A civil rights group is challenging legacy admissions at Harvard University
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Im not sure this will ultimately be an effective argument. You cant favor people for being a certain race. But you can favor people for other reasons, which may result in more people of a certain race. That doesnt violate the Civil Rights Act. You dont have to meet racial quotas and in fact trying to do so will likely put you on the wrong side of the law (see the recent affirmative action case).
The argument seems to be that legacy admissions are wrong because they end up favoring white people which violates the Civil Rights Act. But it’s not actually discrimination by race. Any method of choosing will have imbalanced results, unless you do the one thing you CANT do and choose by race.
The article doesnt make any claims that legacy admissions are in and of itself illegal. Im just not sure what law legacy admissions break.
Also, a popular feeling that it’s unfair is irrelevant. Thats a job for congress.
The Supreme Court doesn’t seem to think so.
In any case its the Supreme Court”s case to rule on what the law says. They cant just conclude legacy admissions are unlawful because they are bad. Congress can.
Edit: (no reply button below) please clarify what you don’t understand. I dont see any disagreement between us despite your oppositional stance and fear of bigotry.
I wonder what would cause a university to both pursue affirmative action to meet diversity quotas while also actively trying to discriminate against minorities via legacy admissions.
As a prereq for voting. But getting accepted into a university isnt a right. And obviously universities discriminate against the illiterate.
That "Federal financial assistance" part puts it in scope. And "program or activity" specifically includes "(2)(A) a college, university, or other postsecondary institution".
I don’t disagree. So what? This has nothing to do with literacy tests. Are you suggesting legacy admissions discriminate by race? As I mentioned there is an unequal outcome but equal outcomes are not required.
Other than adoptive children, people tend to be of the same race as their parents. How is it not racial discrimination?
I mentioned literacy tests as the restrictions put on them by the civil rights act are an illustrative example of the act calling out indirect discrimination. I understand they aren't directly related to college admissions.
I could have used a contrived example. Like how height requirements could discriminate against women. But that's not mentioned in the act, while literacy tests are...so it's a better and more relevant example.
It was in reply to this:
"But you can favor people for other reasons, which may result in more people of a certain race. That doesnt violate the Civil Rights Act."
Again, an example where that's not true. In that case "literacy tests" for voting were restricted, even through it's "other reasons" and indirect. The literacy tests have, as you say, "unequal outcomes". I'm not 100% convinced that legacy admissions would fall into the same category. But, I imagine many people are.
In other words, I brought up the literacy tests as an example of something that contradicts your assertion, which I read as something like "only clear and direct discrimination is in scope for the civil rights act".
You seriously don't see how preferring children of alumni (other than edge cases like adoptive children) isn't institutionalized racism by proxy?
It seems unlikely that Harvard are secretly discriminating against minorities with their legacy admissions program. There seems to be a consensus that if admissions was left to their own they'd be trying to filter out Whites & Asians. So it seems a bit far-fetched to claim that might be an indirect attack against the very people Harvard were just trying to advantage. They're clearly discriminating based on social standing, money and power.
I agree, though it's also likely they protect and promote their legacy admissions because it drives a lot of alumni funding. I don't think there needs to be proven deliberate intent to discriminate for a lawsuit to succeed. Lots of ADA lawsuits, for example, aren't about intent.
No, that is mainly the point of the civil rights act.EEOCs entire purpose is to sue/prosecute orgs that discriminate without being direct about it. If you only interview white sounding names for example, there is no proof of direct discrimination or if a policy you have has the effect of excluding a protected class.
The bar for proving malice, as with all things legal is if a "reasonable person" can recognize the indirect effect of those actions as harming protected people because then intent to discriminate can be proven.
Having unequal outcomes doesnt mean your are discriminating.
If admission to a college is based on a standardized test that is administered only on Sunday mornings, no one is going to buy that it is not designed to discriminate against devout Christians. It doesn't matter if the college swears up and down that that's the only day they have proctors or testing sites available. You don't have to say or even imply you're doing it for an illegal reason.
Unless there's a legitimate reason for applying whatever criteria you choose to apply, you have to check whether they're a proxy for a protected class. This definitely applies to hiring. I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to college admissions. Does having a parent who studied at Harvard better qualify a student to study there?
PDF - http://lawyersforcivilrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/...
Their legal argument starts on p17 of the PDF and across pages 17 and 18 it cites Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and points to 34 CFR §100.3(b)(2) which states universities in receipt of federal student funds:
> may not, directly or through contractual or other arrangements, utilize criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, or national origin, or have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program as respect individuals of a particular race, color, or national origin [1]
The general rule across most jursidictions is you can have a test for employment, admissions etc. that leads to a disparate impact - e.g. a tough physical fitness test that it is harder for women to pass than men - but if that can't be justified as relevant to the job or serving a valid role for the organisation, that's a problem.
