More Militant Socialist Bullshit - Harvard accused of racism against Asian applicants

Harvard University has been accused of racism against Asian students because of perceived negative personality traits, according to court documents filed on Friday.

The 388-year-old institution is being sued by Students for Fair Admissions, an action group, for discriminating against Asian applicants.

The group commissioned an analysis of more than 160,000 applicants who applied for admission from 2000 to 2015, which showed that Asians were given lower scores on “personality” traits - likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected”.

It argues that if admitted on academic merit alone, the intake of Asian students at the prestigious university would be much higher.

Ted Lieu, a congressman for California, blasted Harvard for appearing to "attribute personality traits based on race." He called the report “outrageous”, adding that “it feeds into historical damaging stereotypes about Asian-Americans.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/16/harvard-accused-racism-against-asian-applicants/

Just to show how dumb this clam is.

Asian Americans make up 5.6 of the population

In Harvard, they make up 22% of students

Telegraph wrote:The group commissioned an analysis of more than 160,000 applicants who applied for admission from 2000 to 2015, which showed that Asians were given lower scores on “personality” traits - likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected”.

What are personality traits?  That seems to be the essence of the issue.

Grades alone are not the sole criteria for admission to a university...after all, grades are highly dependent upon personality, too. Which achiever doesn't butter up the teacher?

Didge wrote:Asian Americans make up 5.6 of the population

In Harvard, they make up 22% of students

So, on a simple binomial analysis, it appears that Asians do have a selection advantage.  This appears to be an argument over which selection criteria a major university should use.

I suspect the court will say that's an educational question, not a legal question.

but to be fair they probably should make up more than 22% of the Entrants based on pure academic results.

The issue in American law is: are there quotas?  Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).  The court ruled in Bakke, that specific racial quotas by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible.

Original Quill wrote:The issue in American law is: are there quotas?  Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).  The court ruled in Bakke, that specific racial quotas by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible.

which is why there is a problem of artificially instating quotas to let in more whites than deserve to be there, by making up bullshit immeasurable traits such as likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected”. rather than just letting numbers speak for themselves OR at least restricting it to Measureable traits like 'poverty' or sporting prowess.


it is simply whites claiming to be more likable, courageous, kind and respected than Asian people because they are white.

veya_victaous wrote:

Original Quill wrote:The issue in American law is: are there quotas?  Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978).  The court ruled in Bakke, that specific racial quotas by the University of California, Davis School of Medicine, were impermissible.

which is why there is a problem of artificially instating quotas to let in more whites than deserve to be there, by making up bullshit immeasurable traits such as likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected”. rather than just letting numbers speak for themselves OR at least restricting it to Measureable traits like 'poverty' or sporting prowess.


it is simply whites claiming to be more likable, courageous, kind and respected than Asian people because they are white.

Bakke is one of the Supreme Court decisions that came along as a part of the white nationalist backlash.  It was intended as a return to subjective criteria, which was always kind to whites: no more arbitrary, quantitative standards; only the soft, smooshy crap, where whites can hide discrimination.

Now we see it being used against whites, in favor of Asians, and suddenly they don't like it.

Interesting.

Documents detailing admissions processes were made public on Friday in federal district court in Boston as part of a lawsuit targeting Harvard University’s consideration of race in its College admissions. Both sides filed motions requesting an immediate ruling in the case, which is tentatively set to go to trial in October.

The plaintiff in the lawsuit is Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), an organization founded by Edward Blum, who has engineered a range of lawsuits in recent years targeting civil rights protections. SFFA argued in its filings that its analysis of the data submitted in discovery by Harvard, including thousands of admissions records as well as information from a series of reports compiled by Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research, shows discrimination against Asian-Americans in admissions.

Harvard’s filing denies all of Blum’s claims, stating that the statistical model put forth by SFFA is deeply flawed. The model ignores essential factors, such as personal essays and teacher recommendations, and omits large sections of the applicant pool, such as recruited athletes and applicants whose parents attended the College, Harvard says.

In addition, SFFA’s claims are unfounded, Harvard contends, because the Office of Institutional Research reports cited as evidence by the group were incomplete and narrowly compiled without the benefit of the full admissions database, and without taking into account critical aspects of the admissions process.

After analyzing six years of admissions data, incorporating “as much information as possible about the factors that inform Harvard’s whole-person admissions process,” a separate analysis by David Card, a leading economist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, found “no negative effect of Asian-American ethnicity” in Harvard’s admissions process and no evidence of discrimination, Harvard’s filing says.

The SFFA “analysis is so unmoored from the reality of Harvard’s admissions process that, as a matter of law, it cannot justify a finding that Harvard intentionally discriminated against Asian-American candidates,” Harvard’s filing states. The document also says that Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono, the expert enlisted to conduct the plaintiff’s research, “excluded from his analysis numerous applicants and numerous factors that are relevant to the admissions process — information that was in his [Arcidiacono’s] possession and informed Dr. Card’s more comprehensive analysis.”

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/06/documents-released-in-admissions-lawsuit/


More to read on the link

Consideration of race is permissible under Bakke. However, strict quotas are not.