyers' family is taking place of this poor Chinatown kid.
17
The author misused statistics in the following statement: "The proportion of Asian-American students in Harvard’s admitted classes has grown by 27 percent since 2010, and they make up nearly a quarter of the admitted class of 2022 (overall, Asian Americans make up about 6 percent of the United States population).
1. It is extremely usual to calculate percent increases based on two percent numbers. It makes the increase much more than it really is.
2. Asian Americans are younger than the general population.
The author appears insincere.
16
Modest use of race? Puleeze...Being asian penalizes you the equivalent of 200 points on the SATs. No one calls a 200 point difference on the SATs modest. No one is demanding that test scores be the only criteria. They are demanding that they not discriminate against certain ethnic backgrounds. That anyone fails to see the validity of this is appalling.
23
Imagine the author's position if Harvard was systematically denying admissions to qualified African American students because they didn't want too many of their race. Yes this is very difficult issue, but to deny that it is racist to reject qualified applicants because there are too many of their race is to be simply dishonest.
31
@Richard
Imagine if Harvard was systematically denying admissions to qualified African American students because they didn't want too many of their race ... because Harvard's student body was half black!
As it stands, elite university admissions criteria discriminate so heavily in favor of one ethnic group that universities are desperate to find ways to get other groups' kids are drastically underrepresented.
They're choosing applicants in a way that produces a student body that is not at all representative of the nation. This was a problem when whites benefitted at the expense of everyone else, and it's still a problem.
I don’t know who is right in the Harvard case. But the author’s convoluted reasoning suggests a fundamental weakness in her position.
35
Is it really in the best interest of the country for leading colleges to go the way of Berkeley (CA), where of the 30,574 undergraduates, only 535 are Black? That’s 1.6%, about the same as hyper conservative Hillsdale College in Michigan, and less (unbelievably) than Washington and Lee in Virginia.
The folks that carry on about “lowering standards” for POC’s have no idea just how many highly qualified applicants that Harvard reviews. Believe me, everyone who gets in is very highly qualified.
5
2 observations.
1. Affirmative Action should be considered an insult to the intelligence of all minorities. AA says, implicitly, that minorities aren't good enough to compete against the majority population without help.
2. I note the author advises on AA compliance. This is work she will lose if AA goes away. Now, THAT is creative destruction I can get behind. May you find more useful employment.
25
@Victor Ok. Then do you feel the same way about the decades of White affirmative action that preceded this belated attempt to level the playing field? By your reasoning, I guess millions of Whites should consider it an insult that they were allowed to get VA and FHA loans for housing then non-whites were denied those same opportunities. And I guess generations of Whites should consider it an insult that they were allowed into elite institutions primarily because their fathers or uncles provided them a legacy admission.
Get real. For centuries our society has been structured to provide "affirmative action" for Whites. All of this mewling and whining about affirmative action reminds me of Barry Switzer's comment about George W. Bush: "He was born on third base but thinks he hit a triple." As a White male myself I have no problem acknowledging that the accident of my birth means I was born on second or third base. And I feel no threat by attempts to make the game a little fairer for those less fortunate than I am.
This lawsuit races interesting issues about the role diversity should play in college admissions, but this is such a poorly reasoned essay, I don’t know where to start. Why disparage this as a lawsuit being brought by “a group of Asian-American students denied admission to Harvard”? Why not acknowledge that there is substantial evidence that Harvard (and other schools) discriminate against applicants who are Asian, which is the plaintiffs’ actual complaint?
Don’t talk about schools’ “modest use of race” unless you make some attemp to quantify “modest”; if it’s so modest, what’s the worry?
Nothing will stop students from listing their extracurriculars; schools will simply have to consider them as extracurriculars and not as code for race.
Why compare “a black student who grew up on the south side of Chicago” and a “Hmong aplicant from a working-class neighborhood” to “a white applicant”? Are “white applicants” monolithic?
I haven’t followed the case, but I doubt the plaintiffs in the lawsuit want Harvard to consider ONLY gpa and test scores; my understanding is that they just want Harvard to not hold their race against them.
Don’t blame Blum for financing the lawsuit; financing lawsuits is not the problem. And the author won’t complain when someone finances a lawsuit she approves of.
16
I will go one further and not take gender into account either. Why? Why not let the best candidate get in? Redact gender, race, and you name, until you are either accepted or not.
21
@Joe
Problem with your simplistic view is: who is the best candidate?
It's not SAT scores and GPAs alone. Objective measures don't reveal much, especially when many economically privileged candidates (of all races and genders) can pay for coaching for SATs, the "best" extra curriculars, the best essay editing (or writing), etc. There are many qualifications that cannot be assigned objective number values.
Most people who apply to Harvard are "qualified" to do the academic work there. As this article states and Harvard has always maintained.
So, Joe, who gets to decide the "best candidates" among the thousands of applicants who "qualify"?
You?
I don't think so.
You'd well end up with those who went to the elite boarding schools in New England, California, New York, other wealthy areas, especially the children and descendants of Harvard alumni? Add in those from wealthy families elsewhere on the globe.
An entire first year class with virtually identical backgrounds? Based on GPA and SAT?
@Joe
I come from a country with anonymous college exams and admissions. Same for competitive high schools that have entrance exams. In the days before computers, you went in for the exam, got your id checked, and got an envelope and two cards with the same number printed on them. You wrote your name on one card, sealed it in the envelope, and dropped that in a sealed box (like a voting urn). The other card got stapled to your exam sheet. Different people graded the exams from those who, after the grading was done, opened the envelopes and collated names to numbers for the successful candidates. The accepted roster was made _before_ any of the names were known.
3
@Joe
I come from a country with anonymous college exams and admissions. Same for competitive high schools' entrance exams. In the days before computers, you went in for the exam, got your id checked, and got an envelope and two cards with the same number printed on them. You wrote your name on one card, sealed it in the envelope, and dropped that in a sealed box (like a voting urn). The other card got stapled to your exam sheet. Different people graded the exams from those who, after the grading was done, opened the envelopes and collated names to numbers for the successful candidates. The accepted roster was made _before_ any of the names were known. And after I got into my high school this way I learned there was a 50/50 gender quota, because without it, 70% of admitted students would be girls (same for other competitive schools). Also, the phrase "affirmative action" doesn't exist in my native language, and gender parity is better than in the US in technical professions - because there are no stereotypes that "girls suck at math/science". So I think the anonymous approach would deliver some cool surprises if it gets adopted here as well.
1
Using race against an otherwise fully qualified applicant is as un-American as one can get. It is illegal and immoral and needs to be ended.
23
Perhaps nationwide demographics should prevail. Would Asians like it if only the top 6% of Asian applicants were admitted? This seems fair on the surface, but it is not in reality. This lawsuit should cause fewer Asians admitted to Harvard, not more.
Are they going to make the names of the students inaccessible, too? Really? Sheesh.
1
Sorry I do understand you, but most Americans would see nothing wrong with this. You somewhat craftily say, instead of diversity, that it formed a life. Unfortunately, everyone has that same merit. Their race shaped their lives. You may not realize it, but you just made it subject to a suspect category under Supreme Court jurisprudence. Of course it is anyway, but putting it this way seems to highlight that this is an inborn characteristic which is almost always suspect. My child's school is 70% monoracial. My daughter and most of her friends are minorities for the first time in their lives. I don't mind. The majority scored higher than others. They are Asians. It's the American way. Don't help destroy it. If you earn it, you should have it. If you just inherited it, such as being a certain race...meh.
9
Martin Luther King, Jr. :
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
19
Amen, amen, amen. Enough of the post modern redefinition of racism. It's tearing the country apart and justifying the white supremacists focus on whiteness.
2
If I were grading this essay or considering Ms. Boddie
for admission to a college, I would give it a D + and
reject her as a candidate.
Does "Race" actually exist ?
Or is it a "Social Construct" ?
If it does exist, then why are "Racists"
deemed the worse of the worst ?
If it is a "Social Construct" then why is it given so
much importance.
Take a child of two wealthy parents.
What does this student offer to Harvard just
because of the tincture of his skin ?
I rather take someone bright from a poverty ridden
background no matter the tint of their skin -
that will bring a real perspective to Harvard that
few other students will.
Harvard has been discriminating for decades
and they should just be honest and admit it.
By the way if Harvard is looking for diversity
I am 1/8th African American, 5/8th Native American
and 2/8ths European American and have lived and worked
everywhere - I can bring perspectives no 18 year can even
dream of.
23
". . . MODEST consideration of race in admissions."
If you believe that, you'll believe anything.
16
I am confused why the author keeps talking about white people here. It is rather unclear how not discriminating against Asians "entrenches whiteness". This is a desperate argument to anyone outside the academy.
35
how about they leave off if any relatives went to the school...
5
Without cavilling with the authors point, I was struck her advocacy of racial preferences/discrimination (as this is, while she refuses to acknowledge it, a zero sum situation as class size fixed) to combat racial preferences/discrimination. As Sandra OConnor sagely noted, at some point we have to just stop making any racial preferences and stop discriminating for any race. One can debate when that day will be, but we cant ignore its salience. The author suggests that racism is inherent permanent, in stem, etc, and thus AA, like racism itself ,must roll out into perpetuity. At some point, AA advocates simply have to deal with thsi incoherence/oxymoron. Advocates for AA ahve to be Abel to define when it will end, what the endpoints are, how we will know its time. When whites are the monitoring ? And who exactly is “white”, “black”, “colored” with increasing mixing of racial backgrounds in marriages/children ? To insist there is no end is not tenable and in fact will only embed racism deeper into our society. The answer, obviously, is to emphasize economic affirmative action which is NOT practicing rascism, as Univ o California does.
5
Boddie's essay shows exactly why Harvard should lose this lawsuit. The civil rights laws are clear: discrimination on the basis of race is illegal.
It is mathematically impossible to discriminate "for" one group without also discriminating "against" other groups, and mischief (such as stereotyping the personalities of various groups as being less pleasant) is inherent in the discrimination. Far from being a"modest" consideration among many factors, race is actually the dominant factor in admissions decisions, as shown by Asians' average SAT scores being multiple standard deviations higher than groups currently fancied by discriminatory admissions committees.
The legal contortions in prior Supreme Court decisions on affirmative action derive from the Justices' fear of what an objective, non-discriminatory admissions process might produce. Ultimately, the court can't propagate an obvious legal fiction forever because it is afraid of reality. It must either come down on the side of the law as written (no discrimination on the basis of race) or invalidate the law and allow the universities (and maybe other providers of public accommodations) to discriminate as they please.
