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Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

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Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#251

Post by slg »

xenihn wrote: post #208
slg wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the responses here are talking about ethnicity or Jewish identity, but I think when it comes down to it, Jews are considered white mainly when other white people want to consider them as such. I would bet that your average Ashkenazi Jew (it is worth noting there are multiple different Jewish ethnic groups) has more genetic commonality with an average person of Ukrainian descent than that Ukrainian person has…

Arabs, Armenians, North Africans, and Persians are all considered white in the US.

According to who? If you're referring to the census designations, Jews are considered white too which just goes to further underlines my point.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#252

Post by romwell »

habosa wrote: post #96
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

As a Jewish person I feel weird seeing "whites" being broken into Jewish and non-Jewish. What about other religions? Why include religion at all? In particular with respect to Harvard and Boston I'd think Catholicism might deserve a mention if we're going to bring religion into this. In the end I think religious diversity is important but it doesn't belong in the same conversation. You can choose your religion and al…

As an atheist Jewish person, I don't agree with your definition of "Jewish".

Neither did the Nazis, btw.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#253

Post by zarro »

I don't get why a private University can't decide who it wants or doesn't want to attend its school regardless of the metrics it chooses.

For instance, I don't think that matching a Universities demographics to the "national" or "global" demographics is likely to produce highest caliber candidates. What if Jewish and Asian candidates consistently outperform other candidates, why shouldn't a private school be allowed to accept more of the candidates it thinks "deserve" it more?

If people don't like the policies of institutions that do this, or think they are ineffective, over time other institutions will outcompete/outperform them.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#254

Post by defen »

dwoozle wrote: post #230
defen wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basketball is zero-sum, undergrad college admissions mostly aren't. As long as Harvard lets in enough students who are "good enough" to not fail out or besmirch their reputation, it can continue indefinitely as a prestige-generating institution. Put another way - the "Michael Jordan" of undergraduate academics doesn't really exist (in other words, there is no individual undergraduate you could admit who would instant…

Of course there are — they are the “Michael Jordans” of the world... not only Michael Jordan himself, but all of the top accomplished people in the world... presidents, Nobel Prize winners, CEOs, famous authors... Harvard is prestigious because they admit people who later do those things. The content of the curriculum is largely the same as other colleges. Harvard is looking for people who have the highest probabilit…

You can't really assess someone's capability of becoming a president/CEO/famous author based on their achievements before age 18. It's also really hard to determine whether people achieved those things because they went to Harvard. For example, getting access to the Harvard network massively increases your chances of getting a business funded, being successful in politics, etc. Finally - Harvard's prestige in the sciences is mostly due to graduate students/professors, not undergraduates.

> The content of the curriculum is largely the same as other colleges.

Maybe in some departments, but Harvard's math curriculum is not the same as most other colleges in the US, for example.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#255

Post by dmix »

darawk wrote: post #234
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

Fascinating that non-jewish whites are actually the least proportionally represented. I've never heard that mentioned anywhere before.

Wasn't that the whole idea of affirmative action?

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#256

Post by rohit2412 »

defen wrote: post #199
dwoozle wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why set a minimum bar at “qualified”? If you try out for an NBA team they won’t say “you are really fucking good at basketball, you’re not as good as these guys but you’re diverse so you’re hired.” You get scarce positions by outcompeting people, not by clearing a bar and then getting selected for your race.

Basketball is zero-sum, undergrad college admissions mostly aren't. As long as Harvard lets in enough students who are "good enough" to not fail out or besmirch their reputation, it can continue indefinitely as a prestige-generating institution. Put another way - the "Michael Jordan" of undergraduate academics doesn't really exist (in other words, there is no individual undergraduate you could admit who would instant…

So, Bill gates, Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page etc etc did not bring their amla mater's any extra fame?

Is your bar just "do not besmirch the good name of this institution"? Then I guess nobody should care for or covet International olympiad winners.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#257

Post by ceejayoz »

turbo_fart_box wrote: post #244
oarabbus_ wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm saying there's a difference between people saying "there's too many Asians in tech" and "there's too many white males in tech".

Americans fixate on skin colour and forget that class is far more important

People pushing that argument tend to pretend there's not a significant interlinking between race and class in America.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#258

Post by munchbunny »

opportune wrote: post #221

I wanted to go to Harvard, and didn't get in, so I went to a slightly less prestigious school instead. I had perfect test scores and grades so I potentially could have been part of this lawsuit, and I used to be super bothered by affirmative action. But now I don't really care. Even if you don't get into your favorite top school, if you're actually a strong applicant you're likely to get into at least one, or if not,…

In general I think the community I grew up in (a fairly large community of Asian immigrants) over-emphasizes the role that "getting into Harvard" plays in the trajectory of your life. For most people, the thing that determines long term success isn't getting into Harvard, it's having the internal drive to work hard for it over the course of years. The latter translates into sustained career momentum.

Also, some number of years out of college, I think the test scores aren't actually worth much except as a broad way of bucketing applicants. They are a poor proxy of key qualities like resilience and self-awareness, which, in my experience as both a job interviewer and alumni interviewer, show up much more in the work history/extracurriculars and the way they write/talk.

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#259

Post by nostromo »

akhilcacharya wrote: post #62

Nobody is entitled to go to Harvard and focusing on one institution does a disservice to folks (including Asian Americans like myself) who didn’t get into any elite institutions unlike many of the plaintiffs

We have the Civil Rights Act which is supposed to prevent this sort of discrimination.

Walmart, for example, couldn't refuse to serve black customers and then claim, "nobody is entitled to shop here."

Re: Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process

#260

Post by mawpmawp »

jdoliner wrote: post #110
deogeo wrote: post #37

For perspective, here are the Harvard vs US demographics, sorted by most to least represented [1,2,3,4]: Jewish: 14.0% vs 2.6% (5.38x) Asian American: 25.3% vs 5.3% (4.77x) Native Hawaiian: 0.6% vs 0.2% (3.00x) Native American: 1.8% vs 0.7% (2.57x) African American: 14.3% vs 12.7% (1.13x) Hispanic or Latino: 12.2% vs 17.6% (0.69x) non-Jewish white: 33.0% vs 58.9% (0.56x) [1] https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/adm…

These numbers are next to meaningless, Harvard doesn't just accept people from the US, so we should be looking at population percentages of the world. I assume that people who don't fit in any category are shunted into one of them based on skin color. For example a Jamaican is, I assume, counted in the African American bucket, and compared against the African American population, even though they're neither American…

That's wild statement, shunted into a category based on skin color? Nobody is shunted anywhere, you are asked on the application what race are you, or if you are biracial, or if you identify as anything else. It's your choice what to put on the application. Everything is determined from your responses. Nobody is "shunted" anywhere.
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