Harvard President Defiant in Admissions Fight By A.R. HOFFMAN
https://www.nysun.com/national/harvard-president-defiant-in-admissions-fight/91981/
Harvard is holding firm in its fight to use race in its admissions process, the university’s president announced in an email delivered yesterday to students, alumni, and faculty on Tuesday. The missive from Lawrence Bacow came just one day after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to that very policy.
Mr. Bacow wrote that he wished the Supreme Court “would have decided differently,” but his note makes clear that Harvard will do nothing differently absent a high court order.
The future of how America’s oldest university chooses its students will be decided not in faculty lounges in Cambridge, but in judicial chambers in Washington, D.C. As the Sun has reported, the high court looks set to decide the future of college and university admissions after elevating cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
Mr. Bacow struck a defiant note in response to the dramatic legal development, maintaining: “Our admissions process, in which race is considered as one factor among many, makes us stronger.” He promised to “defend with vigor” that approach against “narrowly drawn measures of academic distinction.”
Harvard’s admissions process is one of the nation’s most selective. Last spring, it extended offers to just more than 3 percent of applicants, making it a bellwether for how thick and thin envelopes (or their email equivalents) are sent out nationwide.
Mr. Bacow wrote that Harvard is “more than our numbers, more than our grades, more than our rankings or scores.” The question is whether just such a “holistic” approach runs afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws and the promises of the Constitution.
Even before it reached the high court, the fate of Harvard’s admissions policies already attracted scrutiny in the courtroom. The case that the Supreme Court will review, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, turns on the accusation that Harvard’s “mistreatment of Asian-American applicants is appalling,” and that students of those backgrounds suffer in the name of concocting rigid racial mixes at the university.
To argue this, Students for Fair Admissions, the group mounting the legal challenges, points to Harvard admissions practices that penalized Asian-American students by giving them low marks on such metrics as “likability,” “courage,” and “self-confidence.”
While Mr. Bacow argues that Harvard’s admissions process reflects the reality that “race matters in the United States,” Students for Fair Admissions maintains: “The cornerstone of our nation’s civil rights laws is the principle that an individual’s race should not be used to help or harm them in their life’s endeavors.”
The University of North Carolina, which shares a Supreme Court docket with Harvard, fired back that the “true agenda” for Students for Fair Admissions is to “deny opportunity to qualified students.”
While both North Carolina and Harvard are undaunted, all eyes will now be on affirmative action’s suddenly very uncertain future.
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