Let the chips fall where they may. Reality is a much better basis for policy than fiction and fig-leaves. Perhaps when we honestly confront the causes of different academic outcomes, we can formulate policies that improve outcomes across the board.
15
Hahvahd still has an undergraduate program? I thought they gave up on that years ago.
What about all of the Chinese applicants from China! Will they be forced to hide where they were born, where they live? Many American schools support their financial aid programs by admitting Chinese students, many of whom pay full tuition. This law suit could end up hurting both schools and Chinese students.
@frank Generally internationals students are not counted when reporting racial composition of the student body. At least that was the case when I went to college.
1
This opinion article would be much more persuasive if it referred to the actual experience at state universities in states like California and Michigan where race is not to be used as an admission factor (by state law). I know for certain that there were successful applicants to UC Berkeley in the most recent admission round who referred to their personal experiences with all of the detail the article claims would be barred if Harvard didn't use applicant "race" as an admission factor.
(The point the article makes that not all "Asian" applicants are the same is well known to those of us here in Minnesota who know students are variously Hmong, Indian, or Chinese.)
7
Harvard has along history of using race and religion to determine who gets accepted in school. In early 20th century Harvard was so concerned about the number of Jewish students being accepted based solely on academic achievements that they introduced interview as integral part of admission process. With that they controlled precise who should get the opportunity to study at Harvard. The issue which not being addressed is the significant number of positions which granted to children of the donors and professors which undoubtedly reduces the number of the positions available to others. Unfortunately there is no perfect system to select students for highly competitive and prestigious schools. I just wonder if Harvard or other school use methods that are used in medical school admission (structured and validated stations) for applicant who qualify on basis on academic achievements rather the race or connection to school.
7
While I respect Professor Boddie, I must disagree on a couple points. She brings up the example of not being able to talk about ones leadership role in the high school Latino club to suggest that applicants can no longer distinguish themselves from other 4.0 GPA students. Yet what about talking about your volunteering experience with the homeless, with the drug addicted, with the children with cancer in the hospital? What about talking about the challenges you faced as a child in an impoverished neighborhood where food insecurity, or violence, or drug use were endemic? Should it matter the race of an applicant when they rose from adversity of these circumstances?
7
Why should race be factor in college admissions? Isn't that a form of racism as well ?
If the idea is to bring about a sense of equity in society using education as a means, then do so based on income levels for poverty and the ills of a lack of healthy income cuts across race, gender and ethnicity. Who would you rather see be admitted if there one opening and the onus is on creating a sense of social equity : A low income Caucasian kid or a well to do African American kid?
I have seen up close the ills of misguided affirmative action policies drive the Indian education system into the toilet. The so called brain drain from India started primarily as a revolt against the educational quota system.
Spend the effort instead to improve the quality of education in inner city schools, centralize the school tax collection at the level of the state as opposed to leaving them at the level of the municipalities, distribute a greater share of the tax revenues to improve schools in poorer areas of a state, improve the public transportation system that lowers spend on school buses, drive more localization of the middle and high schools as opposed to loading them, driving down the cost of education at public and private colleges making it easier for all to attend school etc.
The goal should be to improve the percentage of college graduates - not just from one race or another.
Make education truly universal. All other types of talk are just a meaningless sales pitch.
24
@Plato
Equalizing funding in schools isn’t as much of an issue as parental involvement. If you don’t teach your child to behave at home and instill the idea that education is important, all the funding in the world won’t make them successful students.
12
@D Steinberg - Why are they alternates? Do both. There is no single magic bullet for this. It involves a bunch of factors sometimes seemingly disparate. Urban planning, almost non existent in America, is a very important tool in improving both access to and the quality of education. Demand that from your law makers and those you elect.
@Plato
You missed my point. Baltimore spends more on education than most cities in this country. Unfortunately more money spent has not translated into better outcomes. These kids come from homes where education is not valued. Not too many kids can overcome uncaring and uninvolved parents. I can’t elect better parents.
If you remove race, you will probably have to remove name, essay, clubs and organizations, and finally interview. Way too many clues. Then we are left with the applicants who look best with test scores, but might not have much else to offer.
In an effort to be color/gender/ethnicity/sexual orientation etc., blind, we now are now more aware and afraid of all of them than ever before.
We will never please everyone. Never.
7
Should we provide all with a legitimate shot at admission based on achievement, or should we set quotas? Should we control access to opportunity, or should we control outcomes? Not easy questions because we know circumstances matter. However, should people who achieve be penalized for someone else's lousy upbringing? Nothing but questions. But I disagree with this author on this particular point.
11
@s.s.c. It is an easy question. Why are racial quotes only used when blacks are underrepresented? Why in sports and the music industry aren't they being called for since blacks are way overrepresented and all other minorities pretty invisible? Certainly sports and talent scouts could direct their attention to under represented minorities. It's as though blacks feel anywhere they are overrepresented they deserve it (except for prison) but any place other racial groups are over represented and they are under represented they are being cheated. It's an ugly attitude.
2
How about eliminating the need for the SAT then? High school GPA is a better predictor of academic success in college. And, there is nothing to stop Harvard from using zipcode to balance demographics.
1
The days of affirmative action are numbered. And that's a good thing. Merit, not race, should determine whether or not a student is admitted to university.
33
The issue the Asian-American students are trying to address is that admissions officers might not be merely "modestly considering" race as part of the whole picture of an applicant--they are possibly reducing an applicant's entire identity to race alone, in the pursuit of a nicely balanced graph to place on reports and webpages.
Also, it's an undeniable fact that certain minorities are treated as more "deserving" of assistance and special consideration over other minorities. For scholarships and programs funded by NSF grants, for example, Asians are not considered an "underrepresented group," despite representing only 5% of the American population.
It's very poetic and idealistic to talk about the "fullness of our humanity," but in reality people still sort other people into reductive racial categories. That theoretical Hmong student, no matter how hard he or she works, will always be "the cookie-cutter Asian with good SAT scores but no personality." The theoretical black student from Chicago will unfortunately be labeled "The high-achieving African-American unicorn we need to recruit because it's good for the program."
28
The article reads as if the asian-american students who went to court were the bad guys. In reality everybody has the right to seek a judicial decision. It is up to the courts to decide if something is right or wrong.
28
@Andreas This is written in the same way whites who wanted segregation and apartheid would have written to convince people that they were the real victims.
Ms. Boddie posits that a modest use of race in determining admission is vital to college education. First of all, she provides no definition or guideline on what she means by "modest." If you happen to be one of the Asian students denied admission due to causes alleged in the lawsuit, then even one instance is modest usage of race. Second, she conveniently ignores the fact that the race information is being used against the Asian students to deny admission. This is the epitome of racial discrimination. How anyone, let alone someone with her credentials, can advocate for such discrimination is incomprehensible. And finally, after all that, she states that pretending to be color blind will divide us. So, in the end, I believe Ms. Boddie's position can be summarized as racial distinction is needed and can be used to discriminate against and divide out the Asian students. In America, this is illegal and unconstitutional.
48
Make it race, income and legacy blind. Several years ago, coming out of National Science Bowl was an Asian-American student from CT who was likely the top science and math student in the country. An incredible mind. His dream was Harvard, but rejected he took MIT. Harvard's loss in my estimation. And years before Harvard denied Carl Sagan tenure - whereupon he went to Cornell. I look forward to Harvard getting it's due, where the elite and those with family connections too often get in over more worthy candidates.
25
Actually let's not make it in one blind... Harvard can afford to pay for the poor... Let's give the poor a lift, so long as they are equal in every thi g else.
"We need to stop pretending that affirmative action is the source of our problems around race." -- but why isn't it, at least partly? It makes tars _all_ minority high-achievers, by raising the possibility that they help they got from affirmative action outweighed the hindrance they faced due to race. If race is proxy for economic disadvantage, why not use economic status directly? Those from poorer families get a leg up in admissions, regardless of race.
31
Eliminate the "race" question on the application. Do not ask students to censor who they are. it will be their choice on whether or not to share any details about their race or other identity details in any personal statements, essays, videos, whatever the college uses for admissions. However, instruct the admissions officers, and also applying students, that race cannot be considered as a qualifying or disqualifying factor on the application. Prejudice and desire to right any past racial wrongs on the part of admissions officers will still happen in some numbers, this is part of human nature, but if the official institutional policy is to disregard race, it will be happening less and less often,
However, please, consider the family's income at admission time in order to give some boost to brilliant kids coming from economically disadvantaged circumstances.
23
"The problem is that no one is colorblind, and acting as if we are makes us worse off, not better. Research shows that white people who try to be colorblind often seem more prejudiced and unfriendly to people of color. People of color report more racial hostility in so-called colorblind environments.
"Colorblindness, therefore, forces race underground. It turns people of color into tokens and entrenches whiteness as the default."
I don't follow the author's thinking here. How does research show that? It may be somewhere in the linked article, but I'd appreciate the author giving us a quick explanation.
24
Harvard admits to using a "personality" scale that is solely subjective. Asians score poorly on it. Harvard has a history of using similar tricks in the past to keep Jewish students out. Harvard can not be trusted . It's hands are unclean when it comes to admission bias.
The solution proposed by plaintiffs -- GPAs and test scores -- is patently absurd. GPA without regard to the rigor of the classes taken renders GPA meaningless and considering the classes taken without regard to what the school offers (included with admissions packets) is comparing apples to oranges. Test scores are not a particularly good predictor of success (as research has shown and what of schools that have conservatories of music -- Oberlin or Rochester for example -- are they to look at the SAT score and ignore whether the soprano sings or croaks?
More lightly -- what happens to college football and basketball if the teams are assembled based on SAT scores and GPAs, not on whether the students have any athletic talent? (I'm not sure that would be a loss, of course).
4
@View from the hill Grades and test score show a lot. The rigor of the classes taken are verified by the scores on their AP exam and their other test scores. And if the applicant has also spent a large amount of time engaged in a significant activity or sport, it shows that they can manage their time and still get outstanding grades.
I think the idea of dropping legacy and athletic boosts is ridiculous. Legacies don't really get an advantage other than if two applications are otherwise equal, they might get the offer. But they are not less qualified. As for athletes...well, unless we're talking about NCAA basketball and football, most must be able to make their grades in the normal courses taken by all students, not special ones for functionally illiterate athletes.
No one wants to say this but I think that highly qualified Asian applicants are tired of not being admitted when they see black and first generation applicants from their own schools, getting into these colleges with vastly inferior grades and test scores. I can hardly blame them - they are typically very hard working.
