If it is unconstitutional to discriminate against Asians, what should Harvard do?

by philg

“Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Affirmative Action Win Justice Dept. Support” (nytimes) is kind of interesting for the reader comments. Now that Trump is against Harvard, most readers are confident that Harvard is in the right (see Inside Higher Ed for some data on just how much higher Asians have to score in order to get into Harvard, roughly 400 points higher than the most desired racial group).

Some of the readers want the current system of race-based admissions torn down in favor of family income-based. They want Harvard to give preference to children of low-income families. But if you read

the take-away is that Harvard’s best statistical chance of turning out a group of highly successful graduates is to select from children of highly successful parents (where “highly successful” need not be “rich” but probably isn’t “low income”). In other words, to preserve its prestige Harvard should actually select preferentially from high-income families and/or families where parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are highly accomplished.

How about a straight sort on standardized test results? Wouldn’t the class then be almost all folks from foreign countries? The U.S. does not have a monopoly on smart English speakers who are willing to study for a test. This would really get the NY Times readers upset. Quite a few of the comments are of the form “Asians are not creative or especially intelligent; they just cram for exams because their parents make them. Therefore a university with mostly Asian students would never be an interesting learning environment.” (I’ve noticed this attitude among elderly Hillary voters. One reason why they support an infinite expansion of U.S. government spending is that they think that the U.S. has a monopoly on creativity and therefore an entitlement to high economic growth rates. The Chinese can build stuff, but they can never invent stuff (your typical 80-year-old is apparently not aware of DJI!).)

One idea: Accept some age diversity (right now the passionate diversity advocates insist that everyone starting at Harvard be 18 or 19) and insist that anyone who wants to come to Harvard has to accomplish something in the real world. Harvard already has a lot of students coming after a gap year. So if someone is going to study English literature, that applicant needs to get some stuff published and positively reviewed. If someone is going to be a nerd, that applicant has to develop something that gets adopted and used. If someone is going to be a scientist, that applicant has to work in a lab and get the mature scientist to say “This person did useful work.” Mix that in with a minimum standardized test score and now there is a class full of people who can actually do stuff, albeit maybe the age shifts from 18-19 up to 19-21.

[Olin College of Engineering (higher median SAT score than MIT, last I checked) does something slightly related. Applicants come to the school for a weekend and work on projects so that faculty can get a sense for their real-world capability. Admission is partly based on performance during that weekend.]

Readers: What should Harvard do if the court system orders the school to tear down its race-based admissions process?

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12 thoughts on “If it is unconstitutional to discriminate against Asians, what should Harvard do?”

  1. Out of curiosity, are people whose ancestry came to the US from the Indian subcontinent considered ‘Asian’ in the US? or ‘Asian’ broadly refers just to the incredibly diverse group of peoples in East and South Asia, and their descendants in the US?

    if we ignore Europe and the Indian subcontinent ‘Asia’ is incredibly diverse, and if we add the Indian subcontinent the diversity increases. Are folks telling me that people whose ancestors came from Kerala, people whose ancestors came from Manchuria, people whose ancestors came from Sabah all tick the same diversity box, and help fulfil whatever diversity pledge as if ‘Asia’ were one small little place with a simple homogeneous population?

  2. The smoking gun is that the nebulous “personality score” assigned to Asians by admissions officers vs alumni volunteers is significantly lower, whereas other racial groups do not exhibit this phenomenon. It’s not surprising, since the personality score was invented to exclude Jews, and highly effective at it. Repurposing it to exclude Asians was trivial.

    The most charitable interpretation is that Harvard knows most of the value in a Harvard degree comes from its network, not the education itself, and that Asians-Americans are not (yet) endowed with high-value networks (unlike the children of rich Asian-Asians, or of African potentates). In this light, the Ivy Leagues’ post-war abandonment of anti Semitic quotas reflects not so much a change of heart as much as a recognition that Jewish business success meant Jewish students were now more valuable to their WASP peers.

  8. There are several issues at play: immigration, race-based college admissions, and genetic IQ. Do we really want to allow unlimited immigration of ultra-high IQ oriental girls if it means they take up every top college seat? Won’t someone think of the downtrodden native white males?!

  9. What if these elite universities admitted students based on merit, which would include measures of intelligence, integrity, values, creativity, and leadership ability?

  10. @GC: Would you be comfortable with that plan if the Asians, as a group, scored dramatically lower on creativity and leadership ability?

  11. Apparently, there is more than one anon here, duh!

    > Do we really want to allow unlimited immigration of ultra-high IQ oriental girls if it means they take up every top college seat?

    Why not? Is it not possible to have more than one elite college? Doesn’t it all depend on who you are planning to educate.

    Harvard educates future leaders (gentlemen and occasionally gentleWOmen).
    Stanford educates future visionaries.
    Caltech educates future engineers.
    Florida State educates future ballplayers.

  12. Some supporters of Harvard’s position portray Asian applicants’ interests as being opposed to those of non-Asian minority applicants. However, this isn’t true. If next year 30% of the class were Asian, the vast majority of “lost spots” would those of white students. Therefore it’s hard to understand why this policy isn’t seen as strictly worse than other affirmative action policies. It is literally a policy to benefit whites over Asians, for no other reason than their race.

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