“Harvard has failed to carry its demanding burden to show that its use of race does not inflict unlawful racial discrimination on Asian Americans,” the Justice Department said in its filing.The top-rated comment at the NYT is, somewhat surprisingly: "Glad to see this. The only way to stop discrimination based on race is to stop discriminating based on race."
The filing said that Harvard “uses a vague ‘personal rating’ that harms Asian-American applicants’ chances for admission and may be infected with racial bias; engages in unlawful racial balancing; and has never seriously considered race-neutral alternatives in its more than 45 years of using race to make admissions decisions.”
August 30, 2018
"Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Affirmative Action Win Justice Dept. Support."
The NYT reports.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
167 comments:
How do you say "Bake the Cake" in Bostonese?
Maybe, Harvard can hire Sarah Jeong as an expert defense witness on the benefits of affirmative action......
I think Althouse should incorporate a ranking for comments on her blog as I think we would be at least as interested in which is the highest rated comment here on a particular topic as we are when it comes to articles in the NY Times.
I am willing to believe, without having reviewed the evidence, that Harvard and other "elite" academic institutions try to find ways to limit the number of Asians and I am also willing to believe the Asian students out perform other candidates in almost every category. I do wonder how much a Harvard degree is really worth these days, though.
Re: the top-rated comment, that is surprising. The Times is losing control of the AA narrative.
It's early on the east coast.
About time.
"I think Althouse should incorporate a ranking for comments on her blog as I think we would be at least as interested in which is the highest rated comment here on a particular topic as we are when it comes to articles in the NY Times."
I don't have an option to do that, so it's not possible, but I prefer to see the comments in chronological order to maintain the sense of things. I don't think the voting here would prove much about what's valuable and what's not. I sometimes choose things myself to front-page. But basically, I see the comments as a conversation, not a contest. The people who read but don't comment... they'd be able to vote. I guess you might learn something through that, but I'm not sure what!
I wish Harvard would hire Otter from Animal House as its lead attorney.
"Look, you fuckheads - we need more blacks on campus, we need less Asians! What's the problem?!!?"
I knew there was more to the reason I didn't get into Harvard!
The top-rated comment is unrelated to the discrimination against Asians — another minority group. It would apply even if a white student brought the case.
This case has some special particularity to it, as the U.S. filing shows. Harvard made up a vague "personal" rating that seems designed to be applied to disadvantage Asians.
To disfavor Asians, Harvard reached into the bag of tricks it used to employ to maintain a quota on Jews. Thank the Goddess we now have a DOJ that's willing to take the law seriously.
Harvard is almost 25% Jewish and almost 20% Asian.
Jews are 2% of US population and Asians are about 6% of US population.
So Harvard should be 75% Asian and 25% Jewish. And the remaining whites, blacks, and Hispanics should go to other schools.
Ann Althouse said...
The top-rated comment is unrelated to the discrimination against Asians — another minority group. It would apply even if a white student brought the case.
More importantly minorities are finding out that standing on your own two feet not only gives better results, but allows you to attain a sense of pride and honor that is necessary to succeed.
I have seen arguments about not using the term plantation but it is perfectly descriptive of a system that poorly educates people then later gives them places in college and jobs to make up for their lack of skills.
As long as you stay on the plantation.
If Harvard wants to treat Asians and Hews the same, then it has to decrease the percentage of Jewish students to about 8%.
The Notorious RBG, Breyer, and Kagan then would adopt root and branch Thomas’ views on affirmative action.
Every Asian who was denied their proper place should get a $1 Million.
After their huge surplus is depleted, they can raise tuition to $! million/year. Now that would be elite.
Ann Althouse said...
"Harvard made up a vague "personal" rating that seems designed to be applied to disadvantage Asians."
Kind of like when Southern white supremacists (the real ones) used "literacy tests" to disenfranchise black voters.
Of course, voting is a right. Going to Harvard isn't, or didn't use to be. It seems that Harvard is trying to exercise the right of free association. Too late. It turns out the slope really is slippery.
The racial spoils system was designed to fail. The math never works. In truth, it's just a proxy to push leftism. That's why the Left gets very upset when individuals in "disadvantaged" groups turn right wing (see, Thomas, Clarence; see Rice, Condaleeza; see any gays who happen to vote Republican.)
if i could have a wish list for this site; it would be if were threaded ( the comments could have comments), so that the 100 comments about a comment that Joe Schmow said could skipped by those of us that don't care WHAT Joe said.
But, since that's not possible (and since this is a free site); i'll happily take what i get (and, if I want to get MORE; i'll use the Althouse amazon portal)
@Jupiter ... "slope", ha ha. Nice! I think Ann has a post about the Slopes, an Asian-American band from a while back that discussed the controversy over their name.
If Harvard has to let in more Asians I guess they'll just have to cut back on the dwindling percentage of flyover white guys they admit. But that probably won't free up enough slots, so I'm looking forward to seeing what Asian-targeted criteria they'll conjure up next to keep from having to cut back on the affirmative action admits.
Considering the amount of "nepotism and ethnocentrism: it's different when we do it" behavior I've observed over the years, I wonder if any of the people involved in formulating the "too many Asians" admissions criteria are related to people who got quota'd-out by the "too many Jews" criteria back in the day.
Clown World is endlessly entertaining.
Harvard made up a vague "personal" rating that seems designed to be applied to disadvantage Asians
Sounds like my undergraduate institution's notorious 'class participation' score used in grading. When your grades didn't fit in the 'expected' part fo the curve your prof had an out.
"I think Ann has a post about the Slopes, an Asian-American band"
It's The Slants
One of the hazards of accepting federal donations, is the feds are crazy.
Kind of like when Southern white supremacists (the real ones) used "literacy tests" to disenfranchise black voters.
Kind of like when Progressives started labeling speech they didn't like "hate" speech and arguing the first amendment didn't apply.
Do UC Berkeley next.
The "disparate impact" sledgehammer invented by the Left comes back to bite them in the rear.
I'm all smiles. The only way the Left even begins to understand the principle of merit is if they suffer because of their own discrimination schemes.
Being a hyphenated-American is bad enough, but when they also want special privileges, I draw the line.
Cremate the bastards and light the Statue of Liberty with the electricity.
UC schools by law not permitted affirmative action.
I'm seeing that, on average, 30% of a prestigious university's makeup is legacy admissions. That seems like fertile legal ground in this day and age, but what do I know?
John Roberts subscribes to the NYT?!
Who knew?
The top-rated comment is unrelated to the discrimination against Asians — another minority group. It would apply even if a white student brought the case.
The comment is quoting Chief Justice John Roberts in a 2007 case involving a white Seattle student.
It is rather amusing that the techniques that were used by WASPs to restrict the number of Jews admitted to Harvard are now being used by Jews to restrict the number of Asians and WASPs admitted.
Compelling logic from The Black Institute:
"New Mind-Boggling Evidence Proves SAT Bias"
"For me, grossly and consistently unequal outcomes almost always prove racist intent. The annual outcome of [Asians] out-scoring [Whites] on the SAT demonstrates intent, proves the test is biased. I do not need evidence that shows racist intent. The outcome, for me, is enough."
