Dozens of popular higher-ed organizations have come out in support of affirmative action policies as Harvard prepares to go defend itself in court over its race-based admissions practices.
In 2014, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. filed suit against the elite university, claiming that it engaged “in intentional discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity.”
Specifically, the group suggested in its suit that Harvard specifically discriminated against Asian-Americans, saying on Monday that there is “powerful evidence” of such behavior, according to the Washington Post. Some have gone so far as to call Harvard’s admissions system racist.
“These discriminatory policies in college admissions are expressly forbidden by the Fourteenth Amendment and federal civil rights laws,” Students for Fair Admissions states on its website, arguing that the university is also in violation of the “strict scrutiny” standards set by the Supreme Court case of Fisher v. University of Texas.
The case sparked increased attention in July when the Trump administration announced that it was rescinding seven affirmative action guidelines set during the Obama era.
According to POLITICO, the Justice Department referred to the guidelines as “unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper.”
Academia is fighting back, though, with more than 35 higher-ed organizations filing a July 30 amicus brief in support of Harvard, including the American Association of University Professors and the American Council on Education.
“The lawsuit is nothing more than the first step in a backdoor attempt to achieve the sweeping relief sought — and denied — in Fisher v. University of Texas: the end of the consideration of race in college admissions and the restriction of a university’s ability to assemble a diverse student body,” the amicus brief contends. It goes on to assert that the court should reject this “latest attempt to eliminate the narrowly tailored use of race for college admissions.”
Both sides of the argument cite admissions data to make their respective cases, though the amicus brief refers to a survey of Princeton University in responding to claims of discrimination against Asian-Americans.
“Similarly, a thorough government compliance review showed that Princeton University ‘frequently’ accepts ‘applicants from Asian backgrounds with grades and test scores lower than rejected non-Asian applicants,” it notes, stating that “admissions decisions therefore cannot be reduced to a mathematical formula in which courts can look for a binary outcome based on one or a handful of characteristics alone.”
In its statement, the American Association of University Professors specifically calls out Edward Blum, founder of Students for Fair Admissions, whom it calls an “anti-affirmative action activist.”
The case is set to go to trial in a Boston federal court in October.
[Also read: Asians speak up about affirmative action’s failures]
Anthony Gockowski (@AGockowski) is a Minnesota-based journalist and a former editor for Campus Reform. He was previously a fellow for The Daily Caller.
