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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

#111

Post by atomi »

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.

From what I've read the allegation was that Harvard admissions was giving lower personality ratings to applicants who weren't white[1].

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/15/us/harvard-asian-enrollme...

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

#112

Post by dang »

fromthestart wrote: post #28
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.

Doublespeak

Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

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

#113

Post by munchbunny »

toasterlovin wrote: post #82
munchbunny wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you…

How is “the rich get richer” a racial issue?

Wealth in the US correlates strongly along racial lines. The rich getting richer widens wealth disparities between races and communities, which in turn widens the gap in political voice, both because of money and education.

There's a reason the EEOC needed to exist.

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

#114

Post by masonic »

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.

"... and all the children are above average", like Lake Wobegon.

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

#115

Post by divbzero »

NovaX wrote: post #41

The root of this is the Harvard Jew Crisis of the early 1900s, which redesigned the admissions process away from merit. This is the basis of the modern practice at the Ivy Leagues. It was not done secretly, publicized by the university's President in speeches, and had little backlash. It is in fact a result of Asian Americans having many similarities to Jews that they are being discriminated against, but they were no…

As NovaX describes, “holistic” admissions had very ugly roots. It was specifically instituted as a way to limit Jewish admissions.

Oddly enough, Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell justified the policy as a way to avoid antisemitism, reasoning that too many admitted Jews could provoke antisemitic sentiment. This was the same President Lowell who tried but failed to impose segregation on students. (“We owe to the colored man the same opportunities for education that we do to the white man; but we do not owe it to him to force him and the white into social relations that are not, or may not be, mutually congenial.”) [1]

Still, as Judge Burroughs has pointed out, the ugly origins aren’t necessarily relevant to the current impact. [2] It will be interesting to see how well Harvard’s “diverse student body” argument holds up to scrutiny.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._Lawrence_Lowell

[2]: https://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2016/09/harva...

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

#116

Post by munchbunny »

adamnemecek wrote: post #84
munchbunny wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the one hand, harvard and the left repeatedly say we should live in a colorblind society. Race is not important and it isn't even real. It is a social construct of no importance to who the person is. They tell us only raicsts are obsessed with race and only racists see color. That's a MASSIVE straw man. Harvard won't argue that, and nobody who studies race and equality issues will argue that. I'm assuming that you…

The main problem is that the catch up mechanisms don’t have a termination condition. At what point do these go away? What if for whatever reason, these mechanisms don’t actually improve anything. Do we keep adding more mechanisms?

Well, affirmative action did technically have a built in catch-up mechanism.

But really, do you think all laws need termination mechanisms, and do you only vote for laws that do? Or if you think that some laws must exist that solve permanent problems, then, well, racism has never not been a problem, it has just taken different forms over time.

Alternately, we can trust the democratic system to do the course correcting.

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

#117

Post by rdiddly »

ajross wrote: post #67
rdiddly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume they're trying to have it be affirmative-action-like, but your comment did make me think of it in an interesting way: You can't say "race always helps" or "race only helps" because everybody has a race. There are no Person for which Person.Race is null. (Can you tell I'm on a break from writing code tonight?)

> 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…

You would model that as a many-to-many relationship, with a People table, and a Races table, and a cross-referencing People_Races table that only has PersonID and RaceID columns.

Anywhoo, I'm not sure what the grounds would be for feeling schadenfreude here. "Ha ha, Harvard makes race-based decisions that are not-the-right-ones to everyone, and are surely-not-the-best... THE BLIND FOOLS!" A little esoteric for me.

I'm old OK - I grew up after the leftie ideals that started their ascendancy in the 60s had already kind of arrived in the mainstream. (But before they were set on fire by the likes of Reagan and then sold out by the unholy Clinton-era alliance between erstwhile liberals and 1-percenters.) I was taught, and internalized, values of racial equality, the ennoblement of all peoples, equality for all, one big group called humanity, etc. That picture of Earth taken from the moon by the Apollo astronauts - one world. All of us.

What makes me sad is that what people call fighting "for justice" nowadays seems to mean betraying and abandoning all that. Instead of seeing one big group with no subgroups, and treating everyone equally, some people seem to want to go back to looking out only for their own little subgroup and its interests, against all the others (or against one in particular). Who does that remind you of? Reminds me of the KKK. It was practically their mission statement - "let's look out for our particular subgroup." (white people) So you might say "No no no, we're different because unlike theirs, our cause is just." Are we so sure? The KKK thought they were just. It's in fact the very thing that enabled them to commit horrible acts against human beings. Justness of the cause is ALWAYS how you rationalize injustice.

Seems to me division and hate still lead to exactly where division and hate have always led.

Not that this has much to do with Harvard admissions but I thought I'd get it off my chest.

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

#118

Post by jjeaff »

jorblumesea wrote: post #50
curious_fella2 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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" How is this argument different than supporting a private restaurant not serving e.g. Chinese people since they "are a private company that should be able to serve whom they want based on their own criteria?"

How is what Harvard is doing supported by that example? They are giving preferential treatment to certain groups or ethnicities, not actively discriminating against any certain group. If you went to a restaurant and someone that was in line after you got seated before simply because of their ethnicity, that's not the same as not being served at all right?

I'm sorry sir, but you've been bumped from this flight. Because someone from a more favorable race showed up.

You'll have to try and catch the next flight. We have one departing next year.

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

#119

Post by jjeaff »

adamiscool8 wrote: post #57
friedman23 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in. Ok, can someone explain to me if this distinction even matters effectively? If every group is getting a bonus and one group is not doesn't that effectively mean that one group is being penalized?

Not if, e.g. $race_a applicants get +2 to their score, but $race_b applicants are more likely to be +2 in other $admissions_factors[c,d,..n]. Distinct from $race_b-2 and $race_a+2, as this only hurts the subset of $race_b applicants lacking [c,d,..n]

Whether they are "likely" to have better scores in other categories is irrelevant. You are still deducting points based on race.

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

#120

Post by vageli »

munchbunny wrote: post #113
toasterlovin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is “the rich get richer” a racial issue?

Wealth in the US correlates strongly along racial lines. The rich getting richer widens wealth disparities between races and communities, which in turn widens the gap in political voice, both because of money and education. There's a reason the EEOC needed to exist.

So why don't we address the issue at its root and use wealth as the primary factor for diversity versus the proxy of race?
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