The Black Institute has thereby proven that the SAT test was purposely designed by racists so that Asians would score higher than Whites.
The Left has to be careful not to let Asians be too successful. It ruins the narrative that America is a racist nation of White supremacists.
Perhaps, White Privilege will morph into AbB (Anything but Black) Privilege. The problem is that Black African and Caribbean immigrants tend to be much more successful than African-Americans.
Hmmm ... I wonder if the Democrat's Plantation Politics plays a role.
I don't feel sorry for any Asian-Americans who suffer this discrimination but vote Democrat.
Harvard Crimson says the education system is unfair to white people:
Yes, that [Asian] student with a perfect GPA who scored a perfect score on the SAT deserved an admissions offer. However, so did that [White] student, replacing her, who succeeded despite structural forces depriving him of a high-quality education system and the resources it affords."
The problem is that Black African and Caribbean immigrants tend to be much more successful than African-Americans.
Good character.
The simple solution for Harvard is to expand. Set high standards and let in all students who meet those standards. Of course the Cambridge campus couldn't accommodate so many students, so they would have to start opening new campuses around the country. It would be win-win. More students would get to go to Harvard and Harvard would generate more revenue from tuition and increase their already sizable endowment with gifts from a larger group of alumni.
There's already a sort of analogy with the State university systems.
@Bob Boyd, thanks for catching that! Slippery Slopes and Slants ... we all look alike says this Asian-American, LOL.
Asians are probably being repressed in numbers because they seek truth more than they accept the collective myths in which Harvard prides itself as master indoctrinators.
Theres something to be said for attending a university where all the students are rich and well connected with a few scholarship kids thrown in for leavening. Isn't that the way Oxford and Cambridge used to work. There's also something to be said for attending a university where all the students are super smart and have been chosen strictly on the basis of a competitive exam.......Maybe something can be said for a university whose students are chosen based on what the admissions committee believes is the ideal racial composition of the student body. I wonder, however, what the ideal racial composition of the admission committee should be. Moreover, who should select the ideal admission committee.
Asians are probably being repressed in numbers because they seek truth more than they accept the collective myths in which Harvard prides itself as master indoctrinators.
That's the dragon theory.
Regarding the Crimson article that Fernandistein quoted at 12:05 PM, I don't have a problem with AA as it pertains to economic background. If someone with every advantage barely edges out someone without the advatages, it's Moneyball thinking to take the latter case.
I'm still surprised that legacy admissions have not been successfully challenged and relegated to the dustbin. That is the oldest affirmative action program around.
BJM at 11:37: "Do UC Berkely next".
Prop 209 passed in 1996 made it illegal (well, at least more difficult) to use race as a basis for admission decisions at Berkeley. Between 1999 and 2006, degrees to Asians increased by 10% from 2303 to 2533; degrees to blacks dropped by 23% from 286 to 219.
https://www.nas.org/articles/The_Effects_of_Proposition_209_on_California_Higher_Education_Public_Employ
There probably is a more recent study on this updating those numbers.
This is all about how to distribute what's left after the WASPS and Legacies get Theirs. The people who run the place can change the pattern of their discrimination to suit the times, but they'll still get their piece first.
Diversity, or color judgment, is racism under another name.
As for Affirmative Action, it should be assimilation and integration. It should be rehabilitation, revitalization, and reconciliation, not a zero-sum game for leverage and profits as it's currently played.
"Kind of like when Southern white supremacists (the real ones) used "literacy tests" to disenfranchise black voters."
(Democrat)...(Democrat)... (Democrat)....
There's some speculation that one concern is if you fill up dorm rooms with Asians, it will strengthen the real academic departments against the make-work identity programs,and by extension against the school bureaucracies.
tcrosse said...
"This is all about how to distribute what's left after the WASPS and Legacies get Theirs."
This is widely believed, but untrue. In fact, WASPs are severley underrepresented at Harvard.
"The people who run the place can change the pattern of their discrimination to suit the times, but they'll still get their piece first."
This, on the other hand, is true. But the people running Harvard are Jewish, which is why far more Jews are admitted than either their proportion of the population or their SATs would support. They used to be victims of systematic discrimination, but now they are beneficiaries, and the flyover WASPs are getting stiffed.
'How do you say "Bake the Cake" in Bostonese?'
Hey pal, shut up and bake the f*$kin' cake.
-sw
Fuck Harvard. I told my kids I wanted them to study hard, get accepted by Harvard, but decline, and then go to Fresno State.
Kinda funny that I just got out of the car and it was on the top of the hour CBS newscast that the Trump administration was suing Harvard , but there was no mention of Asian American students...
If all the Dem segregationists switched parties starting in the 60s the way Dems claim, wouldn't Republicans look back fondly on FDR? Cause the idea seems to be that they switched parties to go to the racists, yet oddly switched all their OTHER principles and heroes and historical allegiances as well, in which case, what made the switch primarily due to racism other than their sayso?
This is widely believed, but untrue. In fact, WASPs are severley underrepresented at Harvard.
My information is 50 years out of date, it would seem.
I heard a story, probably apocryphal, of a West Coast big shot and his wife who approached Harvard about contributing a building as a memorial to their late son. The Harvard guy told them that Harvard had all the buildings it needed, thank you, and maybe he should start his own damn university. Which he did; he was Leland Stanford.
The silver lining for Asians is that less of them will have their minds polluted, corralled, and harassed into SJW submission.
Is Asian studies offered at most universities? Seems like there would be a lot more depth to discover there than in Black or women's studies.
I wish a different, prestigious Ivy League University from New York were in this brouhaha, because then a bunch of Asians would be Suing NYU.
As many of you probably realize I hold a couple of degrees from Harvard. Early on in this debate I defended the College's Admissions Committee for the excellent job they do putting a class together. As things have gone forward and I have had more time to think about it - and a couple of undergraduate policies that I strongly disagree with have come to light - I have come to the conclusion that the Asians are 1. correct, they are being discriminated against and 2. it is time we stopped discriminating by race in this country and Harvard is a good place to end that process.
I have a third reason which is that I want to experience the schadenfreude of Harvard living by standards that its faculty is happy to foist on us but never let invade the yard.
If the Harvard case is a win for the Asians this is going to impact, at the very least, the Ivy League and most likely all college admissions across the country. It will be incredibly disruptive, but tremendously beneficial in the long run.
I think the DOJ is right and that if this goes to SCOTUS color/ethnicity blind admissions will win a long overdue victory.
Since a Harvard acceptance has more to do with intelligence-signalling than real education, Trump should by executive decree simply grant every Amerikan a Harvard degree upon birth, leaving our youth with the clear option of gaining real erudition, as dropouts Gates, Dell, Jobs and Zuckerberg did. I rejected Harvard offers in 1965 and 1968 and I still have doubts about the value added by a Harvard diploma (aka "education").
Harvard has more students from the top 1% of income than the bottom 60%. And 30% of the students are legacies.
It’s always been a school run by the wealthy for the wealthy.