I would far prefer to see Harvard et al spend some of their considerable endowment trying to convince black families that they must support education and be ambitious for their children and take school seriously. Now that might actually mean something.
20
If grades and test scores are not good predictors of success, but lead to under representation of some ethnic groups, then the real solution is to bar the use of grades and test scores by colleges in admissions. That would level the playing field.
4
@View from the hill It is disingenuous for Dr. Boddie to mis-characterize plaintiff's position as proposing to only use GPA and test scores as admission criteria. This is a strawman that Dr. Boddie hope the reader to take away from this article. In fact, the plaintiffs in Harvard lawsuit never asked for that. All they requested is Asian American applicants not to be treated differently from students from other races solely on the basis of race. In fact internal data from Harvard that came out from the discovery process of the lawsuit actually showed that in general Asian American applicants not only excel in academics but also have more extracurricular activities than applicants from other races.
17
As a college professor I want but two things of my students: The will to succeed and the ability to rise to the standards I set in my classes. If you can narrow the pool to those students and that is more students than there are seats, have a lottery.
26
I am a professor at an ethnically diverse university in California, where I sit on a committee that evaluates student scholarship applications. While student names and any demographic data are redacted, many students list membership in ethnicity-related organizations and write essays discussing their lives in immigrant families and communities. Other students discuss non-ethnically related activities, economic and family challenges, and so on. As faculty reviewers, we consider all manner of achievements and challenges, as well as good ol' grades. Just because the students aren't asked to report their ethnicity doesn't mean they're expected to actively keep it a secret.
The argument that students would be censored in their applications, forced to hide activities like Latino Student Organization, if true, needs to be better supported than it is in this article. The idea that they would be hindered in writing essays about Dolores Huerta seems to me implausible.
Harvard is being taken to court for limiting enrollment of Asian students through the use of a rather questionable "personality test." It's not clear to me that protecting students from racial bias through backhanded measures necessarily means censoring the students themselves. We should certainly be alert to potential overreach or slippery slopes in any decision. But we should also be careful to avoid straw men.
49
The real issue is the fact that high schools are not graduating a sufficient number of qualified minorities needed to meet the demand of the (est.) 3,000 colleges and universities trying to have them enroll.
Suppose ... for a moment ... if Harvard were to offer any public school system a $25,000 'finders fee' for each qualified minority who matriculated? And, another $25,000 for each year the student finished with an overall 3.0+ gpa?
I'd bet my bottom dollar Harvard would not have to make concessions based on race.
5
@T.Burnett That would be a great plan if your endgame is to heighten racial animosity even more and make whites go even further to the right. You wrote " high schools are not graduating a sufficient number of qualified minorities". Yes they are, they are called Asians and they outperform whites.
That would be all but impossible as some people's names might well indicate their race. If I see an application from a student named Nguyen, I'd be inclined to guess they are Vietnamese. The list of this could well be very long. Names are often, though not always, tied to ethnicity.
4
This is precisely the way ALL college applications should be. Race is irrelevant. What is relevant is economic background. The children of economically disadvantaged parents are far less likely to breakout of poverty irrespective of race and should be prioritized
48
@JD So are you saying that educated parents who have worked hard to be able to see that their children go to good schools, and have made education a priority in their families, should be penalized? That that admissions slot should be given to a child of an economically disadvantaged family? Where on earth is the "fairness" in that?
I am sick to death of the "culture of the victim" that this country has become. Children from poor families have always managed to find a way to get an education if they had the qualifications. President Dwight Eisenhower came from a poor family. He went to the US Military Academy at West Point, where an education was free! There are many, many opportunities for those with limited means to get a fine education. The Ivies now give a free ride (no loans at all) to the children of families with incomes under $60,000 a year.
The cream will rise to the top if it is allowed to do so. Teachers in ALL schools are always on the lookout for that child with a sparkle - that indefinable "something" that shows drive, discipline and motivation. They'll get in on their own merit.
11
As an ex-sociology adjunct who did not have tenure and participate in admissions--and as a alumnus of a school that actively considers race, and who had to apply twice to get in--I think it's wrong to either force students to fabricate cover letters that hide an undeniable part of their life experience, or to contrive to prevent admissions committee members from viewing that information. If admissions were solely based on scores and grades, a machine could tabulate the data and make random selections. But doesn't that describe an admissions policy that dehumanizes applicants?
I suppose that if everyone had the opportunity to attend college, this issue wouldn't be connected to our nation's history of disenfranchising people of color. But that's not the world we live in, and to pretend that our history has no meaning for either our daily lives or our future is to thrust our heads in the sand. Count me out.
4
@J Young
No, it describes an admissions office that doesn't support a large staff (paid out of the students' tuition) pretending to evaluate applications individually, but actually indulging their prejudices.
10
@J Young Contrary to popular opinion, there are universities other than the Ivies and a few other highly competitive schools. They do educate students, and any student who is admitted has the opportunity to get a good education. No one is being "disenfranchised".
If the child is black, the traditionally black colleges are an outstanding opportunity for them and have been for a very long time.
In August, there are still a lot of universities with spaces available. If one truly wants an education, it is out there for them.
3
A University's mission is broader than producing a cohort of excellent test-takers. It used to be described in terms like "preparing the leaders of tomorrow" or, more baldly, "educating the sons and daughters of the ruling class". This was done via a wide-ranging curriculum emphasizing history, languages, arts, and sciences that produced generalists capable of dealing with a rapidly changing world. Throw in some opportunities for competition in extracurricular activities to inculcate the importance of teamwork and working with others of different backgrounds and they had a model that produced the America that saved the world in WWII and led the remarkable post-war post-colonial boom. Over-specialization leads to sub-optimal performance.
8
Elise Boddie states: "They want to outlaw the modest use of race." The "They" refers to a group of Asian-American students and the "use of race" is not "modest" since discrimination against Asian-Americans is blatant and pervasive. An analysis of recently discovered admissions documents has shown that Harvard and its college admissions officers carry implicit racial biases against Asian-Americans. Harvard's institutional policy is to employ an entirely subjective rating system so as to exclude a large number of Asian-American applicants despite their academic achievements and extracurricular activities. Harvard engages in race-based discrimination by employing a biased rating system for "personal traits," and consistently scores Asian-Americans lower on traits such as "likability," "kindness," and "positive personality" then other racial and ethnic groups.
Boddie is listed as "a nationally-recognized expert in civil rights," so you'd expect her to either advocate for Asian-American students, or at the very least, fairly explain their position. She does neither, and she's not forthcoming about the legal history of "diversity" either. Boddie implicitly dismisses the idea of "reverse discrimination" by asserting, in effect, that a policy doesn’t count as discrimination if it harms a non-marginalized group. However, as we see with Asian-Americans in higher education, Boddie's formulation collapses since she refuses to contend with which groups should be considered marginalized.
88
@Robert B Absolutely. I was expecting at least some account of the perspective of the Asian American students who filed the lawsuit, but there was nothing. That's disturbing to say the least.
35
We've heard the Asian American perspective in every other op-ed piece or news article that the NYT has published. It's time to hear a different voice. I fail to understand how a group of students who comprise nearly 25% of Harvard's freshman class can claim discrimination when they comprise only 6% of the U.S. population. That is called overrepresentation, not discrimination. When will critics be satisfied, when 100% of entering freshman are Asian? This represents greed at best.
@Robert B As I've already stated, the author fails to advocate for Asian American students and ignores their arguments. However, the suit errs in pretending that to stop discrimination against Asian applicants all race-conscious affirmative action must end. Affirmative action of the kind upheld by the Supreme Court in Bakke is compatible with addressing discrimination. The suit wrongly asserts that if we ignore race-consciousness and discrimination in America they'll somehow, magically, disappear.
The real problem is that Harvard secretly chose to deploy racial balancing in a manner that keeps the number of Asians artificially low relative to those who are less strong on academic measures, specifically those who enjoy the advantage of being legacy admissions. Legacy is nothing but an affirmative action policy for the rich and well-connected whose wealthy families give large donations. (Harvard sets aside nearly 30 percent of all admissions for legacies). The negative impact of legacy admissions on Asians, most of whom are immigrants or children of immigrants, is the real problem. Legacy totally distorts any debate about "fairness in admissions." On a huge scale, legacy gives preferential treatment to wealthy well-connected applicants, almost exclusively white, over all other groups, including Asians. Wealthy Conservatives backing this suit pretend that "diversity" is why Asians are disadvantaged in admissions today, when the privilege bestowed by legacy is the real problem.
The author suggests that a large portion of the more than 40,000 applicants to Harvard are qualified so some extra criteria such as race must be used to select students for admission. This inevitably leads to claims of discrimination. Does the author also suggests that among the portion of the qualified applicants there is a good mix of students of different background? If so, why not create a lottery system and pick students at random? By using other factors to select students, Harvard is making statement that some students among the qualified pool is more "qualified" than others, which, according the author, is not true. The current approach also causes people to suspect Harvard actually go outside of qualified pool to pick "preferred" students. Harvard, like many elite universities values the prestige of its admission, a randomized admission among a vast pool of qualified students seems unsophisticated. But the current system assigns arbitrary scores of desirability to applicants that unnecessarily harms young people's self-confidence. In honesty one reason people like the author worry about the consequence of the law suit may be that she suspects there is not a sufficient mix of applicants in the qualified pool. Therefore, the qualification itself has to be modified for people of different race and background. In a layman's view that is awfully similar to discrimination.
20
I do not even remotely agree with the authors premise that “white” people cannot act blind to other people’s “race”, whatever that is. I fully concur with Mark who suggests socio economic class should be weighted rather than outdated relics of the 20th century like the concept of race. This is why I can’t vote for Democrats today. Everything to them is about classifying humans into non scientific categories which ultimately leads to “us” vs “them”.
Last time I checked we were all humans. We have different color hair, eyes, and yes even skin, among other differences that are just cosmetic. That said, socio economic and certainly cultural differences should be the driving force (other than grades and accomplishments) for determination of acceptance to a university or not.
22
“Others who oppose considerations of race in admissions claim that discussions of identity divide us as a country and that we all would be better off under a colorblind system.”
They have a point. I’m assuming the Asian-Americans are not claiming their position is to promote a “colorblind” society. As you point out, that simply cannot work. What is more interesting is that this group is advocating for a meritocracy, for which, at least in China, there is a long history.
My brother who worked in China for ten years was constantly impressed by the young Chinese who were running the city governments he had to negotiate with. They were, he said, the smartest people he ever met. Asian-Americans are well known for their academic discipline and success. If colleges, especially the Ivy League universities, take in and train the best minds in the country, that is excellent. With one proviso: that those students are actively encouraged and rewarded for going into public service. Identity politics has caused severe damage to our culture and politics. But if we can get the best, whatever color, to start taking leadership positions, that will benefit all of us, regardless of color and gender.
