Why would they keep it secret? To stop others from gaming the system or because the system can't be gamed since its biased from the start?
They created set of personality criteria for admissions. The criteria was entirely subjective, things like 'positive personality', and 'likability'. Then gave Asians consistently low scores on theses subjective criteria. And then weighed the criteria high enough to knock them out of positions which they would have otherwise qualified for if the admissions was based on standard academic criteria.
Bias and racism is predictable when you choose to abandon Meritocracy based on objective measurable criteria.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...
Take test scores - just having the right parents will push your sores up on average.
Having better performance regular ties into wealth and upbringing. No surprise then that the dominant economic group will hold an advantage is such tests.
The damned intertwined nature of all these issues is what makes it hard to set up an actual objective measure. Which then brings us back to subjective decision making.
'just having the right parents will push your sores up on average'
That has little to do with the objectivity or subjectivity of the test. There can be a wide variation of social development between racial groups, economic classes, religious communities, geographic regions etc. Not to mention individual IQ and ability.
A standardized test in say, mathematics is objective. The same tests that demonstrate competency are administered all over the world in every country and culture in the world. You can objectively determine the level of ability of any given student regardless of race or culture.
To simply say that because disparity exist we should therefor abandon standards and objective criteria in favor of a set of morphological corrective fictions that look good on paper but do nothing to fix the disparity is diminishing for everyone.
The problems are simply much harder and more complicated then peoples egos will let them admit. Its very easy to propose a grand theory that fixes all the problem of the world quickly and completely.
You actually can set up objective criteria for entry to a college. That some groups perform better than others in no way means they are not objective.
The unwillingness to accept the possibility that objective criteria might not result in equal outcomes from all groups is the problem. The rabbit hole of "that can't be objective because it challenges my assumption that all groups would perform equally" only ends in bad places.
And if that's the case, they should be comfortable saying openly that they're intentionally discriminating against Asian Americans for the good of the diversity of the student body.
If they followed the pure merit route it would be exactly like it is today in other countries - people would over prepare for the exams and entrance will depend on who got 0.05% more than another person.
That’s the main draw of the American system- these schools long ago saw that there would be a problem because of baked in bias and took steps to equalize it while keeping their own interests constant.
And let’s not ignore the raw ability of the people who are aiming for Harvard - if a candidate for Harvard doesn’t get in, their safety school is still the first choice of a massive chunk of college applicants.m
Ps: in this sub thread I was not specifically talking about diversity; but it is an argument I do make and it is also a short throw from where my previous comment in this thread.
Meritocracies aren't purely objective, either. Someone has to come up with the metrics, and someone has to decide whether someone meets those metrics. And not every metric that would be needed would be something that can be easily and objectively quantified.
It looks pretty bad for them.
Exposing this however would inevitably require that they do, strictly, define their terms and conditions, which may lead to worse outcomes, if its not easy to produce non-gameable rules, or rules that actually match successful reviewer judgement.