"Is Asian studies offered at most universities? Seems like there would be a lot more depth to discover there than in Black or women's studies."
The idea of "Asian Studies" is absurd.
There are Chinese, Japanese, Korean and other such departments in various universities.
But "Asian Studies" is simply an invitation to politicized triviality.
UCLA is typical in its broken-up treatment -
Asian Languages and Culture at UCLA
That is, the guts of the thing are specific language and lit courses - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and even the generic ones require a single intensive language track.
Because of the languages and native literature in the language, these are far tougher, more rigorous majors than the usual "studies" courses.
To paraphrase myself: I look forward to the day American universities become color blind and make decisions not based on race.
The simple solution for Harvard is to expand...More students would get to go to Harvard and Harvard would generate more revenue from tuition and increase their already sizable endowment with gifts from a larger group of alumni.
But I think Harvard's goal is to supply elite connections, not an elite education. That's what people are paying for. If you dilute that, the brand is harmed.
"I'm seeing that, on average, 30% of a prestigious university's makeup is legacy admissions. That seems like fertile legal ground in this day and age, but what do I know?"
The problem is that Harvard is a private corporation, and it is all about the money. A decade ago, when my kid was getting starting to apply to college, I was told that the going rate for a legacy admission at my alma mater was 4 years of tuition of contributions throughout the time since my graduation. And that Admissions worked extremely closely with "Development". That essentially means that the parents of legacy admits paid twice, once as tuition, and once as donations to the endowment fund. Instead of maybe $250k, we are talking $500k. Over time, that is where their huge endowment came from, mostly people, very often alumni, who expect preferential admission of their kids or grandkids as a result of their generous donations. And that, of course, pays for many of the minority admits. Remove legacy admits, and most private colleges and universities are going to have a hard time funding minority outreach.
Thanks for answering, Bruce. One further question I'd have is how does a university receiving federal funding figure into the equation with legacy admissions? If they do not get any federal money and they don't have a special tax status, yes, it's certainly a private corporation, subject to the same rules as any other private college that falls in such a category. I gather that it's not often that simple, though. Also, what percentage of legacy students have such an arrangement?
"Maybe, Harvard can hire Sarah Jeong as an expert defense witness on the benefits of affirmative action.
That wouldn't work, since it would show by example that they were right to rate Asians low on personality.
I am going to overdose on the popcorn.
Simply allow the Asian applicants to self-identify as blacks. Problem solved.
That top-rated comment blows me away. NYT has some intelligent and reasonable readers!
"I'm looking forward to seeing what Asian-targeted criteria they'll conjure up next to keep from having to cut back on the affirmative action admits."
Driving test.
So we are not going to discriminate against race, we are going to base entrance on intelligence. But wait if we do that wouldn't that mean that the students will be disproportionately Asians and Jews. Isn't that discrimination? Well let me introduce to where this has been the case since circa 30s, my High School-Stuyvesant.Entry was soley based on passing a purely academic test. The school was predominately made up of Jews from the 30s through the 80s. Since then it is made up predominately of Asians. Throughout its 70 years of selecting the brightest youths, minorities have been drastically underrepresented. You know that Diblasio wants to change that. He calls it discrimination!So that top rated comment is just teenage pablum. Life is hard.
"This, on the other hand, is true. But the people running Harvard are Jewish, which is why far more Jews are admitted than either their proportion of the population or their SATs would support. They used to be victims of systematic discrimination, but now they are beneficiaries, and the flyover WASPs are getting stiffed."
Not sure about the SATs. There is a significant IQ component to SAT scores (as well as both short term and long term prep). Murray's Bell Curve pointed out that Jews were the one demographic group with measured IQ statistically significantly above the norm (roughly one STD). This means that the average IQ of Jews is roughly 115, while it is 100 for whites, and maybe 102 for Oriental Asians. And that also means significantly more people in the right end of the IQ curve. Which is why, the year that my kid graduated from HS, roughly half the 800 SATs in the state came from the traditionally Jewish HS in the state.
Driving test.
I've always imagined that Chinese NASCAR would look a lot like figure-8 track car racing.
But I think Harvard's goal is to supply elite connections, not an elite education. That's what people are paying for. If you dilute that, the brand is harmed.
There's the rub. If admissions were based purely on merit, many children of the elite would not make it even though they might otherwise be qualified because of the limited space. If you increase the number of students, the elite will still make connections through clubs, society, housing etc.
Brand dilution is an issue, but I don't think that Harvard has expanded its student population in step with the US population. Checking online, I see that there are 2.2 million first-time freshman students in the US and Harvard accepted just under 2,000 to their freshman class. That works out to under .1% of the student population. I think they could double or triple that without diluting their brand or the quality of the students.
The answer, from Harvard's point of view, is to increase the staff in its Admissions Office and use a truly holistic perspective in admissions.
After all, Harvard could have a class of only valedictorians and salutatorians if it so desired. So they can reasonably argue that they accepted the best mix of students without concern for any protected classes.
And then pretty much do whatever they prefer.
BTW this points to the false construct of egalitarianism and leftists liberalism. All men are not created equal and free education will not solve the world injustices and lead to equality and utopia.
Race-based admissions is plays toxic. All Harvard needs is a heighth minimum to accomplish two goals at once.
- is
Bruce Hayden said...
"Murray's Bell Curve pointed out that Jews were the one demographic group with measured IQ statistically significantly above the norm".
Yes, indeed. But I based my comment on research indicating that Jewish academic achievement has been falling at the same time that their proportion at Harvard is rising.
http://www.unz.com/runz/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
Bruce Hayden: Not sure about the SATs. There is a significant IQ component to SAT scores...
A population can have both a higher relative number of high IQ (and high SAT-scoring) individuals, and still be over-represented. You might expect a high mean-IQ minority to be over-represented by x%. If they're over-represented in significantly higher numbers than that, there are likely other things going on.
People go 'round and 'round about this - there are plenty of exchanges online of dueling statistical analyses re Jewish over-representation. Same for under-representation of gentile whites, relative to the number of high-IQ individuals in their much larger percentage of the U.S. population. It's one of those topics where you have to wade through biased (sometimes comically so) partisans on either side to get to sensible discussion.
Aside: It's my understanding that SAT scores from recent decades are not as good a proxy for IQ as earlier scores. Still correlate positively, though, like just about every other metric.
John Tuffnell said...
"I'm looking forward to seeing what Asian-targeted criteria they'll conjure up next to keep from having to cut back on the affirmative action admits."
Driving test.
**********************
LOLZ
My DIL is a Chinese-American Harvard post-doc. She's always telling us what horrible drivers Asians are.
(But IMHO Russians are far worse)
Stop monkeying around, you racists.
Many of you are missing the point. Harvard has always balanced its scholastic, financial, geographic and extra curricular interests using its "holistic" method. This has obviously worked well for the school and for the admittee/graduates. Forgetting the race issue for a moment, the admission process has brought the school a geographically, socio-economically and talent-wise diverse group of men and women. In that mix are kids from all over the country - including flyover country - and all over the world; there are still kids who are the first in their family to attend college; there are kids whose parents can just afford to keep their families afloat and kids (legacies or not) whose families are worth millions or billions that subsidize the poor kids in both the short and long term. Given the success of alumni of Harvard College and the school's reputation in this country and the world, the Admissions Committee has a proven record of outstanding performance.