19
This attack on affirmative action has been around for decades. It makes no more sense now than when it was made by a white medical school applicant in the 1970s. I believe he won his case in the Supreme Court. Affirmative action has a very uneven history in the Supreme Court. But I have yet to see how the use of affirmative action by universities has caused any societal problem. Even Trump's DOJ should support Harvard. After all he believes he has managed to make America greater than it has ever been and we still have affirmative action.
5
@James Ricciardi
"But I have yet to see how the use of affirmative action by universities has caused any societal problem."
or
"But I have yet to see how the use of Jim Crow by Southern states has caused any societal problem."
What's the difference?
Set a cut off score score on the tests that would assure the students above were "qualified" and then randomly select from all qualified students. The admissions people are all too eager to tell you that many of those not admitted are "qualified" and how difficult it is to decide among the "qualified" applicants. Get rid of 99% of the admissions office and save a bunch of money.
Donor's children and legacies would have an equal chance as long as they met the cut off point.
The athletic teams would suffer, but if all the ivies implemented similar policies they would be competitive with each other.
42
Universities should encourage diversity of opinion instead of focusing on artificial categories like race.
Without regard to skin color, gender, race, and sexual orientation, we need more diverse opinions at universities.
That should be the only focus of diversity.
It is boring when everyone thinks the identical thing as at universities where faculty are overwhelmingly relatively left of center.
56
How can this group of students demand that US colleges must look only at test scores and grades? Those are NOT the only valid factors from an application to take into account. What it a school does not want just the top test scores? What if they want a diverse student body? Asian-American students should not be able to demand that only top test scorers get in.
25
@Jennifer
Asian-American student plaintiffs have NEVER made the argument that college should focus only on grades and standardized test scores. This is a strawman made by the author.
13
@Jennifer, the real person behind this lawsuit is not an Asian American student or group...the real plaintiff (or the real person hiding behind the AA names) is a conservative Republican funder and activist. Cast the accusations at the right target.
@Jennifer if you read the facts of the case, the group is not demanding that Harvard only review test scores and grades to determine admission. They are alleging that Harvard is using subjective measures, such as "leadership qualities" and other subjective criteria, to cap the number of Asian students admitted. Harvard is allegedly using a "personal rating" that is biased against Asian students as part of the admissions criteria. Due to this bias, the applicants contend that they are ranked lower on personality traits with no true basis for such lower ranking. They contend that if you take identical candidates, the Asian candidate will receive a lower personality score (with no basis) resulting in the Asian candidate not being accepted while the non-Asian candidate is accepted in order to achieve racial balancing.
Legacy admissions (GW Bush) and large parental donations (Jared Kushner) are the ultimate anti merit admissions. A potential student is more than his scores on tests which for the wealthy are padded by all kinds of tutors and test prep. Having varied students with different backgrounds benefit all.
A pure lottery with all students who meet a minimum standard would be fair. Then encourage all kids who meet the standard to apply. Then insist that schools with massive endowments provide scholarships to students based on parental income.
24
This argument about race and college admissions illustrates the oversized influence ivy league schools have on widely held perceptions that admission vastly improves their chance of future career success. If admission bias cannot be eliminated because schools decline to blind admissions policies, then all applicants who would otherwise apply to Harvard, apply instead to State Schools such as University of Michigan, Virginia, Florida,Berkley, etc and then succeed in life based on your own efforts, without the imprimatur of an ivy to claim some of the credit that you deserve.
8
"Colorblindness, therefore, forces race underground. It turns people of color into tokens and entrenches whiteness as the default."
"Silencing discussions about race silences people whose lives have been shaped by race."
If I understand the argument, you are claiming that by outlawing affirmative action in higher education racial identity will be forced "underground" and discussions about race will be "silenced"?
I'm not exactly convinced. In the absence of affirmative action, we can still discuss race and racism in society -- but institutions won't be allowed to discriminate based on race.
I think we can stick to the main tension: the fundamental right of an individual to be treated the same as anyone else regardless of her race vs. a policy interest in promoting a racially diverse study body to foster a better learning environment.
Sticking to the Constitutional issues, when a fundamental right is infringed because the policy goal serves a compelling interest, to pass Constitutional muster the policy needs to be the least restrictive means for achieving that interest.
Is affirmative action the least restrictive means of ensuring that college students are exposed to different points of view, or are confronted with evidence challenging their stereotypes, or are encouraged to fraternize with people from different backgrounds?
Of course not--all these goals could be achieved in a myriad of ways that don't involve race-based admissions criteria.
33
Maybe if such a large amount of students get completely perfect scores, they should make the test a little harder.
45
@KTT
Actually, this is an oft-repeated fallacy. The number of students who get a perfect 1600 on the SAT is relatively small - fewer than one thousand out of over 1.7 million test takers per year. Yet people still like to talk about how "Harvard could fill several classes with perfect SATs". It's simply not true.
1
@KTT. A large number of ppl are NOT achieving these perfect scores. Fewer than 1% of the test takers in the country (and international test takers) achieve them.
If the SAT tests were made significantly harder, Harvard and MITs student body would be easily be over 50% Asian.
The outcome of the Harvard lawsuit will have implications for all US colleges and universities. At nearby MIT, where my daughter attended, and where there are many Asian students, during the Parents' Day event for freshman students, a talk by the MIT president emphasized the importance of a balanced admission policy. One of his points was that based on grades and test scores, virtually all the students at MIT would be Asian. He said that anyone in the entering class that is not Asian should be grateful for their affirmative admission policies.
I have no animus towards Asians, nor against wealthy whites, but the value of a varied and diverse student body at our premier universities, both for our society and for the students, seems obvious. I hope we will let those institutions continue to pursue rich diversity in it's student bodies. I fear what will happen if this case lands in our uber-conservative Supreme Court.
26
@Mosttoothless
Harvard excluded Asians based on personality traits, lack of leadership and charm.A racist biased school.First it was the Irish, then the Jews and now the Asians.
I am curious how the Hallowed Ivies deal with the applicant interviews, often mandatory. How will they deal or not deal with the slip-ups, be they Freudian, Trumpian, or (interviewers being human being and all that), human slip-up, tip offs when reporting back.
1
They would have to redact names (which could reveal an applicant’s ethnic background) and discontinue interviews.
We can view the results of a "merit based" system at the California state university system. What are the consequences and current demographics of Berkley or UCLA?
14
@Tim, While there has been a decrease in African American and Latino enrollment at the two flagship schools you mention above, the graduation rates of underrepresented minorities at those same schools have risen significantly. For instance, African Americans graduations rates have increased 6.5% post Prop 209. Moreover, minority enrollment at the remaining UC schools has increased, and more importantly, 4 and 6-year graduation rates have increased for URM. Latino graduation rates at UC San Diego have doubled. Is there a causal link to Prop 209? Hard to say. On a personal level, I care far less about how many URM students are in admitted to an entering college class and more about how many walk out with a diploma 4-6 years later. The former is window dressing; the latter, real progress.
16
Berkeley - 40% Asian
UCLA - 42% Asian
Caltech - 43% Asian
U.C. San Diego - 50% Asian
2
@Tim - more than 40% of admitted students at Berkeley and UCLA are Asian American.
1
Does a college have the right to choose it's class?
The argument that standardized tests and grades be the determinant for admissions would be a heck of a boost for the college prep and testing industry, but would not necessarily make for much of a college class.
If we are to argue that test scores are more important than race or ethnicity, or any other criteria for admissions, I'd just recommend that the colleges take all the applicants who meet the basic requirements, and toss darts at the pile. The class would be random, and everyone would have an equal opportunity to object to the kids who actually got in.
8
@Cathy
Not so long ago this country nearly tore itself apart over laws prohibiting racial discrimination.
Harvard is in trouble because they are doing exactly that: discriminating based on race. In all other respects they remain free to pick their entering class.
Do you really believe that we should repeal the laws that prohibit discrimination based on race?
9
So many of those contributing comments are operating on the assumption that there are applicants who are "better" prepared for an Ivy League education who are getting rejected. But trying to make rationale distinctions among the outrageously highly accomplished students who apply to elite schools is foolish. This isn't the Olympics, but we are treating it as if it were, as if the best can win. We need to reset out thinking about this whole game of admissions and stop viewing it as a game. It isn't fair. It is and always will be a flawed process, like falling in love, getting a job, publishing a novel. There are a mess 'o considerations and we need to grow up and accept that reality and move on....
8
Isn't that the ultimate goal, admissions based solely on merit? Of course the outside obstacles are far from fair. Still, race based seems wrong as does gender based emissions. How about age discrimination? Must all Harvard entrants be hormonal teenagers?
Maybe more focus on diversity of personality, of volunteer efforts or hobbies that taught critical thinking, summer jobs, even number of siblings which teaches interaction. If outside activities stepped up and academic achievement was secondary - after all, grades are subjective - maybe there would be actual diversity based on merit.
Affirmative action came to mean letting in unqualified students, which helps no one. But letting in those that started in kindergarten to check all the right boxes might be worse.
17
As a Harvard grad with A.B. and A.M degrees, I think the university could adopt a system like the University of Texas has whereby an applicant's zip code and family income level are considered as part of the admissions process.
27
At some point, colleges will simply have to establish a reasonable minimum standard for applicants, and then choose randomly from among those who qualify. It will become vastly more difficult to game the system by making sure that your kid has endless tutoring and all the right after-school activities; a laid-back kid who gets good grades and good test scores will have the same chances as a kid who has been Tiger Mom'd for 17 years.
The racial/ethnic makeup of college classes will be closer to that of the general population and high school kids will be relieved of much unnecessary pressure. People who have been throwing resources at their kid to get them into The. Best. School! will be upset, but smart kids with 2 overworked, underpaid parents will have a better chance to go to a good university.
Would it be fair? Not totally, but in a situation where everyone is trying to game the system a randomized process is the fairest.
32
@S. B.
So instead of rewarding excellence we should reward mediocrity .
Harvard stand for the best of the best.
If you want mediocrity go to a state school.
3
We can go ack to a simple truism of life, “Life is not fair”. It may not be fair, that doesn’t mean it is not right.
