June 19, 2018

The Unfairness of Harvard

The Harvard University admissions process appears to be an ongoing microaggression against Asian-Americans.

The Harvard University admissions process appears to be an ongoing microaggression against Asian-Americans.

A group called Students for Fair Admissions is suing the school for alleged racial discrimination and has filed documents in federal court making a persuasive case, based on data provided by the school.

Harvard denies it, but one of the imperatives of the affirmative action regime in college admissions is that schools never admit what they are doing.

The great and good at Harvard will insist that Asian-Americans all be called by their preferred pronouns, but they won’t afford them equal treatment in the admissions process. They will upbraid anyone daring to ask an Asian-American where he is from, but will, in effect, hold his ethnic background against him.

And they will do it by relying on the stereotype of Asian-Americans as dull, unrelatable “model students.”

According to the analysis of Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono, an expert for the plaintiffs, an Asian-American applicant who is a male, is not economically disadvantaged and has, based on his other characteristics, a 25 percent chance of getting in would see his odds markedly increase if he belonged to another group. His chances of admission would be 36 percent if he were white; 77 percent if he were Hispanic; and 95 percent if he were black.

Why is this? Among Harvard applicants, Asian-Americans have the highest average SAT scores and the highest academic index, combining the SAT and high-school performance. Somehow, though, they manage the lowest admission rates.

They supposedly fall down on their personal ratings, which includes the question of whether the applicants have a “positive personality.”

It just so happens that, per Harvard, otherwise high-achieving Asian-Americans are beset by chronically negative personalities. It’s amazing that they somehow manage to do well in school and extensively participate in extracurricular activities despite their glum outlook and downbeat personas. Alumni interviewers who actually meet them tend to rate them highly. No matter.

Harvard’s “holistic” approach to admissions allows it to adjust the knobs to get the demographic mix that it prefers. There’s precedent for this. In the 1920s, as a report of the Center for Equal Opportunity notes, Harvard changed its admissions process away from an exclusive focus on academics to considering the whole person, which allowed it to reverse an unwelcome run-up in Jewish admissions and keep the percentage of Jews in the student body at about 15 percent for decades.

Like the Jews before them, Asian-Americans are deemed “unclubbable” by many elite universities seeking to keep their admissions down.

The Center for Equal Opportunity report notes the contrast between Caltech, which doesn’t have affirmative action, and Harvard, which does.

At Harvard, Asian-American representation topped out at 21 percent in 1993, before dipping below 20 percent for a couple of decades (it’s now 22 percent).

A 2013 internal Harvard analysis, according to the lawsuit, said that Asian-Americans would make up 43 percent of admissions if academics alone were the factor.

If Harvard applied its own standards to Harvard, it would be appalled by how it’s disadvantaging members of a minority group. It would encourage protests. It would refer itself for racial bias training. It would apologize and grovel and hope it all could be a teaching moment. But none of this will happen because it could lead to the admission of “too many Asians,” the scenario that its admissions policies and related subterfuge are designed to prevent.

The lawsuit includes an exchange with a teacher at exclusive Stuyvesant High School in New York City who breaks down and cries when she’s shown data on how much less likely her Asian students are to make it into Harvard. She’s upset by the unfairness of it — would that Harvard felt the same way.

© 2018 by King Features Syndicate

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.