I get a bit perturbed about those who pick on legacies or insinuate that Harvard ignores the flyover kids. I am a legacy and my son is a legacy. My father went through Harvard on scholarship, I was lucky enough to attend when tuition was affordable to a middle class parent. My son attended on a NROTC scholarship. One roommate was a kid from "The Hill" in St. Louis who never could understand why people on the street in Cambridge did not say hello to you. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and was head of Orthopedics at U of Oklahoma and Arizona. Most of the guys I played football with were from small high schools all over the country: State Collage, PA HS;Lima OH HS; Duxbury MA HS; Sioux Falls HS; etc. Many of them became doctors , one for the Olympic squad; others attended various graduate schools and held important positions in American corporations or politics, and many led what we would consider normal lives of achievement and participation in their professions and communities.
Sure there are kids whose parents have money. That's where places like Widener Library came from. Then there are graduates who made big bucks like Edwin Land (Polaroid) who gave a big chunk for the "new" undergraduate science center, or another roommate of mine - also a legacy - who endowed a chair to fund the football coach.
All that said I still think that it is time to end ethnic/race quotas in admissions. I think it will work out quite well for Harvard in the long run and certainly for the country.
"There's the rub. If admissions were based purely on merit, many children of the elite would not make it....
****************
True dat. It's called "regression toward the mean."
It's self-serving that Harvard grads can argue that their offspring are as smart as *they* are, and at the same time ignore what statistics tell us.
It's a lot like the saying, "Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves, in three generations."
Just look at the Kennedys for the truth in that old saying.
Has a fun time the other day. HR came to give a talk about diversity and our hiring goals with the implicit message that we need to achieve greater diversity. I asked the rep, a woman, how many employees were in HR and how many were men? She fumbled around with words avoiding the answer and I stopped her. I informed her that of the 53 employees in HR, only three were men and there were no men in HR management. I then asked her if she thought that to be a problem because that sort of statistic is usually evidence of bias and is often actionable.
She didn't appreciate my contribution, but I'm a founder and there's nothing she can do about that.
One thing I left off from the above. I am personally aware of a number of big bucks legacies whose parents were told very tactfully that Harvard was not the right school for their child. One parent, at the time, was the head of a Harvard capital drive.
The issue is color judgments. The solution is a market-based (e.g. merit, money, influence) system of determining price and allocating finitely available and accessible resources, which is not restricted by diversity or color judgments.
Affirmative action was supposed to increase accessibility that is not based on diversity or color judgments, and thus overcome race, sex, and other barriers perceived to be erected due to pervasive diversity or color judgments.
Khe Sanh,
This is a constant problem, of static memories.
You cite your decades-old experience.
But institutions change.
What is it like now, today?
I run into this all the time, for instance, in education, where people recall their high schools of forty years ago.
They haven’t seen the inside of a modern HS.
They cannot imagine the situation I describe because they are stuck in the past.
The DOJ's brief (available on its website) makes many powerful points. It asks the Court to deny Harvard's motion for summary judgment, but does not address directly SFFA's motion for summary judgment. But the upshot of DOJ's argument is that Harvard has failed to meet its heavy burden to justify its conceded use of race at every significant step of its admissions process, has provided no guidance whatever as to how its admissions staff should integrate consideration of race into obviously subjective evaluations, and has failed to rebut the presumption that overt racial balancing is the only explanation for the remarkably stable, year-after-year racial balance that it admissions process produces. And Harvard admits that, while it has been using race affirmatively for 45 years in making admissions decisions, it has never considered race neutral alternatives, nor does it have any diversity goal in mind (whether in terms of percentages of the incoming class or in any other terms).
It's hard to see how the Court could possibly grant Harvard's motion, and quite easy to see how the Court could grant SFFA's (failure to meet its burden to justify its admitted use of race). But the Court would do both the litigants and the public a favor by denying both motions, and proceeding with a public trial. These are issues that need to be aired publicly -- everyone wants a candid conversation about race, right? -- and for all the endless spinning in the motion papers and PR releases, a public trial will get past the spinning and lay bear the truth. It will certainly get past the sanctimony in Harvard's endlessly repeated insinuation that Blum, the head of SFFA, is just a racial bigot.
As a prominent DC institution has taken to proclaiming, democracy dies in darkness. A little light would do a world of good here.
Khesanh 0802: Many of you are missing the point. Harvard has always balanced its scholastic, financial, geographic and extra curricular interests using its "holistic" method.
No, I think people are addressing any number of points here, the "OMG, they're discriminating against Asians" being only one of them. (I really don't care if they discriminate against Asians, or admit less-qualified blacks or Hispanics over better-qualified whites and Asian. Frankly, I wouldn't care if Harvard was still an all-male discriminatory WASP bastion. I don't really care for a lot of reasons I won't go into here.)
I think what people perceive is that Harvard is reserving to itself a right to discriminate and "freely associate". Harvard represents the "elite", and the "elites" are seen actively seeking to deny those rights to everyone else. "If your business or association or neighborhood looks 'too white' to us, we're not going to ask why, we're going socially-engineer and disparate-impact the hell out of you! If Harvard is starting to look 'too Asian' to us, well, that's different, you see, because reasons..."
I get a bit perturbed about those who pick on legacies or insinuate that Harvard ignores the flyover kids.
Ianm there are some analyses showing that Ivy League schools these days do discriminate against highly-qualified white fly-over kids with the "wrong" extra-curriculars and the "wrong" belief systems. (Even more than they discriminate against middle- and upper-middle-class Asians, according to one ref I've seen.) Considering the ideological atmosphere of universities these days (both elite and lower-tier), that's not a claim I would dismiss out of hand. That you know "flyovers" who went or go to Harvard (as do I) is not proof that that kind of discrimination isn't going on.
People care about this to the extent that institutions like Harvard produce what is supposed to be the nation's elite, its leadership class - and when people think that an existing elite doesn't represent their interests, or even actively works against those interests, you get trouble.
The NBA is clearly racist. Not nearly enough Asians. Yao Ming was clearly a token, as is Jeremy Lin.
A mere 2 Asian players out of 450? Look at the disparate impact! Prima facie evidence of discriminatory effect, if not purpose.
We must sue LeBron James and all his cohorts now. Not tomorrow. But now.
"and when people think that an existing elite doesn't represent their interests, or even actively works against those interests, you get trouble."
This is it entirely. The old WASP upper class was acceptable as long as material progress and social stability continued. The last two decades showed that there is an increasing, irreconcilable split between the volk and the modern elite.
I have no sympathy for Harvard, and hope they lose half the endowment.
The Trump administration needs to send out its own "dear colleague" letter to put a stop to this kind of illegal discrimination.