I think the essay grossly misrepresents the plaintiffs' position. I don't believe the plaintiffs are asking the admissions office to ignore the formative effect of race on who the applicant is, but rather thru should not their subconscious bias against a certain race to discriminate against a racial group to achieve what the university may believe to be the best racial balance for its students. in that respect, comparing the percentage of Asian Americans against the general US population is to me meaningless. The more meaningful comparison is the percentage of Asian Americans in the applicant pool. How big of a difference is that, how has that gap changed since the filing of the suit, and was the lawsuit a factor in that changing gap? None of this is discussed. I would agree, however, many in the US have subconscious bias against a certain race or group of people. The solution is to acknowledge this subconscious bias and do something to address it, rather than legitimizing that bias under the guise of affirmative action and in the process punishing the one group of people that have weakest political voice. BTW, whatever the motivation that precipitated this suit, it uncovered the unfairness in Harvard's admission process. Acknowledge it, correct it, and don't ignore it just because you question the true motive of the person who financed the suit.
56
I'll be ready to have this conversation when colleges are ready to stop preferentially accepting legacies and children of donors. Until then, I don't think we can have a meaningful discussion about how fair it is to let some people in over others who appear, on paper, to be better prepared to succeed at a school.
32
Yes! The chief rationale for giving preference to legacy admits is to keep the Alum donations flowing in. That is definitely not merit.
6
I am not convinced that race matters as much as individual experience. Universities seeking diversity, should first and foremost consider academics and ability. Race does matter, so after passing a test designed by each individual college of that university, then submit each applicant to an oral interview whereby he/she/they can explain to a panel of professors what contributions their life experience including race can make to that program and to that student's future chosen field of study and work. I have been helping seniors at my high school revise and edit common essays for their college applications. Many are enamored by their differences and believe they are special based solely on a race or a gender or even illness. Very few can explain either verbally or in writing how the experiences derived from their differences can benefit other students, their chosen program, or their future field of study. I wonder why that is the case, even among the brightest students applying to elite universities like Harvard.
18
Couldn't admissions just use add economic hardship as one of their criteria? That seems to address the heart of the problem -- advancing people who do not have access to power.
57
Educational inequality is one of the reason, racial and social diversity is the other part. Until college, my interactions with African-Americans was minimal. Before high school it was effectively limited to one person, much less Asians, middle-eastern and Latinos. A well diversified student body really does help the college experience. Without it, the experience would have been much less fulfilling, as will as filling. All the way down to music and food. I likely never would have had sushi, much less vindaloo. Never discount experiencing different cultures, or sub-cultures. Diversity of experience, culture, life, make you a better person.
10
There are crazy rich families in every ethnic group, likewise crazy poor families in every ethnic group.
Unfortunately Asians are the most impoverished ethic u group in the US. And there are a surplus of poor whites. And blacks of course. Generally they have lower SAT scores. Your suggestion would do nothing that I think you want.
To those who think that grades and test scores are enough to choose a class:
1. Think about the implicit bias inherent in testing. Those with money can afford to hire test tutors. Any system like that will privilege the wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
2. Do you really think that admissions officers only look at race and don't consider socio-economic status? Most colleges strive to admit first generation students regardless of their ethnicity. And admissions officers are sensitive to those students who had to hold down a part-time job throughout high school, preventing them from padding their resumes with extracurricular activities. In fact, many of the CommonApp essays encourage applicants to talk about jobs.
3. If you were a top notch students, would you really want to go to a college that was filled with students exactly from your background. Its the diversity that makes a college. Diversity of majors. Diversity of extracurriculars. Diversity of gender. And diversity of ethnicity.
4. There are plenty of "Ivy League caliber" schools. The honors programs in most state Universities offer superior education, access to first class researchers, small diverse classes.
5. Finally, think about who is pushing this lawsuit. It has nothing to do with Asian American students. It's all about a single man with a bone to pick about affirmative action. Not a single Asian American student is part of his lawsuit. Ironic isn't it?
25
@HN
Not true.
Blum is pushing the case but he is representing Asians students not himself.
Also not true is that those test tutors are only affordable to the rich.
Stanley Kaplan's college prep for the sat is 600.00 dollars.
Who can't afford that.
“Students for Fair Admissions includes more than a dozen Asian-American students who applied to Harvard and were rejected.” NY Times
1
@HN
As to your point 5, see my other comment outlining who is really behind this "single man." It's more than just some guy with a bone to pick about affirmative action.
1
Other countries have a far fairer method of applying to their top tier schools. Absolute numeric cutoffs for certain objective tests for different majors and if oversubscribed then a lottery.
It's university, and should be treated as such. Fair and open to all.
39
Your point explains a lot. But it doesn't change the merits of the argument. If Brown were White, should she have lost Brown (White?) v Board of Education?
The definition of affirmative action has never been adequately established. Historically it meant equal employment regardless of race or color. The thinking was that blacks were discriminated against by the way “the system “ in the past and going forward there was the need to make things right but no specifics on how to do this.
Where the legislature failed, the courts stepped in and defined the term. The Allen Bakke Supreme Court case struck down quota based admissions at UC Davis. The court majority at that time also found the Harvard admiions process was not quota based and that their application process considered race as only one of many admissions criteria.
4
A true return to merit would be when the universities cease all legacy, donor, faculty kid admissions. Till then this is the right making sure their legacy and donor statuses are protected and sticking it to minority kids and first gen kids. All of you who carry on about merit alone are feuding yourselves if you think the right would find this if it hurt their children in ANY way.
18
@Ifonly Too right. Without legacy admissions our country would not have been saddled with the likes of Bush the younger, our current pathetic excuse for a president, or the most recently appointed associate justice of the Supreme Court.
It is disappointing to see so many people in the comments section praising judgement based on test scores and grades alone as a "return to merit." Even ignoring the fact that there are more qualified applicants in this regard than spots avaliable (something that Boddie points out in the article), we also know that tests like the SAT are inherently biased and advantage students who have greater economic and cultural capital. If anything, the application process should become more holistic - that is what would truly separate the wheat from the chafe.
10
@MaxThe SAT's are not inherently biased except for knowledge and thinking skills. Do you want questions about surfing and bamboo utensils included?
2
Is it wishful thinking to pick the "best" from such a well-qualified pool? What is the best this year? Dance or service in Honduras? And next year?
One approach would rely only on scores and grades, as called for by plaintiffs for fairness, but not by an automatic ranking, but rather to create one or two or more pools from which applicants would be selected at random.
I grant that it leaves out the personal, but my personal is not yours. Since there is at least one good school besides Harvard (on the Supreme Court only one), applications to several schools,extra points for applications to particular programs and other measures might limit the deleterious effects of a race-blind but "fair" selection.
1
Basing admission on only HS grades and the SAT/ACT will instantly block many poor and minority applicants. That’s the goal of this lawsuit.
It’s well known that the only stat that correlates with high SAT scores is parent income, one of the reasons both the College Board and Harvard dropped the essay as a requirement.
And trying to navigate the differences between and A in one high school and an A in another is impossible. Admissions depts know the high schools that send them students. A number of private schools’ reputations hinge on their ability to send 10% of each class to Harvard.
But high scores aren’t just what colleges want. They want a diverse environment. They want to take a risk on an interesting kid who brings more than just 1600, all As, and parent funded service trips. Mostly, they want to hear from the applicant directly and honestly, to learn what drives that person. To stifle an applicant’s ability to express him/herself and make admission about only grades and test scores ensures that the wealthy will dominate at places like Harvard.
22
@M
I recommended your comment, though I'll quibble with your assertion that any private school sends 10% of its seniors to Harvard. I am very familiar with matriculation rates at private schools in New England, and none of them are anywhere near 10%. In 2018 Andover sent 11 out of a class of 275 students, and they're one of the very top senders.
12
@M
This suit was brought by Asians; do they not count as "people of color" and "minorities" in the leftist identity Olympics? And, in NYC, many of the Asians the leftist mayor wants to kick out of high performing schools because he thinks there are too many of them, qualify as "poor" by anyone's definition.
Too, consider the implication that a "diverse" student -- we all know what THAT means when a leftist uses the word -- is "interesting", but an Asian student (who loses the admission spot) is not. if that's not racist, what is?
When skin color can't be used to discriminate, admissions will be based on MERIT, which might include talents other than those reflected in grades and test scores. But skin color is not a talent and does not make one "interesting". Nor does admitting lots of children of successful professionals who happen to have Politically Correct skin constitute "diversity". Indeed, if one wants "diversity" on campus, outreach to Republicans would be high on the list of goals.
I don't envy the job of admissions officers at Harvard, or many other top-tier schools. Per Harvard numbers, "Admissions" must screen well over 40,000 apps for about 2,000 offer letters, and eventually deliver a "yield" of about 1,700 freshmen. At the recent reject-rate of 95%, the admissions committee disappoints many a fine candidate.
.
There's one group, though, that's easily and statistically the "most underrepresented" of all undergrad students at a place like Harvard... and that's US military veterans. Of those 1,700 or so freshmen who walk through the gate every year, only a small handful ever wore the true fiber of any uniform of any US military service. Indeed, Harvard admits quite a few more "Native Americans" (about 2% of recent admittees) than prior/serving/reservist US military.
.
Admission committees at elite schools clearly go through all manner of contortion to fill their annual classes with some semblance of "diversity." We're about to learn much more about that via the Asian applicants' lawsuit against Harvard. But the fact is that Harvard has no truly effective outreach towards smart young people who took time after high school to serve the country. It's quite a shame...
29
Related questions are whether admissions officers should be made aware of applicants' gender? Or home state/country? or high school name? All of these factors also give clues to personal qualities of applicants.
If one imagines how such an admissions process could work -- perhaps with randomly generated numbers for all university applicants rather than names, no "personal" essays, no lists of activities or sports or summer jobs (since any of these might reveal race/gender/nationality/etc), with admissions decisions based solely on grades, class rank and standardized tests -- the admissions process could be automated. No human judgement would be required to discern "potential" rather than "achievement".
Would such a process be more "fair" than what we have today?
Or would it result in suboptimal demographics for individual university classes?
1
@LD But limiting admissions decisions to grades, class rank, or standardized tests would simply ensure the entering class of any university would be overwhelmingly (if not exclusively) white and higher income. None of these measures has any empirical support as being an accurate evaluation of achievement much less of being predictive of college performance.
2
@Michael Morad-McCo
Of course! That’s why I said such an approach would result in suboptimal decisions.
@Michael Morad-McCoy
Of course! That’s why I said such an aporoach would result in suboptimal decisions.
