WASHINGTON (AP) — An alliance of Asian American groups on Friday filed a federal complaint against Harvard University, saying that school and other Ivy League institutions are using racial quotas to admit students other than high-scoring Asians.
More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the Justice and Education departments. They are calling for an investigation and say these schools should stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission.
“We are seeking equal treatment regardless of race,” said Chunyan Li, a professor and civil rights activist, who said they’d rather universities use income rather than race in affirmative action policies.
Harvard says its approach to admissions has been found to be “fully compliant with federal law.” Officials also say the number of Asian students admitted increased from 17.6 percent to 21 percent over the last decade.
“We will vigorously defend the right of Harvard, and other universities, to continue to seek the educational benefits that come from a class that is diverse on multiple dimensions,” said Robert Iuliano, Harvard’s general counsel.
Iuliano pointed to the Supreme Court’s landmark 1978 decision in Regents of University of California v. Bakke, which upheld affirmative action and specifically cited Harvard’s admissions plan as a “legally sound approach” to admissions.
Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were sued last year by “Students for Fair Admission,” a nonprofit group based in Austin, Texas, made up of recently rejected applicants who argue that affirmative action policies should be banned at colleges across the nation.
The federal suits allege Harvard and UNC rely on race-based affirmative action policies that impact admissions of high-achieving white and Asian American students. The Harvard lawsuit also contends that the Ivy League university specifically limits the number of Asian Americans it admits each year.
Yukong Zhao, who organized the groups for Friday’s complaint, challenged Harvard to open its admission books to prove that Asians were not purposefully being put at a disadvantage. “We want to help this country move forward,” Zhao said.
Other Asian American groups and officials also released statements supporting affirmative action, including two members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. “Neither of us believes that any racial or ethnic group should be subjected to quotas,” Commissioners Michael Yaki and Karen Narasaki said. “Nor do we believe that test scores alone entitle anyone to admission at Harvard. Students are more than their test scores and grades.”
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Whites always complain that they get screwed by affirmative action, but the ones who really get screwed are definitely Asians.
I wouldn’t be surprised if true. White applicants for the most part are de facto beneficiaries of automatic white privilege affirmative action. AA got W into his dad’s ivy league school as many whites get automatically accepted into schools their parents graduated from. But nobody discusses white AA which is the majority of affirmative action going on for centuries.
The notion that admissions should be based on test scores and grades, rather than on being a fully-rounded human being with broad curiosity and creativity, rewards those from cultures where only test scores and grades are valued. With advances in computing, the sorts of “intelligence” that correlate with the larger part of test scores can be taken over by machines. The unique human role is to be curious and creative.
There’s nothing wrong with Western universities being aligned with Western, humanist values, rather than with Asian values. It is well-known in sociology and academia that Asian cultures typically do not cultivate either curiosity or creativity in their students. For diversity’s sake, we should nonetheless welcome Asian students to Western universities, and do, well out of proportion to their presence in our population. But the notion that their test scores should privilege them above students of Western cultural backgrounds is, to put it plainly, unintelligent.
These people are making the same mistake white males make when they complain about lower-scoring applicants getting jobs over them: it’s not just about a test score.
If about 5% of the US population identifies as Asian and Harvard has a 21% Asian student body, I’d say Asians are exceedingly well represented. And, if affirmative action policies were banned as they desire, I suspect the number of Asians admitted would in fact go down, not up.
There is no way any institution is going to turn over their application process to a strict ranking of scores on a test. Human potential cannot be so measured.
Too true.