I went to Harvard 1961-65, and there were almost no Asians there. The only one I knew at all was Grant Ujifusa (later one of the founders of the Almanac of American Politics). I think there were more Africans than Asians (the soccer team was mostly Nigerian princes, I think).
When I went back for my 25th reunion, the most obvious change was women on campus and in the Houses (Harvard had gone co-ed), but there were also a lot more Asians around. I didn’t count how many. Among the alums I met a classmate (who I’d never met before) who lived in Singapore, but I can’t remember if he was Asian or white.
I’m not a big fan of Harvard these days. They have a very bad rating from FIRE, which they seem to have earned. The University has adopted a totalitarian policy against student membership in private clubs. When I was a student there, it was a lefty university, but rightish people like me weren’t persecuted. That seems to have changed.
BUT I don’t like the idea of a private university or college being subject to federal requirements or federal court scrutiny about the ethnic/racial make-up of its student body. I don’t think the feds should tell colleges that they have to admit members of racial groups or interracial couples or same-sex couples or students who don’t want to bake cakes for Gay weddings. If Harvard wants to exclude some of the best and brightest from its student body, I think it should have the right to do so. And pay the price for its lowered reputation.
Khesanh 0802: Many of you are missing the point. Harvard has always balanced its scholastic, financial, geographic and extra curricular interests using its "holistic" method.
Harvard's "holistic" method would get you sued out of business if you applied it in the private sector. Why should universities be exempt from the same burden they've place on the rest of us?
BUT I don’t like the idea of a private university or college being subject to federal requirements or federal court scrutiny about the ethnic/racial make-up of its student body.
I agree, provided Harvard stops accepting federal grants and Harvard students are ineligible for federal student loan programs.
The Godfather wrote-
I don’t think the feds should tell colleges that they have to admit members of racial groups or interracial couples or same-sex couples or students who don’t want to bake cakes for Gay weddings.
I used to believe this. I don't any more.
Universities receive too much federal money to be considered independent or private. Many universities promote the idea that in the past their alumni have shaped federal policy along lines that the university prefers, and that they expect that their graduates will continue to do so. They call themselves private universities because they want to be self-governing, yet they consider their mission to be public.
buwaya,
I run into this all the time, for instance, in education, where people recall their high schools of forty years ago.
They haven’t seen the inside of a modern HS.
They cannot imagine the situation I describe because they are stuck in the past.
That describes me (well, almost -- it's 38 years since I started HS). But my husband is a current public HS teacher, so let's just say that I have a toe in, and have seen the inside of his school many, many times. Allowing for the differences between rural NY and suburban Salem, OR, they aren't all that far apart. Though Salem isn't at all typical of western OR. (We're pretty religious here, for starters, and with an odd mix of religions too. Not just your standard mainline Protestants and Catholics, but a lot of LDS, some Russian Old Believers -- yep, they do exist -- and several hundred Sikhs ... )
The dress code is laxer, and you need to pry kids' cell phones physically out of their hands before they'll relinquish them, but otherwise it's much the same. Then again, what he teaches is (mostly) orchestra; he doesn't see his kids in their natural habitat, and they're a self-selected bunch.
Angle-Dyne, re: "flyover kids," you have it right; they tend to be just like the coastal kids the same schools admit. In my musicology class at UC/Berkeley, there was a guy from Oklahoma; in the one after mine, there was a guy from Nebraska. (Bear in mind that these classes are unbelievably small. The guy from Oklahoma and I were it that year, for example.) Apart from their sartorial choices (flannel plaid shirts and light-blue shirts respectively), there was nothing particular to distinguish them from their coastal colleagues.
"They call themselves private universities because they want to be self-governing, yet they consider their mission to be public."
The reality of the US system is that the private and public spheres flow into each other seamlessly.
Harvard and its kind are inextricably lined with your politics because they are an essential part of your cursus honorum. Outsiders are unwelcome, as we see with the treatment of, say, Sarah Palin. They are the unofficial but very real gatekeepers to your leadership stratum.
They also dictate, through the dogma of their scholars, the content and ideology of the rest of your educational and cultural establishments. Both of which also feed your politics.
If you want to fix the rot in your system, the essential first step is to decapitate the system, to destroy Harvard and its kind.
Sally 327@10:51AM/
How much is a Harvard degree worth these days? Considering that some roughly 60% of all undergraduate grades currently given are "A" or "A-" I'd say that a certificate from a good welding school carries more honest intellectual heft and rigor than any Harvard degree.
I’ll be happy when the only non-Asian-Americans at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are the legacies and the scholarship athletes. Oops. The Ives don’t offer athletic scholarships, do they?
Over 70% of Harvard students come from families with more than $200,000 in annual income. (Median family of four income is $57,000 in US).
This isn’t Diversity. It’s a school of rich kids. It always was. Of course they admit a few kids who are poor or middle income. Most of the athletes aren’t from rich families. (They are guys who weren’t good enough to play in the Big Ten).
No one can look at the numbers and say Harvard is diverse. It’s a rich kids school. Filled with douchebags like Jared Kushner.
Rich people don’t want too many Asians. That’s Harvard’s admissions policy.
buwaya, just above, speak heap big medicine..
Buwaya is correct. The Ivy League needs to be dissolved. Treat it like the NFL where both Left and Right despise it.
The Ives don’t offer athletic scholarships, do they?
A friend's daughter got a tennis scholarship to Dartmouth.
They play on an indoor court,
How much is a Harvard degree worth? You coulda got the same education with only $1.50 in late fees from the public library. ;-)
Not sure about the SATs. There is a significant IQ component to SAT scores (as well as both short term and long term prep).
I'm not as sue of that as I was 50 years ago. More than tat. I took the SAT in high school and we were marched down to the study hall and told we were taking a test.
It was the SAT. No prep courses. To this day, I don't know my score except it was enough to make me a National Merit scholar.
Since then the SAT has been dumbed don and "race normed."
For example.
1) Free test prep: Thanks to a new partnership with Khan Academy, students will be able to access high-quality online test prep without signing up for programs like Princeton Review or Kaplan, which are often difficult for students from low-income families to afford.
Lots of changes, like these.
Students despised the SAT not just because of the intense anxiety it caused — it was one of the biggest barriers to entry to the colleges they dreamed of attending — but also because they didn’t know what to expect from the exam and felt that it played clever tricks, asking the kinds of questions they rarely encountered in their high-school courses. Students were docked one-quarter point for every multiple-choice question they got wrong, requiring a time-consuming risk analysis to determine which questions to answer and which to leave blank. Teachers, too, felt the test wasn’t based on what they were doing in class, and yet the mean SAT scores of many high schools were published by state education departments, which meant that blame for poor performances was often directed at them.
I have to agree with the teachers. "Teach to the Test" is the old motto.
"A friend's daughter got a tennis scholarship to Dartmouth."
"Although the Ivy League schools do not offer athletic scholarships, admission is need-blind, and more than half of the Dartmouth student body receives financial assistance."
- DartmouthSports.com -The official site for Dartmouth sports.
I think, Michael K, that she got a need-based scholarship and played tennis. Admission may have been prefaced on joining the tennis team but the Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships.
