Harvard’s new president, Lawrence Bacow, says there is no evidence in the “hundreds of thousands” of court documents from an ongoing lawsuit to suggest Harvard admissions has engaged in race-based discrimination.
“I really don’t want to get into the details of the lawsuit, but there have been hundreds of thousands of documents that have been pored through at this point. There is not a single one which suggests that there is a policy to discriminate against anybody or to hold one group to a different standard than anybody else,” Bacow said in an interview with with Radio Boston on WBUR 90.9.
Bacow on Sunday became the 29th president of Harvard University, succeeding Drew Faust, who held the position for 11 years as the university’s first female president. The administrative change comes during a federal lawsuit that on whether the university discriminates against Asian-Americans. A June 15 report, for example, showed that Harvard admissions consistently rated Asian-Americans “lower on traits like ‘positive personality,’ likability, courage, kindness and being ‘widely respected,'” according to the New York Times.
Bacow dismissed the report.
“That’s an allegation which, in fact, I think we would dispute,” he said. “And we believe that the facts established at trial will prove otherwise.”
Bacow explained that there are many more factors beyond test scores that determine which students will flourish at a university. He emphasized the need for students of various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, geographical locations, and fields of study. An internal Harvard University review obtained by the plaintiff in the lawsuit showed that although Asian-American admittance to the school hovered around 18 to 21 percent between 2014 and 2017, that number would be 43 percent if based on academics alone.
When asked about Harvard’s discrimination against Jewish students based on personality traits in the 1920s and 30s, Bacow acknowledged “there was an explicit policy articulated by one of my predecessors to do that,” adding that “nobody has suggested that we’re trying to keep out any ethnic group out of Harvard. To the contrary.” He noted that the last two affirmative action cases that have gone to the Supreme Court have “specifically cited our holistic admissions policies.”
Bacow said the admissions officers are a group of 40 people that includes a “fair number” of Asian-American admissions officers.
The case is slated for an October trial.
