Kevin Li ’19
The Students for Fair Admissions, headed by conservative civil rights activist, Edward Blum, is dangerously close to dismantling affirmative action in Harvard’s college admissions. Ironically, the affirmative action Blum is rallying against is the byproduct of John F. Kennedy’s 1961 order for affirmative action in the face of the civil rights movement. Students for Fair Admissions contends that Asian-American applicants are unlawfully discriminated against due to Harvard’s use of racial quotas and unfair personality ratings. However, for Asian-American college applicants, a better chance to go to U.S. News & World Report’s number 2 ranked national university may not be worth the dangers of removing affirmative action.
Data released from Harvard as a response to the lawsuit reveals Blum’s intentions to manipulate the public’s perception of Harvard’s admissions process. “The quota today is against Asians,” says Blum in an interview from Fox News. Yet, Harvard College released the statement, “Asian-Americans’… rate of admission has grown 29 percent over the last decade.” Evidently, the quota Blum refers to lacks statistical support, but the effect of his argument is strong nevertheless. His narrative fills discourse around the case with constant mentions of racial quotas hurting Asian-American applicants, even when they don’t exist. There’s a reason Blum’s argument seems convincing: he’s already had practice manipulating data in a previously failed crusade against affirmative action at the University of Texas.
Students for Fair Admissions does present a compelling argument, though. According to the court documents of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, “Harvard’s admissions officials assign Asian-Americans the lowest score of any racial group on the personal rating – a ‘subjective’ assessment.” In comparison, Harvard’s alumni interviewers “rate Asian-Americans, on average, at the top with respect to personal ratings.” So, in Harvard’s review process, Asian-Americans are consistently rated lower on traits such as likability and courage, while Harvard’s interviewers are not finding this disparity. Korean-American Minjee Cho ‘19 says, “I feel vulnerable to prejudice when I check the Asian box on applications.” If Students for Fair Admissions believes this is the root of Asian-American discrimination, they should be advocating against implicit bias against Asian-Americans. They should not attack institutions like affirmative action that give opportunities to disadvantaged minority groups. The evidence does not indicate Harvard’s use of the personal rating as a measure to maintain racial quotas; rather, it points to longstanding prejudice that won’t be solved by removing affirmative action.
Affirmative action is not perfect, but it is necessary for building a diverse community that reflects the real world. The misconception is that qualified applicants are ‘losing’ spots in favor of unqualified applicants based on factors like ethnicity. This is not true; all accepted applicants are more than qualified – 72.9 percent of Harvard’s Class of 2022 were in the top 2 percent of their high school class, as published by The Harvard Crimson.
In essence, Harvard wants to build a better community for education, and it’s hard to argue that diversity does not cultivate learning. Take The Episcopal Academy, for example, which obviously values admitting a diverse class to foster a better classroom environment. “My literature discussions were enriched because of the diversity of my class when we read books like Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which deals with race,” says Praneeth Alla ‘19. Amy Brotschul, Upper School French teacher, agrees, adding, “accepting the ideas of others makes students a more informed, cultivated student, which is evident in my conversation based classes.” Like Episcopal, Harvard’s efforts to build a strong class with varying perspectives means they must employ affirmative action, but affirmative action is not the root cause of the prejudice against Asian-American applicants in the application process.
For America, if the plaintiffs win the case, the dismantling of affirmative action would revert steps made towards racial equality. If the precedent is set that affirmative action results in discrimination, affirmative action as in institution could be removed altogether. Legacy applicants, Caucasians, and Asian-Americans would dominate highly reputed and selective institutions and consequently crumble the societal progress affirmative action has made. For instance, Peter Hinrich, an education economist, concludes from a meta-analysis that, “the affirmative action ban in California shifted underrepresented minority students from more selective campuses to less selective ones.”
In the future, high-achieving students at top-level schools would perpetuate generations of cyclical superiority due to the allotted resources they can recycle into their own children’s education. This has already occurred in the early twentieth century. Without affirmative action working to repair a historically instituted inequality of opportunity, America would fall back to a state of divide. Without affirmative action, women and minority workers would struggle to reach higher positions in the workplace. Affirmative action is about recognizing the equal potential in all people but also recognizing the unequal opportunity. So, to Asian-Americans, Students for Fair Admissions, and Edward Blum: is getting into Harvard really that important?