How much is a Harvard degree worth? You coulda got the same education with only $1.50 in late fees from the public library.
The value of a Harvard or Yale education was never in what they teach. There's too much variation in teaching skills to warrant such a large premium, and in any event it's the graduate programs that are most prestigious.
It's about the networking. You're rubbing elbows with people who are going to be CEOs and Senators and Generals. The favors they can trade are worth millions.
Admission may have been prefaced on joining the tennis team but the Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships.
How is that not an athletic scholarship couched in different language?
“The Ives don’t offer athletic scholarships, do they?”
Classmate of my kid got a golf scholarship to Penn. Her parents could have afforded it, but that scholarship paid for grad school. Last I knew, much of the Ivy League also plays D1 men’s ice hockey. Oh, and can’t forget field hockey and maybe lacrosse. Girl a year ahead had a scholarship to, I believe, Dartmouth to play field hockey. Sure there is a lot more.
"How is that not an athletic scholarship couched in different language?"
Because it is need-based.
Students were docked one-quarter point for every multiple-choice question they got wrong, requiring a time-consuming risk analysis to determine which questions to answer and which to leave blank
That doesn't make sense. The reason they docked you a quarter point was if you ran out of time there was no benefit to putting random answers down for the remaining problems. But if you could eliminate at least one answer guessing from among the remaining choices would help you slightly. I don't see how that's "complicated risk analysis".
"How is that not an athletic scholarship couched in different language?"
Because it is need-based.
Sure, but if she didn't play tennis she wouldn't have been the beneficiary of that need-based logic.
From a long term strategic point of view, forcing Harvard and its kind to accept a more academic-meritocratic enrollment standard will reduce the cachet of the institution, as far as a place for networking. Making Harvard 50% Asian kids, most of them with no powerful connections or any sort of glamour.
After all, MIT and Cal Tech have higher intellectual standards but are not really part of the cursus honorum.
Foreign students too will regard an extremely Asian Ivy League as lacking cachet.
"Sure, but if she didn't play tennis she wouldn't have been the beneficiary of that need-based logic."
I agree. She had to qualify for admission and then was awarded a scholarship using the same criteria as any other student. Her athletic skills combined with her academic skills got her admitted. The scholarship would have been automatic based on her family's financial situation.
I understand that's a fairly fine line, but it is a line.
And please excuse me for seeming to refer to a particular student. Generalizing the comment would have taken more effort than I was willing to put out.
There's a formula to getting to the Ivy League for undergrad.
1) of course top grades and SATs. The courses need to be honours. The school should be top rated. There are a couple of public schools like New Trier that will work. There are a lot of private and public schools that are not good enough. Less then top school quality will hurt the application. Admissions people know the top public & private schools in the USA. The kid should be in one of those schools.
1.b) Win academic competitions. Essay contests and the like. Debate competitions. Win a state science fair. Accomplish something interesting.
2) Athletic extracurriculars. You should demonstrate some form of Athleticism. You don't need to be good. You need to participate.
3) Arts: Play in a city's youth orchestra. Win a poetry or short story competition. Show excellence in dance. Dance can count for Athleticism. If you do this, might be best to throw in another arts competency.
4) Do something interesting or unusual in the summertime. Internships or programs at the city's Aquarium, Museums, participate in a children's educational TV show. International programs. Volunteer work that is unusual and demonstrates foreign language skills.
5) Demonstrate skills and training in more then 2 languages.
司法
超过
人权
生活
6) Don't have yellow skin.
But I based my comment on research indicating that Jewish academic achievement has been falling at the same time that their proportion at Harvard is rising.
This keeps coming up in the comments here, but you should really read this response:
Andrew Gelman on Unz claim.
BTW you ought to see “Crazy Rich Asians” if you haven’t yet. The movie portrays people who seem to get on fine without a Harvard degree.
@Buwaya I think the Admissions Committee still plays the same role it always has in trying to admit a class that covers , as I said, the scholastic, financial and extracurricular needs of the college. There is no question that the class makeup as far as race, ethnicity and internationalism is substantially different from when I was there; good thing too! I am willing to bet that Harvard's outreach to flyover country has not changed much. Alumni and admissions officers have been beating the bushes since Harvard decided (in the 20's maybe) that it was going to be a national school. The recent emphasis on "diversity" and internationalism" may cut down on flyover admissions as it will cut down on Acela corridor admissions. The Admission Committee's "holistic" approach could as easily be weighted toward kids west and south of the Acela corridor as not. Recent admissions statistics indicate that 49% of the freshman class comes from outside the Acela corridor, while 12% are international. Given the population and application patterns in the US 37% from the Acela corridor doesn't seem unreasonable.
@McCullough I'd like to know where you get your numbers. Harvard says that 50% of its students receive scholarships and 20% of the kids pay nothing Harvard's payment policy at the moment is that families with income below $65,000 pay nothing; families with incomes between $65,000 and $150,000 pay 10% of income. The NYT reported in 2017 that the MEDIAN income for a Harvard family was $168,800 and 67% come from families who made $110.000 (guys working on oil rigs in ND are making that kind of money at the moment.)- not 70% over $200,000. Admission to Harvard is "need blind" in theory, I am not sure that is completely possible in practice.
@Bob Loblaw No, Harvard's holistic method would not be thrown out in business. In fact it is very little different from how employment choices are made. You start with a resume and you winnow out those who you don't think will fit - for any number of reasons. Then you have an interview process where you gauge the candidates on any number of objective and subjective criteria and then you winnow out the finalists, do what ever research you need on them, perhaps reinterview, then make an offer to the candidate of your choice. Your entire process is "holistic" just like Harvard's admissions committee.
Athletes are tagged by the coaches during the admissions process. The Ivy League does not award athletic scholarships.
The POINT comes down to simply this: are we going to continue to discriminate in admissions based on race/ethnicity or are we going to stop discriminating in admissions based on race/ethnicity. Regardless of the Admissions Committee has done it is time to stop discriminating on the basis of race/ethnicity.
One of my dear friends went to Harvard Undergrad and is Japanese American. Grandmother was in a WWII internment camp.
Another friend followed the formula and could not get into Princeton undergrad, his first choice, but did get into Dartmouth. I don't know anyone who followed the formula and couldn't get into a Ivy League.
There's no guarantee to get into a particular Ivy League. You might not get Princeton, but get into Yale. Apply to a lot of schools in the League if you've got your heart set on it.
who made $110.000 or more
I think, Michael K, that she got a need-based scholarship and played tennis. Admission may have been prefaced on joining the tennis team but the Ivies do not offer athletic scholarships.
No, but I think the scholarship was much less than 100%.
I know her parents and they won a winery in the Napa Valley.
They OWN a winery, not "won."
That was a while ago. The daughter, as I recall, is the same age as my middle daughter who will be 38 next October 30.
Example of one person I knew who got into Yale:
1) top grades, top classes, SAT, top school blah blah --- this is the minimum. It's not what you need to get admitted.
2) Won a state-wide science competition.
3) Lead actor in school play.
5) Water polo & I think he was on the lacrosse team.