To use the fitness test example, it's highly likely that the Marines applying such a test to decide who gets to train for special forces could justify such a test, but rather less likely if you're a company deciding on who to hire to write software or adminster databases or whatever.
The argument made in the complaint is that the justifications for legacy admissions policies don't work, and without a satisfactory justification, it's a breach of Title VI.
[1] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-34/subtitle-B/chapter-I/p...
I guess you might be able to argue legacy admissions might be more fit for the job (expectations, culture fit, etc) but that seems weaker and frankly not the real reason for Harvard admitting so many legacies.
I don't know where you got that idea from but it's not true. There's plenty of precedent that using a proxy for a protected class to discriminate violates the CRA.
If elite institutions have favored people based on a protected class in the past, then preferring their children is likely to perpetuate that same discrimination in many cases (religion, race, ethnicity) that are inherited or inculcated. Obviously not for others (gender, sexual orientation, veteran status) that aren't inherited.
I saw that you were supportive of ending affirmative action. This is basically the same thing.
You’re assuming unequal outcomes means there is something being used as a proxy for race.
In a merit based system you would take the best students and judge by grades and test scores. This would have unequal outcomes.
I think I compete agree with this.
> Harvard has had discriminatory admissions criteria in the past. Many axes of discrimination are inherited. Ergo preferring children of Harvard alumni causes that same discrimination, but with a new name ("legacy admission").
But are you saying legacy admission are unfair or illegal? “Discriminatory” admissions practices are not necessarily illegal (by gender) nor even bad (by grades).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandfather_clause#Southern_Un...
There are also parallels to BFOQ's in other peer nations.
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/columnists/2022/11/03...
"According to research from Princeton University, students who identify as Asian must score 140 points higher on the SAT than whites and 450 points higher than Blacks to have the same chance of admission to private colleges."
99.9% of white people do not have a chance of getting in this way. it does not help a white kid with high test scores from a working class family with no elite connections. so the overwhelming majority of whites are competing for an even tinier sliver of places than it might appear, after the AA/legacy/athlete quotas are subtracted.
if you got rid of legacy admissions the white student population at top schools might shrink a little (or probably grow after AA is also abolished), but would become far more representative of the country as a whole. it would actually become more "diverse", which I am told is a good thing. there would be more square-headed midwesterners and appalachian scotch-irish, and fewer degenerate WASP scions.
So if they can only admit 1000 students, the the list of applicants must be sorted by SAT/ACT/GPA first. Then student essays which should not identify the student's economic status or class and ethnic backgrounds or any identifiers such as their names having been removed from the essay, should be graded and sorted then. At this point, they have the top candidates without considering any individually biasing information. Now, they can use protected group status such as race and gender as well as legacy admission status, but not for additional sorting, only as a tie-breaker. So if 500 all have perfect scores, 500 have 9/10 on essay and perfect everything else and 500 have 9/10 on essay and one of SAT,ACT,GPA then the first 500 are automatically accepted , and legacy/minority status scoring would be applied for the rest without humans looking at individual identifiers or legacy/minority status. So a legacy/minority person of perfect everything except essay and 9/10 SAT score would be ahead of a non-minority/non-legacy person with perfect everything except essay.
Essentially, I am against both legacy and minority status compensating for lack of academic accomplishment but I am not against either factors being used as conditions of last resort. I am fine with harvard accepting all legacy white male students that all scored perfectly on essays,SAT,ACT and GPA.pure meritocracy is a joke but so is having anything trump someone's achievements.
but why would someone being less rich also imply they're more able? And why would someone richer not be capable just as much?
It's just another form of discrimination - except that it feels justified, because it came from the axiom that legacy admissions must be worse for merit.
Say you have some criteria like "potential future donor" and "really smart". They might not be connected in the general population, but when you select on the total donor+smart, such that only people with a high combined score are admitted, you get a correlation among the admitted population.
It's not hard to see why: either you have loads of money and thus only need a little smarts, or you have lots of smart and need minimal money.
The less rich person must be able to get in. The more rich person doesn't have to be able to get in. This means that the average rich person that got in is less able than the average less-rich person. Where do you disagree with this logic?
America would be much better off preventing this at source...
Neither education nor media seem to me an obvious public good, unlike, say, clean air. Private actors should definitely be allowed to teach or publish news.
And Harvard et al. aren't really a monopoly in any sense. There is a shitton of other universities across the US. The Ivies are prestigious, yes, but logically, you can't have a shitton of prestigious institutions.
It’s a private institution as you say, but it’s a private institution that benefits from a particular tax status in exchange for serving the public good.
TIL that public good has a specific meaning similar to that: