Day 170 of the Lower Puna Eruption.*************
I've long been following the problems Harvard has been having with admission discrimination, and posted several times on this topic. Here are just two:
I was never interested in going to an Ivy League school and don't remember why I even applied to Stanford. Further, I've long wandered why Stanford accepted me into its freshman class. I was totally unprepared, as can best be imagined when I actually wondered whether I was coming to a junior college when I glanced at that sign to the left. They saw something in me that even I did not appreciate, and still don't. However, surviving four years in an environment where I was intellectually, financially and socially inferior gave me a whole lot of confidence after graduation.
Why is Harvard having admission problems? California institutions, with one glaring example, tend to accept students mostly on national test scores. According to Forbes, 43% of Harvard's class of 2013 should have been Asians. They typically accept half that percentage, and this past year had a freshman class 22.2% of Asians. Cal Tech? 45%. This percentage could well, actually, be higher.
However, Stanford's class of 2020 only had 22.9% Asians and the overall undergraduate enrollment is 21%. In 1958 I was the only Japanese I knew, although there were several (6?) Chinese. Zero African Americans. Back to today, worse yet, Harvard recently admitted 14.6% Blacks, Stanford...3.8%.
So why is Harvard in trouble and not Stanford? Or, perhaps more specifically, why aren't private universities allowed to do whatever it wants? The short answer is the Civil Rights of 1964, which made it illegal to discriminate against students and college applicants on the basis of race or gender. If a university, public or private, is convicted of discrimination, it cannot qualify for federal funds.
Interestingly enough Republicans and this White House in particular have a totally different motivation. Conservatives have historically complained that equal rights are compromising constitutional rights. Whites would not be getting their fair share if African Americans and Hispanics are given special privileges because of their economic and civil status.
A coalition of more than 60 Asian-American organizations filed the complaint against Harvard in 2015, but this suit was dismissed to first hear the 2014 Students for Fair Admission application. This becomes particularly confusing when you learn that Edward Blum is coordinating this effort, a Jewish conservative who has no legal background. He is a member of the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank which I have tangled with in the past. He has shepherded six cases reaching the Supreme Court, which ruled in his favor four times.
Ultimately, this case will be reviewed by the Supreme Court, and it is unclear what it will do, for while the addition of Brett Kavanaugh has solidified its conservative status, I rather doubt they would want the Ivy League Schools, and Stanford, to have an Asian enrollment approaching 50%. This is a very complicated issue of what is right and fair.
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