Applications need
Athletic component
Arts
evidence of academic achievements aside from course work & SAT, Science, Debate, something interesting.
and interesting hobby or volunteer work.
In 1968 I was offered a full ride to Williams College with the understanding that I would play football. It was not called a football scholarship because Williams technically did not offer sports scholarships.
Are we talking yellow (Pacific) Asians or brown (India) Asians or a mix?
Then there are the Arab, Turk, and Persian Asians.
When I was in prep school in the 70's, class rank became an obsession for many because we thought it was more important than it was. There were only 60 in the class, and everyone but one went somewhere (#58 went to USNA and nuclear power school like his father). The 3-4 Ivies were legacies, too. Ten of the class went to UVA.
There was one black guy of Caribbean parents, no Asians or Hispanics, many military brats. This was before No Va went thoroughly multi-cultural, and the Vietnamese were still poor and ghettoized.
Now the school is really expensive, coed, proudly multi-racial, and PC, so they have to do a "volunteer" service project to graduate.
Khe San,
Got my Harvard numbers mixed up with another Ivy League school. Looks like median income is $168,000 (about 3 times national median).
15% of students come from the top 1% of household income while 20% come from bottom 20% of income. So the poor slightly outnumber the super-rich. This is considered Diversity?
53% come from the top 10% in income.
I’d still say this is not an economically diverse place. But not as much a rich kid’s school as Brown. So kudos to Harvard for their strong commitment to social equality.
@mccullough That top 15% helps to pay for the bottom 20%. Frankly, I find it difficult to understand how anyone can afford today's college costs.
Frankly, I find it difficult to understand how anyone can afford today's college costs.
Right after the turn of the millennium it was already pretty much the case that one could only afford college if (1) your parents were were well off, or (2) your parents were very poor, or (3) you were a good athlete. It's only gotten worse.
Harvard, Princeton, Yale have built large endowments. Students from lower and middle class families can receive generous tuition funding. In many cases, better grants and tuition funding then the same student would receive at a less prestigious school.
two schools with very wealthy families are Vanderbilt and Southern Methodist University.
In-state tuition & fees costs in CA run around $15K/annum. In State schools its about @$8-9K.
Add dorms/apartment fees, and it can get bad, depending on the location. The UC's and at least some of the State's force a year or two of dorm living. Assume @20K at UCLA and almost as bad for some of the State's.
Many private schools and neighboring state systems make deals to partially equalize prices. You CAN go to Harvey Mudd for tuition of $25K/annum.
A lot of the private school tuitions are "list" prices.
"Admissions people know the top public & private schools in the USA. The kid should be in one of those schools."
Or homeschool. (With the caveat that you must take advantage of it.)
Interestingly, I've been hearing a lot of negative feedback from people who went to top schools lately. Going to the "best" school one can get into might not be the best idea.
Bob, in response to your post at 6:51 PM, I was quoting Good Will Hunting. I don't disagree with the notion of added value that you mention, though.
Khesanh 0802: No, Harvard's holistic method would not be thrown out in business. In fact it is very little different from how employment choices are made. You start with a resume and you winnow out those who you don't think will fit - for any number of reasons.
I guess you haven't been part of a hiring process in awhile. Or maybe you just didn't get caught. Let me introduce you to the concept of "disparate impact" as actionable proof of bias.
Khesanh: how large is the foreign student population at Harvard? We, the taxpayers, subsidize every single school that benefits from a nonprofit status and we allow them to become absurdly fat and happy by subsidizing student loans, not to menrio grants. Yet, increasingly, schools take 10% of their students from overseas to line their pockets. This issue goes to the heart of other admissions issues.
Virtually every problem with academia could be less of a problem with less subsidizing. Even third tier community colleges waste ungodly amounts of money on garbage like six figure diversity directors and endless student activities. I once had to teach Montesquieu while shouting to be heard over a drumming circle run by this creepy aged dredlocked white woman. I later found out she received more money to make noise for a day than I recwived to teach an entire semester of what used to be called Western Civ.
It was perfect. As a metaphor.
Khesanh: @Bob Loblaw No, Harvard's holistic method would not be thrown out in business. In fact it is very little different from how employment choices are made. You start with a resume and you winnow out those who you don't think will fit - for any number of reasons. Then you have an interview process where you gauge the candidates on any number of objective and subjective criteria and then you winnow out the finalists, do what ever research you need on them, perhaps reinterview, then make an offer to the candidate of your choice. Your entire process is "holistic" just like Harvard's admissions committee.
Yes, that is what companies do. And when what they do - "winnow[ing] out those who [they] don't think will fit" - results in unapproved forms of racial "disparate impact", the gummint/SJW orgs/etc start sticking their noses in and suing/fining/regulating/mobbing/etc them. Based on rules made up by the great and good, of which "Harvard" is a significant representative. Because they've arrogated to themselves the right to dictate to everybody else how everybody else shall or shall not be allowed to "winnow".
I don't know why this obvious point keeps eluding you, but I'm sure it's not because you don't know what expressions like "sauce for the goose", "what goes around comes around", and "hoist by their own petard" mean. You're being willfully obtuse about it for some reason.
@Tina Trent Harvard has 12+% students they rate as "international". I will bet that those kids are paying the full bolt. Personally I disagreed when Harvard decreed that it was going to expand its international student body. I think that was a basic provincial reaction. Given the way the world works today the policy is probably correct, but I still don't like it. I don't disagree that Federal funds and the pressures they bring distort what colleges/universities do, nor do I disagree that there are way too many administrators and activity directors than is healthy - morally or financially, nor can I disagree that many curricula have gotten out of control. After all I am an old curmudgeon and believe strongly, as Sheldon does, that change is bad!
@Bob Loblaw It has been a while since I hired anyone, but I will bet that the process today, in private industry,is just as subjective as it was when I was hiring. The corporation may have different/rules/ policies than it did then, but within those guidelines every hiring is subjective. In the tech field that may not be true where they may feel comfortable hiring on test scores alone - but I'll bet even there you don't get to take the test unless someone liked the looks of your resume. Would you hire someone without even looking at their resume and comparing it against other candidates?
@Angel Dyne I don't know how many times or how many ways I can say that I am rooting for the Asians! My primary reason - and I have said this innumerable times as well - is that I want to experience the schadenfreude of Harvard (and all the Ivies) living by rules that they have been more than happy to advocate for the rest of us. In addition,if I had the power I would close the Kennedy School of Government which I think has done nothing but deepen the Swamp.
I also feel very strongly that it is well beyond time to stop discriminating by race/ethnicity.
All I have tried to do in my comments is to make sure that where Harvard is concerned - admissions, financial aid, etc. - we are dealing with today's facts not yesterday's rumors or biases.
@AngelDyne I am going to repeat this and bold it because I enjoy your comments and don't want you to misinterpret how I feel about the admissions case.
@Angel Dyne I don't know how many times or how many ways I can say that I am rooting for the Asians! My primary reason - and I have said this innumerable times as well - is that I want to experience the schadenfreude of Harvard (and all the Ivies) living by rules that they have been more than happy to advocate for the rest of us.
