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Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

nytimes.com

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Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#101

Post by codyb »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #88
ajross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no Person for which Person.Race is null. Are there not? There are surely Person for which multiple rows with distinct Race exist. It's... complicated. And yes: if you buy that "race" matters, for good or ill, it's not possible to have a completely just policy that is race-blind, it just isn't. If Harvard wants a campus whose diversity of background (and that obviously includes much more than just race) ma…

Actually, it would probably be mainly Asian students if it was completely merit based Does that suck? If so IMO you're racist

You can call me racist all you want but I do think that'd suck and meeting people from different and similar backgrounds to me has been a tremendous boon to me in my life.

Getting out of your bubble is important, being challenged by others beliefs is important, and learning to have empathy for others situations is important.

And universities should strive to be places where those things happen.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#102

Post by paulddraper »

ekianjo wrote: post #15
throwaway333444 wrote: post #10

> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.

> IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty. I don't like what they seem to be doing, but Harvard is a private university - they should be able to recruit who they want to based on their own criteria. Of course, it's not a binary thing: universities in the US receive lots of subsidies from local states, so there is a certain expectation of fairness. Maybe the right thing to do would be to c…

I agree, people and private (non-government) businesses should be able to discriminate however they want on whatever factors they want.

However, that is not what the law says.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#103

Post by tuesdayrain »

yhoneycomb wrote: post #88
ajross wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are no Person for which Person.Race is null. Are there not? There are surely Person for which multiple rows with distinct Race exist. It's... complicated. And yes: if you buy that "race" matters, for good or ill, it's not possible to have a completely just policy that is race-blind, it just isn't. If Harvard wants a campus whose diversity of background (and that obviously includes much more than just race) ma…

Actually, it would probably be mainly Asian students if it was completely merit based Does that suck? If so IMO you're racist

Complaining about any kind of race composition does seem oddly racist to me, even when the poster is trying to reduce racism. I wouldn't go to a university in Africa and say "wow it sucks that there's so many black people here, you need some white people for diversity. Maybe we should tweak the admissions system".

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#104

Post by bnm123123 »

pgodzin wrote: post #89
toasterlovin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that SATs measure something real (intelligence), so unless outright cheating and bribery are taking place, it will continue to be a good measure.

Citation needed. The huge amount of time and resources spent preparing for the SATs imply that it is not a direct measure of intelligence. Is a someone who scored a 2300 after years of test prep necessarily more intelligent than someone who couldn't afford test prep or didn't have access to it and still scored a 2000?

See: https://nepc.colorado.edu/sites/default/files/Briggs_Theeffe...

"When researchers have estimated the effect of commercial test preparation programs on the SAT while taking the above factors into account, the effect of commercial test preparation has appeared relatively small"

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#105

Post by verylongname »

spangry wrote: post #45

I thought the ACLU had a rather interesting take on this issue: "Make no mistake: A lawsuit against Harvard that's purported to represent the interests of Asian-Americans would, if successful, primarily benefit white students. #DefendDiversity" https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898

Quite aside from the question of whether or not its okay to discriminate as long as it is principally whites who are harmed, I find this statement from the ACLU to be bizarre. I think it is fairly obviously wrong.

Moreover, the plaintiffs commissioned a study on the effect color blind admissions would have on the racial distribution of Harvard's undergraduate population. It should be taken with a grain of salt, as should the materials offered by the defense, and I suspect it overestimates the effect a bit, but it conforms fairly closely with anecdotal evidence I've seen and so sounds much more plausible to me than the ACLU's take.

It claims the share of black students would shrink from ~15% to ~0.9% and the share of hispanic students from ~15% to ~3%. Meanwhile, the share of white students would shrink slightly from ~37% to ~35%. The proportion of Asian students would roughly double, from ~25% to ~50%.

Again, the specific numbers might be a bit off, but it generally agrees with a lot of anecdotal evidence I've seen --- being black or Hispanic gives one a large advantage, being white is close to neutral, and being Asian is a large disadvantage.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#106

Post by bnm123123 »

throwaway333444 wrote: post #10

> Harvard has testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. So if your race matches their preference they improve your odds of admittance. Since the number of admissions is fixed this reduces the odds of those who have a race that doesn’t match their preference. IANAL but it sounds like Harvard just admitted that they were guilty.

Seems like Harvard is trying to add confusion to the issue. There's a strong possibility that asian applicants are penalized relative to white students, which has nothing to do with affirmative action.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#108

Post by [deleted] »

tbrownaw wrote: post #70
09bjb wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be this guy, but...how is this different from affirmative action? I'm not saying it's wrong, but affirmative action is discriminating based on race. Surely it hasn't been illegal this whole time?

It looks like it's complicated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirmative_action_in_the_Unit...

[deleted]

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#109

Post by ajross »

tuesdayrain wrote: post #103
yhoneycomb wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it would probably be mainly Asian students if it was completely merit based Does that suck? If so IMO you're racist

Complaining about any kind of race composition does seem oddly racist to me, even when the poster is trying to reduce racism. I wouldn't go to a university in Africa and say "wow it sucks that there's so many black people here, you need some white people for diversity. Maybe we should tweak the admissions system".

You're missing the point. Let's say you go to your hypothetical "university in Africa", and that your nation had, I dunno, a significant(25%, say) Uzbek minority. Yet the student body was 98% native africans. You seriously wouldn't consider that a problem? You wouldn't ask why the Uzbeks weren't being educated at the same rate as the rest of the population? You'd consider it "oddly racist" to even ask if maybe this was wrong?

That's where we were, in just our parents generation. Harvard used to be 98%+ white as recently as the 1970's. Of of that generation, there were almost no non-white elite graduates entering the top flight law firms and investment banks and academic tenure tracks. I mean, sure, hispanic kids could "go to college". But because of "merit" they couldn't go to Harvard.

So Harvard fixed it. Harvard is now reasonably well-integrated. But the techniques they used to fix it are coarse and hard to apply in a uniformly fair way. So everyone bitches about it, and they tweak it endlessly. But bitching about the algorithm isn't a refutation of the problem.

So tell me again how that's "oddly racist" to think this is a problem.

Re: Harvard’s Admissions Process, Once Secret, Is Unveiled in Federal Court

#110

Post by gizmo686 »

spangry wrote: post #45

I thought the ACLU had a rather interesting take on this issue: "Make no mistake: A lawsuit against Harvard that's purported to represent the interests of Asian-Americans would, if successful, primarily benefit white students. #DefendDiversity" https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1051626960537808898

The ACLU is not the organization it once was.

There was a time that the ACLU would defend the right of Nazi's to march down a Jewish neighboorhood. Not because they thought that particular lawsuit would help anyone other than the Nazi's; but because they recognized the importance of establishing a legal precedent so it would be there when the "good guys" were under attack[0]. Under this old philosophy, even if the aim of the lawsuit were specifically to help whites, it should still be supported.

By supporting Harvard in this case, you are weakening the legal precedent against racism, and strengthening the legal precedent for it.

Once this precedent is established, it can be used to argue for racism against Jews (it already bears an eerie resemblance to earlier anti-semetic attempts), or gays, or liberals, or redheads.

Sure, this one case won't overturn all our legal protections overnight. But those legal protections did not spring into existence overnight. They grew up through a long sequence of court cases [1] that gradually established our rights. Those cases can be overturned in the same way, and this case is 1 step on that ladder.

[0] The ACLU also recognized the practical importance of sympathetic cases, and so would often make a strategic choice to pursue the most favorable ones, but that is a separate discussion.

[1] And legislation, and shifts in public opinion. But we are talking about a court case, so I am focusing on that aspect of the history.

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