This is an inaccurate understanding of the lawsuit. If the plaintiffs win, Harvard will have to show over time that successful Asian American applicants do not have academic metrics that are significantly higher than that of whites, Latinos, and African Americans. The crux of the case is that for decades now, Asian American students who matriculate at Harvard have much higher standardized test scores and GPAs than other groups. This is a well-known and established fact that has been documented most famously by Princeton sociologist Thomas J. Espenshade. Rather than the ominous and foreboding imagery of Harvard admissions officers reading redacted applications as the author suggests, the likely outcome is much more mundane statistical reporting of Harvard admissions office who will have to show that admitted Asian Americans are statistically similar to other students and that Asian American applicants do not have to pay a statistical penalty. If Harvard and other elite private universities follow the Caltech model of race-neutral admissions, we can infer that approximately 40 percent of the admitted class will be Asian Americans given the well-known and publicized metrics of elite university applicant pools. The real question is whether these institutions feel 40 percent Asian American at places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford is simply too many for their institutional identity.
116
@UC Graduate Um, if the crux of the case relies on standardized test scores and GPAs then how would that not, ultimately, reduce college admissions to the "ominous and foreboding imagery" the article presents? If college admissions are to be reduced to these (rather suspect) statistics, the conclusions are unavoidable: higher education would then be reserved for the dominant culture ideal of "those just like me," or those of the "model minority" (but only those of that minority who fit the dominant culture ideal) who can game the statistical system. The reality is that, for decades, these statistics have been simple shortcuts that make it easy for admissions offices to pick a class that fits their dominant culture ideals. The reality is also that neither of these "metrics" has any empirical support for claims they can predict the success of any individual in the higher education environment. If this lawsuit proves anything, it should be that ALL admissions offices need to abandon the use of GPAs and standardized test scores as admissions criteria.
3
@UC Graduate. Arguably, Board scores and GPA are a far better indicator of success in the Sciences than in other professions like Business, The Arts, Politics, Journalism, etc.
It bothers me less that a school like Cal Tech would be so hung up on these numerical metrics, but schools that cater to a wider range of professions might need more latitude to determine who are most worthy of admission.
@UC Graduate
"The real question is whether these institutions feel 40 percent Asian American at places like Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford is simply too many for their institutional identity."
I'd like to see in writing where these elite institutions specifically define their "institutional identity."
I have personally run into scenarios where I've seen highly qualified individuals in my life lose out to others who did not have the same credentials/test scores but filled a minority quota. I think this is a great thing. I get it that there is an historical need to adjust for certain populations not having access to the best institutions for higher learning, but I'm sick and tired of the band-aid of affirmative action keeping out otherwise top-candidates while the real problems lie in helping struggling communities obtain the resources they need to help their children succeed.
36
@Zach Ulrich In order for someone to win, someone has to lose. The pie is only so big, you really can't grow the pie. If minorities and women are to get their piece of the pie, someone has to lose their slice. For now it is the white working class male, hence we have Donald Trump. However, the middle class white male will also start to fall, then we'll see how liberal the millenial white males really are.
If you really want a race-neutral admissions policy you cannot consider race. This seems like a good idea that will bolster confidence in liberal institutions of higher learning. Why would anyone who accepts the basic principle of fairness oppose it?
94
@John Jabo
Fairness is in the eye of the beholder.
@John Jabo Um, because "race-neutral" is, by definition, a fig-leaf for dominant culture preference?
@Cousy
In my eye Stuyvesant High in NY is fair.No I am not an Asian
Professor Boddie makes good points. I would add to what she says that a student's name may reveal their race or ethnicity, or perhaps religion.
There are many names likely to identify a person as African-American. An applicant whose surname is Wong or Kim or Gupta is likely to be Asian; worse, they are likely to be thought to be Asian on an application, even though they may look, feel and believe themselves to be predominantly white, black or Hispanic. Should we, then, censor students' names?
Names may mislead. I went to school with a young man named Cohen and another whose last name was Tobin. Mr. Cohen was an Episcopalian, as I recall, and Mr. Tobin (who had what we used to call a map-of-Ireland face) was Jewish. As they say in Brooklyn, go figure.
The way to deal with discrimination is to think hard about it and to work hard at overcoming it. Simplistic approaches like color-blindness wind up, more often than not, making matters worse. Indeed, that often seems to be the point of them.
8
@JJM, actually hiding identification of students, including name, in application process is done in many countries. It's a great way for admission officer to focus on the application itself.
20
@GL
And that is why students in those many countries are clamoring to leave home and attend American elite universities. It is why it is so easy in those countries to game the admissions system by outright cheating. It is why the privileged elite in those countries have better access to an elite university education (wealth and connections = knowing how to take the tests, and being able to pay for cramming). American universities' excellence comes out of the systems we have. Beware what you wish for.
3
It's not clear to me why any applicant needs to hold forth about their race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socioeconomic status or any other identity badge. On the other hand if I was picking a class for Harvard I wouldn't want to have it comprised solely of well off white folks from NYC, Westchester County, Greenwich, and greater Boston. I still think the best way is to leave admission committees alone and let them do whatever they want, without any oversight, and have the market decide. The Trustees will want a class, circa 2018, that is first rate and reasonably representative of the country and the world.
16
Schools like to know about applicants extracurricular accomplishments and challenges. Race and gender often are related to these things.
5
It seems to me that many people who are opposed to Affirmative Action have no problem with colleges accepting "legacies" or the children of wealthy benefactors. Would Donald Trump really ever have gotten into the U. of Penn. or Jared Kushner to Harvard based on their own merit? Personally I believe that is doubtful.Granted universities need the money that loyal alums provide but is it really so counterproductive to deny others a leg up? SATS, merit and grades have never been the only consideration.
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I disagree. Many people against affirmative action are also against legacies. I think universities should follow the example of Caltech. No legacies and no racial quotas. Just section based purely on academic merit. The result: by far the highest number of Nobel laureates per capita.
11
@Margaret Fraser
You are right on the mark Margaret. How are legacies not discriminatory. All Trump's kids got into Penn. Were any of them listed as graduating with honors on the programs of their high school graduation ceremonies. I think not. It is all about money.
3
@Margaret Fraser Incorrect. However, what's not said about legacies is that someone who is the child of two Harvard or Yale parents is probably going to be better prepared for college than the child of two parents who only graduated high school and there hasn't been much research showing that legacies are some kind of automatic admit.
However, legacies should not be granted additional "points" just because their kids went there. The same goes for wealthy benefactors and students of color. Everyone should be judged based on the merit of their own qualifications.
I can think of nothing better than leaving off any mention of race, religion, or ethnicity.
Years ago, my mother's class at the High School of Music and Art made the brave decision to leave religion off their college applications to protest the Jewish quota. My father, meanwhile, who unlike my mother was Jewish, was reject by his first choice school because of the Jewish quota, something that caused him great pain.
I'm with my mom on this. What Harvard did to Asian kids merely because they're members of a group that puts a high value on education -- systematically reducing their personality ratings -- is wrong.
Kids should be admitted on the basis of merit, not the color their skin -- or any of the other wrongs, such as legacy status and athletic ability, that currently pollute the admissions process.
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@Josh Hill
Thank you for this post. Harvard’s current behavior is distressingly reminiscent of their anti-Semitic quotas of years past.
It was wrong then and it is wrong now.
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@Josh Hill "I can think of nothing better than leaving off any mention of race, religion, or ethnicity." Really?!? To do so would strip away vital elements of a student's identity and experience.
@Michael Morad-McCoy
Unfortunately, yes, it would. But better that than the massive and systematic discrimination revealed by the lawsuit. It seems clear that Harvard cannot be trusted with this information.
Race should not be a factor in admissions. I would love to see the day when race is no longer in the college app. Admit based on merit alone and provide tuition scholarships for those who cannot afford it.
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@Rational Ok. But then how do you define "merit alone"? What measurements are you aware of that claim to (much less actually do) measure "merit alone"?
I'm not sure the outcome is an all-or-nothing proposition: either all traces of an applicant's race is excluded from their application, or we retain that collection of boxes in the personal information section that allows an application to enter his or her race.
But in any case, several claims are true in the existing system:
1. Latino and black applicants are more likely to be admitted to top schools than are caucasians or Asians, for a given academic record.
2. The credential gap exists, and according to some research, it continues past college and graduate school and into the workplace.
3. There is significant value in creating a diverse student body.
4. Too often, diversity is just a population of people who look different but think the same.
I don't think affirmative action is wrong, it's just too little, too late. It's in part a feel-good policy used to create genetic and racial diversity, but too often without the attendant cultural and/or philosophic diversity.
Instead, we ought to be choosing applicants for their diversity in life experiences, and cultural and philosophical upbringing. As part of this, we should recognize that an A student from Palo Alto may not be as accomplished as a B+ student from urban or rural poverty. And we need to start affirmative action for disadvantaged kids very early, in the form of support for both kids and their families.
Anything less is cheats us all of fairness.
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@hammond
I agree. The article claims that an applicant would need to strip their identity, but it is a false claim. All that is needed is to eliminate the "Race" box on the application.
No issues if Harvard looks at parents income, zip code, marital status, etc. I live in Hartford CT, kids in the inner city are disadvantaged and should be given a bump in the admission process. But don't do it based on race.
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@hammond
Affirmative action has been shown to be harmful.
To both those it causes schools to reject, and those it causes them to accept.
Admissions policies and admissions practices by private, non-profit corporations, are Free Speech. The very concept of "composing" a class is Free Political Speech. If Citizens United vs. The FCC is not invoked here, it would be a shame on government for interpreting law and procedural code to limit the political speech of Harvard and institutions similar to it.
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@Chris Kox Most if not all universities take significant money from the government, Harvard certainly does. That subjects them to oversight on many fronts. Title IX being one. This is potentially another.
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@Chris Kox They are of course free to compose their student body as they wish, but of course we are also free not to give them billions of dollars in Federal research and other grants.
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@Chris Kox "Bob Jones University lost its tax exemption over whether the university's policies against interracial dating precluded it as a non-taxable religious educational institution." Just take away Harvard's tax status and deny all students attending any federal financial aid. Then I will agree with you.
16
Admissions at prestigious colleges amount to zero-sum games. Any advantage given to one group represents a corresponding disadvantage to another. What the author doesn't seem to notice are the data that seem to indicate certain groups of applicants are being disadvantaged - i.e., discriminated against - on a racial basis. Race-based affirmative action has a noble goal of trying to compensate for racial inequality of opportunity, but the notion that criteria for admissions will be preferentially lowered for one group (and thereby raised for others) is a problematic approach.
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There are smart people among all racial groups and no single screening tool is even substantially accurate. For me, extracurricular activities, whether scientific, civic or just plain helping others, should count significantly in determining who is accepted. That motivates young adults to get involved, see what interest them and experience the world outside of the classroom, the tutoring process and social interaction via LED display.