The Godfather said...
BTW you ought to see “Crazy Rich Asians” if you haven’t yet. The movie portrays people who seem to get on fine without a Harvard degree.
******************
My Harvard post-doc DIL saw it, and said it was terrible, filled with "corny" jokes and dialog.
It's about the networking. You're rubbing elbows with people who are going to be CEOs and Senators and Generals. The favors they can trade are worth millions.
********************
Yeah! And that's what an "education" is all about, baby!
Networking! and Favors worth millions!
We are well and truly FUCKED if this is what a Harvard education is "worth".
An Ivy League education, like being at one of the service academies, is a great way to meet people who are going to be "going places" in their chosen profession. Going to the U for people who stay in MN or stay in WI is really little different from that. That's part of the college experience: making acquaintance with potentially successful people who you may connect with again in later life. In fact I would bet that the networking of state university graduates is much more prevalent than from the Ivies.
BTW If, as a student, you wish to get a good education while in Cambridge you can learn from some of the finest minds in their fields. One may not agree with their politics, but that doesn't mean that they don't know what they are talking about in their field. I wasn't the most ambitious student there but I was able to take a course from Henry Kissinger and a couple from James Q. Wilson while there.
Khesanh:
@Angel Dyne I don't know how many times or how many ways I can say that I am rooting for the Asians!
@Bob Loblaw It has been a while since I hired anyone, but I will bet that the process today, in private industry,is just as subjective as it was when I was hiring.
I don't know how many times or in how many ways people can try to explain that you're missing what seems to them to be a very obvious point. (For my part, I'm really at a loss to understand how you interpret "I really don't care if they discriminate against Asians, or admit less-qualified blacks or Hispanics over better-qualified whites and Asians" as "rooting for the Asians".)
At any rate, I always enjoy your comments, too. Every now and again we're bound to run into a "not understanding and talking past each other" impasse.
It's all good.
Did I ever say this: "I really don't care if they discriminate against Asians, or admit less-qualified blacks or Hispanics over better-qualified whites and Asians"? I very much doubt it. I knew that Harvard has always admitted a cross section of talents and financial abilities, but as far as Blacks and Hispanics were concerned I always thought that the "whites" were paying the price and that admission of most of those you might classify as less qualified was worth the price to begin to develop a leadership group in those ethnicities. I had no idea that Harvard was actively discriminating against the Asian American applicants until the suit was filed and the discrimination became clear.
That I think the Admissions Committee has done an excellent job doesn't mean that I think they should continue to be allowed to continue as they have been. The time has come to establish a non-race/ethnicity based standard for admissions to all colleges not just Harvard. Whatever new non-discriminatory policy they are forced to come up with - which, I imagine, will include legacies and other special categories as well - will be incredibly disruptive to Harvard as it has been in the modern era, but I think it needs to happen and let the chips fall where they may. As you hint that will likely depress the admissions rates for all other special interest groups (and there will be a lot of screaming), but that, to me is a price worth paying to stop race/ethnic discrimination. Certainly all the Ivies will have to conform to whatever Harvard is forced to do since they all , very quietly, coordinate their minority admissions practices.
If you think hiring in private industry is not subjective then I think you are living in a bit of a dream world. The universe of candidates may have changed, and the overall hiring requirements may have changed (think diversity) but within whatever group has to be favored at the moment the selection is made on subjective as well as objective criteria. One is not required to hire the first woman, black, white, Asian, Hispanic who sends in a resume. One makes a selection based on need and fit within whatever favored group is being interviewed at the moment. That's what I mean when I say the ultimate hire is based on subjective criteria. A simple though odd example is the NFL. If a team needs a right tackle they are not going to hire a running back because he's the first guy through the door, and they are not going to hire a guy who has been out of the league for a year because his agent was the first to contact the team. The team has some objective and subjective criteria based on need and fit that it will use when making its hiring decision.
@Khesanh ... so are Asians right tackles or running backs?
@Art Most that have attended Harvard have been running backs or defensive backs. Not many right tackles; most of them come from Guam and that is not considered Asian American as far as I know.
Khesanh: Did I ever say this: "I really don't care if they discriminate against Asians, or admit less-qualified blacks or Hispanics over better-qualified whites and Asians"?
No, *I* said that. In a post in this thread, responding to you. Why on earth would I be complaining about how you interpreted your own comments?
I think we've reached the point of no return in the "talking past each other" game.
Though I can say that, up to now, I actually bothered to read through people's posts before responding to them. Unlike, apparently, you.
Except for this one. I didn't bother reading past the quoted sentence of yours that I responded to.
Thanks, Khesahn
@Kheshan: I would have loved to take a class with James Q. Wilson.
Once upon a time, academicians worked with police to prevent crime, instead of working with criminals to criminalize policing.
Can anyone explain what 'well rounded' means in the context of 2018 identity politics & university admissions? Does it mean working at a heroin injection site during the summer?
@AngelDyne Okay I've got it now. Sorry. Seems to me we are on the same wave length. We agree that it is time for the admissions committee to get out of the race/ethnic quota business.
I reiterate thatI have been "rooting" for the Asians since they submitted their suit. Besides disliking the leftward slant of the faculty of Arts and Sciences I abhor the new Final Club policy as curtailing freedom of association and a smoke screen for the faculty's failure to police "sexual" conduct in the Houses. As a result I was primed to jump on the Asian-American bandwagon.
As far as flyover kids I repeat: "Recent admissions statistics indicate that 49% of the freshman class comes from outside the Acela corridor, while 12% are international. Given the population and application patterns in the US 37% from the Acela corridor doesn't seem unreasonable." In engineering the racial/ethnic and international composition someone ends up suffering. Like you I would suspect that the flyover kids might be in that category. I will say again that a new admissions paradigm will be tremendously disruptive for the college and I suspect that there are going to be a lot of surprise oxen that get gored.
@Tina Trent I believe that the classes I took from James Q Wilson were among the best I took at the College. He was a terrific teacher.
I should add that this was very early in Wilson's career.
@Angel Dyne In my own defense I did not realize that you were referring to an early comment. I had gotten so entangled in the demographics of the classes and other factual matters that I lost track. My 8:00 was in answer to your 7:48 where I was trying to assure you that I believe schools/faculties like Harvard's are due a comeuppance for trying to dictate to us how we live. Then our conversation apparently went off the rails!
Khesanh: My 8:00 was in answer to your 7:48 where I was trying to assure you that I believe schools/faculties like Harvard's are due a comeuppance for trying to dictate to us how we live. Then our conversation apparently went off the rails!
Yes, it did, lol! (Whoever heard of such a thing happening on the internet?)
Here's to a nice on-the-rails Labor Day weekend for everybody...
@Khesanh:
James Q Wilson participated in a very important conference on the riots and terrorism perpetrated by Sixties radicals. It was recorded in one of those odd touchstone books that could never, ever be replicated today.
The academicians were against the rioters, in case it isn't clear.
It's like the wrecked Easter Island statues, we are so far and reduced from such sane and ordinarily noble times.
Post a Comment