Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

Ok, can someone explain to me if this distinction even matters effectively? If every group is getting a bonus and one group is not doesn't that effectively mean that one group is being penalized?

Sounds like a classic example of double effect[1] to me: Harvard intends a good end (alleviating historical injustices), applies a means that is not in-itself objectionable (AA), and does not intend the bad end (that some otherwise-qualified students have a reduced chance of getting in).

That's a moral argument and not a legal one, but my intuition is that the intent of their admissions program and its necessary connection to the means (AA) will play a central role in their defense. Fisher II v. UT[2] was decided on similar grounds.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher_v._University_of_Texas_...

I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness.

Maybe the right thing to do would be to completely cut subsidies if they decide to have a non-public selection process.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

Oddly enough, Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell justified the policy as a way to avoid antisemitism, reasoning that too many admitted Jews could provoke antisemitic sentiment. This was the same President Lowell who tried but failed to impose segregation on students. (“We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.”) [1]

Still, as Judge Burroughs has pointed out, the ugly origins aren’t necessarily relevant to the current impact. [2] It will be interesting to see how well Harvard’s “diverse student body” argument holds up to scrutiny.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell

[2]: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harva...

It’s not like they aren’t already considering a lot of factors besides some kind of test metric.

But more seriously, grades do not correlate across schools in the slightest. The rigor of a public school in rural Kansas vs. a private school in NY could be wildly different. AP scores and SATs correlate well (same test for everyone that takes it), but normal grades do not

And good grades are already a prerequisite for admission, you generally need to averaging an A- average GPA to be competitive. schools want to see that you can balance a ton of things on your plate well (or your parents can afford to send you to classes/camps) rather than just optimize for a 5.0 GPA

Giving an explicit formula for scoring, along with a required score, has historically been the same as letting everyone in, because schools, over time, will always "teach to the test" so to speak.

Applicants are graded 1 - 6, so an applicant getting 'tipped' doesn't necessarily bump their score. The way I've seen it work elsewhere is just that applicants who are flagged get their entire applications reviewed, so that way someone actually reads the essays instead of just tossing it after spending 30 seconds looking at the grades and SATs.

Also each department is going to have its own quota, so that way the orchestra gets 10 people and the rowing team gets 10 people and the development office gets 10 people and so on. So you're really only competing with other applicants within your bucket, unless you're not in a bucket in which case it's really just lottery odds at that point.

That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that.

I'm assuming that you are looking for actual discourse on the topic. The issue of color-blindness vs. race consciousness is pretty well-trodden territory in the context of studying racism. If you google those words, you'll find plenty of literature about it. I just tried it and there are several good discussions of the topic in the first couple pages.

The short version is that colorblindness doesn't address the "rich get richer" effect, so if you want to close the gap, you're going to have to look at ways to create catch-up mechanisms.

If we are all humans and equal, why does race matter? Who cares if the humans attending harvard are all white or all asian or all black? We are humans right?

You're assuming that the default behavior is fair. That's fundamentally not true. If you're looking for the actual argument made by Harvard and "the left," then this is it: the default is unfair, and the goal is to make it fair.

Thus, the theory is that the way to get to that colorblind society is by accounting for those differences and to afford greater opportunities to historically disadvantaged groups.

On the other hand, if in the essays or interviews you get the feeling that this candidate has matured beyond his/her peers as a result of it, or if this candidate demonstrates resilience dealing with growing up this way in an extremely conservative culture, then you'd probably consider betting on this person's upward trajectory. The context is important, and I don't think the NYT article captures it.

SATs will quickly become one of the poorest indicators for success.

Your ability to break into the highest levels of many fields depends on that Harvard degree vs a public or 2nd tier private school.

Whether the law is a good idea or a bad idea as written is another question, and is up to the legislature to debate that and amend the law as needed. But courts shouldn't be in the business of rewriting laws because they had some consequences that their authors didn't intend (although in this case I suspect that the original authors actually did very much intend for this sort of thing to be illegal also, since the laws were written back in the era where being color-blind was not considered bad).

Moreover, the plaintiffs commissioned a study on the effect color blind admissions would have on the racial distribution of Harvard's undergraduate population. It should be taken with a grain of salt, as should the materials offered by the defense, and I suspect it overestimates the effect a bit, but it conforms fairly closely with anecdotal evidence I've seen and so sounds much more plausible to me than the ACLU's take.

It claims the share of black students would shrink from ~15% to ~0.9% and the share of hispanic students from ~15% to ~3%. Meanwhile, the share of white students would shrink slightly from ~37% to ~35%. The proportion of Asian students would roughly double, from ~25% to ~50%.

Again, the specific numbers might be a bit off, but it generally agrees with a lot of anecdotal evidence I've seen --- being black or Hispanic gives one a large advantage, being white is close to neutral, and being Asian is a large disadvantage.

There was a time that the ACLU would defend the right of Nazi's to march down a Jewish neighboorhood. Not because they thought that particular lawsuit would help anyone other than the Nazi's; but because they recognized the importance of establishing a legal precedent so it would be there when the "good guys" were under attack[0]. Under this old philosophy, even if the aim of the lawsuit were specifically to help whites, it should still be supported.

By supporting Harvard in this case, you are weakening the legal precedent against racism, and strengthening the legal precedent for it.

Once this precedent is established, it can be used to argue for racism against Jews (it already bears an eerie resemblance to earlier anti-semetic attempts), or gays, or liberals, or redheads.

Sure, this one case won't overturn all our legal protections overnight. But those legal protections did not spring into existence overnight. They grew up through a long sequence of court cases [1] that gradually established our rights. Those cases can be overturned in the same way, and this case is 1 step on that ladder.

[0] The ACLU also recognized the practical importance of sympathetic cases, and so would often make a strategic choice to pursue the most favorable ones, but that is a separate discussion.

[1] And legislation, and shifts in public opinion. But we are talking about a court case, so I am focusing on that aspect of the history.

They used to defend Nazis to make a point of dedication to free speech. Now they openly abandon due process if the accused is a white guy (Kavanaugh) and have recently decided to never protect a Nazi, saying some speech shouldn't be protected. Very sad to see.