Institutions like Harvard need to use their smarts to teach to the highly motivated and not just the highly groomed.
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@Emergence
Would working nearly full time to help one's family financially (while still getting good grades in high school) count as an extracurricular activity?
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@S.B. I attended a Yale presentation last night and the Admissions Officer stated directly that working and family responsibilities definitely would.
2
@S. B.Yes S.B. it certainly would because it is indicative of the ability to succeed. But that person needs access to the tools.
Guess what, many Asians are already concealing their ethnic background on college applications so as to avoid the rampant discrimination imposed by Harvard and other institutions during the admissions process. So it would indeed be best to have all admissions "color-blind".
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Adalberto: If Asian Americans are 6% of the US population and nearly a quarter of the admitted class of 2022 (and the proportion of Asian Americans in admitted classes has increased by 27% since 2010), how much has that ethnic group suffered from rampant discrimination there?
@Adalberto
Unfortunately what happens is everyone understands that no race indicated on an application is the same as Asian.
1
As Bull Halsey once told me, "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
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@phil queeg
I believe it was George Orwell that said that.
I believe Asian Americans are already "censoring" their own applications, per this story (and others like it.)
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/12/asian-american-students-p...
Ms; Boddie would have more credibility if she advocated for affirmative action based on economic status, rather than race.
For example, presumably Ms. Boddie is very well compensated as a HLS-degreed law professor and affirmative action consultant.
Would she advocate for her own children to receive a race-based preference, despite their privileged background?
This is, I think, one of the core issues pitting races against each other in the affirmative action debate.
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"Imagine this scenario: An admissions officer sits down to read a stack of applications, but they’re heavily redacted because the college must censor all references to an applicant’s race."
I can easily imagine that, and it seems completely reasonable. Many states mandate this by law.
I haven't heard anyone claim that you won't be able to put leadership roles on a college application. What you won't be able to do is favor one applicant with a Hispanic leader role over another applicant with an Asian leadership role based solely on their race. It's not hard to understand.
They also don't claim that a college should focus ONLY on grades, just not focus on race. This is also misleading.
Self identified anti-racists defending blatant racism against Asians with logic that doesn't make sense to a kindergartner is a site to behold. Perhaps they should lookup the meaning of cognitive dissonance.
Good luck with this argument in court, you are going to need it.
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Why not build more Ivy League caliber schools ?
There are more then enough smart kids to fill them immediately.
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@Norville T. Johnson I
It is primarily the quality of undergraduate students that defines an "Ivy League caliber school". There will always be some schools that nearly every undergraduate chooses over others, and these schools will always be the most prestigious.
Of the prestige that is associated with being a Harvard graduate, a substantial majority derives from being a Harvard admittee, not from the education that follows.
For this reason, we can not make more Ivy League Caliber schools. We can make more schools that deliver excellent educations. But that isn't what makes these schools so special in the first place.
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@Norville T. Johnson I Or, in the alternative, get rid of all "Ivy League caliber schools" (full disclosure: I have an Ivy League degree) and thereby eliminate the leg up that it provides (full disclosue: have a large state university as well). There is way less difference between the two than most people imagine.
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@Norville T. Johnson I
Are all Ivy League professors graduates of Ivy League universities? Who is worthy to be an Ivy Leaguer? Is there a "Ivy League-ness" that rubs off on anyone associated with the Ivy League, no matter how tangentially?
No doubt, there are Harvard Ph.D.'s teaching at (very respectable) land grant universities across the fruited plain. Do they bring their "Harvard-ness" with them so as to embellish and exalt the institution at which they teach?
In the late 70's Richard Marius, a professor of Renaissance and Reformation studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and something of an expert on Martin Luther, became the director of the Harvard Freshman Writing Program. (I remember him occasionally writing "Ugh!" in the margins of my papers. For some reason he didn't like the words "societal" and "exemplify." But in class one day he sang the praises of one of my classmates using the word "avatar." He once spoke of quaffing a beer and grading papers on the weekend. Would that one could do a Vulcan mind meld on ones professors and thereby determine what it took to sufficiently stroke the pedagogical academic ego.)
It is nowhere near as important where one attends college as to know WHY one is there in the first place.
It doesn't matter if your clothing preferences go to white sheets with eye holes or tweed jackets with elbow patches: If you judge people based even in part on the color of their skin, you're a racist.
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Affirmative action doesn't judge people based on their race. It makes sure those to whom it applies based on protected class get into the room so that then they can be judged on their merits.
If one can't get in the room, one's qualifications don't matter because no one will see them.
15
No one forced Harvard to use race as a primary consideration in their admissions process. (by some accounts, Black students have an advantage over Asians equivalent to 450 points on the SAT. To put that in context, SUNY Stony Brook undergrads have SAT scores that are about 450 points beneath those of Harvard.)
Harvard chose to do this. And rather than help students who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, more than two thirds of Harvard's African American admits come from wealthy and/or international backgrounds. In fact, Harvard has a preference for applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds for all races EXCEPT for African Americans.
Although Harvard might theoretically have put racial information to good use, they have now been caught perpetrating a massive program of racial discrimination for the second time in a century. Enough is enough.
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@Jason
I wonder if any applicant has declined an acceptance letter from Harvard, and if Harvard has been offended as a result.
@Jason Harvard does not use race as a primary consideration. It is one consideration of many. It is, no doubt, a flawed process as are those of many other schools. The author's point is that matters of race, especially for minorities, often has a formative impact on their lives. Not allowing them to reveal/discuss that prevents the admissions committee from learning about the "whole person". Applicants are asked to write essays, provide info about their interests and extra-curricular activities and family circumstances so that admissions officers have a way of distinguishing among candidates with equally strong academic credentials. When faced with 2 applicants with identical GPAs and SATs, how are they to decide which one to admit? A toss of the coin? First come, first admitted?
@Jason, I hope those Harvard students with average SAT scores 450 points higher than those of SUNY Stony Brook students aren’t planning to major in Math or Statistics, because that means the Harvard kids are scoring more than 150 points above the maximum possible.
1
Be careful of profiling.
9
The numbers are rather stark ... it's hard to see how the number of Asian applicants falls to the level it does ..... let's face it .... impossible.
The problem -- there is no true transparency in the process ... and no one is really being honest about "culture". It's not race .... Not all asians or great students .. but some asian cultures drive towards excellence. They win ... and should.
The schools don't want to publish how well various groups do after being admitted .. graduation rates. We know why.
Transparency and honesty -- that's what's needed. I have been hearing the same points for 40 years and the results keep falling
45
What's neglected in this article is that Harvard is alleged to have used race to discriminate against Asian candidates, using damaging stereotypes on "softer" measures such as personality traits. I am actually a supporter of Affirmative Action but Harvard possibly went to an extreme level to ensure certain minorities were accepted and others were not.
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A thousand times yes! The law of unintended consequences would hamper applicants and admissions officers alike.
Harvard, and other highly selective colleges, already have "go-to" high schools from which they accept a large number of students each year. My own public high school is one of those, and a significant proportion (not quite half) of the students from my high school that go to Harvard are POC's. Almost none are Asians. (About 15 students get accepted each year).
I don't think that Mr. Blum or his plaintiffs would like it that applicants from my high school would have an even greater chance of getting into Harvard given the large number of highly qualified POC's who apply.
5
Finally a level playing field. People should be determined based on merit and not whether they belong to a “special minority”.
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@Shirley Chen
College is not a "playing field."
I think anyone who using sports analogies in her supplication/application should be rejected.
And who's to decide what "merit" means? Surely those high school athletes who are urged to apply already "belong to a 'special minority'."
Ok, lets say we agree that race can be considered.
So, we can consider the actual true fact (the NYTimes loves facts, of course, unless they are this one) that white and Asian people simply are more successful, for a given education level.
So ... white and Asian applicatants will be given a boost in ranking for that reason.
I doubt if the NYTimes will like that. What they want is clear:
admit more people who historically vote the way they (the NYTimes) want people to vote: left wing.
" Research shows that white people who try to be colorblind often seem more prejudiced and unfriendly to people of color. " Whose research? I'd bet money that they vote Democrat.
22
"modest" = 43% > 19%, according to Harvard's own internal report.
13
Interesting article. Why, though, do you keep mentioning white applicants: "It turns the experiences of people of color into tokens and entrenches whiteness as the default."? What do white applicants have to do with a lawsuit brought about by Asians? Are Asians no longer POC, but are now white people? Just trying to follow the NYT's current usage of racial identity.
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A few minutes of research on Edward Blum reveals that he operates via a group called "Project on Fair Representation," which is supported by an organization called "DonorsTrust" which is described as part of a "murky money maze" that helps very wealthy people and corporations remain hidden when "funding sensitive or controversial issues."
And guess who turns out to be funding DonorsTrust? That's right, Charles Koch through his "Knowledge and Progress Fund."
I don't know what the right-wing angle is here, but you can be sure it's not about improving our education system.
36
@Pat The fact that some of the people supporting this have questionable agendas does not mean the idea is wrong. Clearly, one minority is being penalized to benefit others. How is that ok? I would like to see Harvard compelled at least to make its admissions process transparent.
1
@Pat I think you hit the nail on the head here. I think this is just more of the right-wing agenda to hammer away at affirmative action as applied to, specifically, African-American kids who have grown up under difficult circumstances. They don't want black kids from disadvantaged schools given a fighting chance to make their way into the moneyed classes. I don't believe they care about Asian kids at all.
1
@Pat - Lame point. When you can't address the substance of the issue, blame the Koch brothers...
It is an opinion article but it could do with a bit more unbaised coverage of the other side.
21
Elections have consequences.
Like our newest Supreme.
Vote as if your life depends on it.
Because it might.
22
"The proportion of Asian-American students in Harvard’s admitted classes has grown by 27 percent since 2010, and they make up nearly a quarter of the admitted class of 2022..."
And...?
57
The logic is bizarre: people from this racial group are doing very well academically. Better exclude some of them.
5
And......based upon merit perhaps they should be 50% of the admitted class of 2022.
2
This is a reductio ad absurdum argument. If Harvard loses its lawsuit, it would not be barred from asking about race, and certainly applicants would not be barred from talking about it. It would just have to face the fact that as an institution it has a bias against Asian students and take measures to address that bias. In the 1980s, Stanford found that it had biases in the admission process against Asian applicants. When it took steps to correct these biases, the admission rate of Asians went from about 11% to the high teens the next year.
60
I can't think of anything more fair than applicants concealing their race on college applications and noting their parents' income.
