A barrage of amicus briefs was filed last month defending Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, whose use of race as a criterion in their admissions processes heads to the Supreme Court this term.
As others have noted, Harvard’s own data (as presented in the petitioner’s brief) expose an odious pattern of discrimination. An Asian American student in the top decile of the “academic index” (“a metric created by Harvard based on test scores and GPA”) has a 12.7% chance of admission, while an African American applicant has a 56.1% chance. In the seventh decile, it is a 4% versus a 41.1% chance. Asian American students consistently have the lowest chance of admission at every decile, even though their academic scores are often higher.
Anti-Asian discrimination at elite universities has a long and ugly history. In 1985, the New York Times recounted what Princeton University professor Uwe Reinhardt witnessed at a graduate school admissions committee: “[W]e came to a clearly qualified Asian-American student … and one committee member said, ‘We have enough of them.’ And someone else turned to me and said, ‘You have to admit, there are a lot.'”
There is no other word for this except “racism.”
University admissions procedures are not the same as violence, but can Asian Americans really believe Harvard President Lawrence Bacow, who stated in the wake of the horrific attack in Georgia last year that cost the lives of six Asian Americans, “To Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders in our community: We stand together with you today and every day going forward”? As Harvard pledges extensive reparations to address the legacy of slavery, does it not understand the hypocrisy of “standing together” with the Asian community while actively discriminating against Asian applicants?
In Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, writing for the majority, held that a narrowly tailored use of race in admissions decisions was permissible. But she added, “The court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.” That was 18 years ago. Harvard and UNC, and many of the schools filing briefs in their support, argue that they need to continue considering race to meet their educational objectives. They appear to have neither intention nor strategy to do things differently.
Ultimately, their position is an example of the unseemly effects of continued racialization and categorization by group identity. We find ourselves in a parallel universe in which fighting racism requires engaging in racism. Ibram X. Kendi, the man behind the toxic racialism we know as “anti-racism,” has written, “The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.” That approach is precisely what Justice O’Connor eschewed.
New organizations have departed from the perverse, racialized vision of elite institutions. But the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism is committed to defending the civil rights and liberties of all Americans. It holds that “skin color … is a crude proxy for perspectives and experiences.” FAIR notes that skin color could be correlated with other attributes that a university desires but that group preferences undermine our country’s founding commitment to the liberty of the person.
Clearly, there are better methods for building a diverse student body than privileging race. Even a colorblind admission and scholarship program based solely on socioeconomic status would be fairer, and it would inevitably bring a diverse group of students to the university. It would be especially appropriate for the children of immigrants.
It was not long ago that students who were not part of the Anglo-Saxon Protestant mainstream faced a numerus clausus, a quota, that limited their admission to many institutions. Some schools did not even feel the need to be subtle: Milton Winternitz, dean of Yale Medical School from 1920 to 1935, instructed, “Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all.”
Surely, the time has come to move forward to a system based on merit and fairness, not the ugly, discriminatory practices of the past.
Michael B. Poliakoff is the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and Steven McGuire is the Paul and Karen Levy fellow in campus freedom at the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.