Diversity is a noble goal, but not at the expense of shortchanging working class or poor children who just happen to be white or Asian.
I can only think of my high school experience, when the poor white kids did not receive the benefit of affirmative action, whereas middle class African-Americans, some of whom were bi-racial, with college educated parents, did. How is this even remotely fair? How does this foster inclusion rather than exacerbate resentment?
363
@Mark Perhaps not only race should be disregarded and not considered, but also sex, and age. Parent's income - not sure about that one. That is considered for scholarship awards however, but higher incomes should not be preferred.
1
@Mark The reason why Harvard and similar institutions don't use economic hardship as a factor is because they ran the analysis and found that actually Asians would benefit disproportionately from this and so would not result in their desired racial balance of students. The majority of affirmative active beneficiaries are actually upper-middle class African-American and Hispanic students.
6
@Mark here's an alternative -- rip capital from the soft, undeserving hands of this nations' top 5% and use it create a system that grants all folks access to a high quality education. Affirmative action --a small consideration in light of this nations brutal racism -- is not short changing working class people. Mega corporations, the uber-wealty, and corrupt politicians are the ones bleeding this country dry.
2
Professor Boddie, I assume that you have NOT advised Harvard on how to comply with federal law on affirmative action because if you had, you would have been obliged to reveal that conflict of interest in your first sentence.
Your impassioned plea against color-line university admissions and against the suit by Asian-Americans ignores the details provided by the plaintiffs in this matter. Contrary to your argument, Harvard did not ignore race. It looked at Asian applicants with stellar records and decided, in large numbers, to reject them because of alleged "personality" problems. Sorry. That just won't wash. Either students have the academic record to get into Harvard or they don't. When large number of ONLY Asians are rejected because of purported "personality" or "character" flaws that ARE NOT SUBSTANTIATED IN THE RECORD or who have not even been interviewed in person.......well, I find it hard to believe that this was not the result of a deliberate policy to minimize the number of Asian-Americans in the class.
Discrimination is not wholly unfamiliar at Harvard. There was a time decades ago when the university made a deliberate policy of rejecting Jews, so there would not be "too many" of them. That became known, then the policy changed.
I am curious to see how the case turns out. Clearly, there will be much that is currently hidden about Harvard that will come into the open. Good.
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@Lenore
Bravo. I'd like to know Professor Biddle's view regarding Asians being "rejected because of purported "personality" or "character" flaws that ARE NOT SUBSTANTIATED IN THE RECORD . . . ."
I'm reminded of a certain relative's using the phrase "Chinaman's chance" in describing the (un-)likelihood of something occurring.
1
@Lenore Affirmative action is on its way out. Most Americans are against it & vote to ban it when given a chance. For example in 1996 California voters amended the state constitution, to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, in the areas of public employment, public contracting, & public education. Since the passage of Prop 209, minority students at California schools have posted higher graduation rates, African American graduation rates at Berkeley increased by 6.5%, & rose even more dramatically, from 26% to 52%, at UC San Diego. Prop 209 restored & reconfirmed the historic intention of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The basic and simple premise of Prop 209 is that every individual has a right, & that right is not to be discriminated against, or granted a preference, based on their race or gender. Since the number of available positions are limited, discriminating against or giving unearned preference to a person based solely, or even partially on race or gender deprives qualified applicants of all races an equal opportunity to succeed. It also pits one group against another & perpetuates social tension. Prop 209 has been the subject of many lawsuits but has withstood legal scrutiny. In 2006, a similar amendment was passed in Michigan. In 2014 SCOTUS ruled 6-2 that the Michigan Initiative was constitutional. This public policy is no longer defensible. Harvard's policy is no longer defensible. They will lose this case.
3
@Lenore the law suit was not be Asian-Americans but by a white lawyer who attacks affirmative action any chance he gets. Indeed that there is not a singe Asain-American who has signed on to this law suit. To quote Casey Stengel “You could look it up.”
To ignore identity in college applications is to pretend that each applicant is on a level playing field. They're not.
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@westie
So is it RIGHT then to level playing field by lumping students(applicants) together simply by their RACE or SKIN COLOR? Sit back and ponder on it for a minute.
Are all WHITE people the same? ALL Blacks the same? ALL Asians?
Are we solving a problem or really creating a MUCH WORSE one?
Love to hear fair, honest, open-minded discussions.
@westie
To pretend that Black applicants to Harvard can't be privileged sons or daughters of Doctors or other professionals is to stereotype POC.
3
@westie
Sorry life is not fair.
College (and job) applications should be blinded to race, gender and religion. This eliminates any potential conflict between birth gender/race and self selected gender/race. Only grades and test scores should determine admission. Including any reference to gender and race always leaves open the possibility of discrimination of one sort or another.
13
I do not understand people’s obsession with limiting consideration to nothing but grades and test scores. Grades are not equal. I’m pretty sure you cannot compare an A in biology at Riverdale Country, which costs $54,000/year to an A in biology at August Martin public high school in Queens, which has a 39% graduation rate (that’s not a typo).
And it would be ridiculously insulting to everyone’s intelligence, particularly the admissions staff at Harvard to ask them to pretend that the valedictorian at August Martin had the same opportunities as even the bottom of the class at Riverdale Country.
And the only nationally standard exams are the AP exams (courses not offered at every school), the SAT, ACT, and SAT subject tests.
I thought we wanted to move away from making school all about testing. . .
6
As I see it, the major problem with admissions to elite schools is not refusing to base admissions solely on test scores and grades. Everyone knows that talent and personality are not well measured by those standards. The problem is the number of kids offered admission based on their social connections and the amount of money donated to the university by parents or being the son or daughter of a prominent alumni. These are private schools and have the right to construct their student body the way they want to do that. It's ultimately useless to try to dictate their admissions policy.
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@jonr
"These are private schools and have the right to construct their student body the way they want to do that."
Right. Such is the prerogative of private tyrannies. And the effort to privatize the public continues apace.
1
@jonr: Then why pretend that grades even matter? Why not admit those with the biggest bags of money and be done with the charade?
Why emphasize that asian americans make up 25% of the class but then put in parenthesis that they're only 6% of the population overall? As if they're already getting more than they "deserve"? Pretty sure each and every one of those students earned their spot.
I think this is a harmful point to make and speaks to the larger fears of many Asian Americans that they're not truly being heard in this case - that the policies in place are not helping them, but hurting them. That the policies are meant to be some sort of "racial balancing" and social experiment that directly affects their chances at success.
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They surely don’t make up 6% of the population globally.
4
if Asian students represent 6% of the population and 22% of the Harvard admissions, it is very difficult to argue that Asian students are being discriminated against in any fashion.
1
I think back on when orchestras started having auditions with the musician behind a screen--suddenly, a large number of women appeared to be really good at whatever they were playing, good enough to become orchestra members.
With regard to college admissions, there is nothing to stop a young person from writing that he/she grew up in a poor neighborhood, went to lousy schools, will be the first in the family to attend college, had parents who struggled with English and/or low paying jobs, had to work while going to school to help support the family, had to care for siblings or a sick parent, etc.
Those qualities are important regardless of race; I think race blind admissions are a good idea.
158
We don't like the use of race in setting up voting laws or employment practices. But a teeny-tiny bit of race is just a welcome seasoning in deciding who gets into an Ivy League institution. Which is the same thing as deciding who is kept out.
Apparently, keeping applicants out because of their race is all a part of "building bridges across communities."
91
So the plaintiffs want to use only the selection criteria they want over what the school feels in necessary. Hmmm, seems to me Harvard didn’t become Harvard by taking their admissions cues from failed applicants. They probably should be forced to start now.
12
@William Raudenbush
Maybe those "failed" applicants failed bc Harvard has secret racial quotas for some minorities. If Harvard really wants the best then why does race matter?
23
@William Raudenbush
Maybe those "failed" applicats really failed b/c of Harvard's secret racial quota for some minorities. If they really want the best then why not be race neutral?
2
@William Raudenbush
Maybe those "failed" applicants really failed b/c of Harvard's secret racial quota for some minorities. If they really want the best then why not be race neutral?
1
If someone doesn't identify by race because they consider race a social construct, that person should be free to identify as "human race." That's me, even though I know other people look at me and think "white guy," and I'm aware of the privileges I enjoy as a result.
In the meantime, those who do identify by race must be free to state their identity.
And colleges and universities, in pursuing their educational mission of excellence (but not missions of exclusion or white supremacy), must be allowed to consider racial identity in assembling their student bodies through the admissions process.
No one is entitled to a seat at Harvard, and anyone qualified for Harvard will be able to find a seat somewhere else.
11
@Sam I Am: so you believe that Harvard (and other elite schools) should continue to DISCRIMINATE against Asian students?
1
@Sam I Am
I genuflect in the direction of Haaar-vaaaard ( as Yalies like to say.)
Sure, race ought not to be ignored because it forms a significant chunk of an applicant's identity, but is that really what is under discussion here? The proposal to redact mentions of race is one pragmatic method for instituting a broader idea: that race should not be weighed as heavily in admissions decisions as it currently is. How is it fair to deny a qualified applicant of Asian origin simply because there are too many others like him or her? How people from one's race or ethnicity are doing in terms of academic performance and positions/representations in the academic arena ought not to have an impact on one's own application and candidacy. And yet it does. Asians are "over-represented", while other minorities are "under-represented".
Currently, affirmative action policies at top universities use race as the most important criterion--over economic status--which disadvantages certain minority groups. The choice is not between being able to discuss race or not; it's between allowing race to be such a high priority factor in admissions.
This is not just about "whiteness"; it actively hinders the prospects of minorities that are, for lack of a better phrase, not in vogue these days. I, for one, am rooting for Edward Blum, despite his record, intentions, and my own (leftist) leanings. Even a broken clock clock is right twice a day.
35
Weaskininnocence: How does one hide one's personal appearance? Is it not possible that the decision to enroll or not enroll an applicant is made as soon as the physical being appears for the final enrollment interview?
2
Harvard should just replace the "race question" with a requirement that all applicants submit DNA samples for analysis. DNA testing would then help to determine if the applicant has the appropriate genetic potential to be a future US President or Supreme Court justice, since Harvard grads have a 50% chance of being one or the other.
11
Why should a college not strive to have the best students, not merely ones who are acceptable? Why should anyone ever expect student bodies to reflect the ethnic/racial composition of the overall population if the distribution of high school graduates, let alone high achieving high school graduates, doesn't match?
By the way, just to add to the richness of this discussion, I would like to see the stats on which majors minority students pursue at Harvard and Rutgers.
42