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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

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard has a 25%+ Asian American undergrad class, (edit)~~2.5x (Harvard's is ~60% of UC's) more than the latest number listed on that wiki page, so your final statement is factually incorrect`~. I quoted wrong number. It's 25% vs 40%. https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics

We all know that number should probably be higher if we're actually caring about academic performance. Affirmative action doesn't actually bother me as much as legacy based admissions. Just absolutely idiotic that it's accepted.

I don't see why academic performance, beyond an institution's decided-upon base threshold, should be the sole or even dominant admissions factor. Especially at a liberals arts college like Harvard.

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

#312
Of course it's constitutional, Harvard is a private organization and basically none of the constitution applies to them. The question was whether it violates federal law - specifically Title VI.

The confusing part is that Title VI prohibits actions by private entities receiving government funding that would violate the constitution, were they carried out by a state entity. The opinion uses "constitutional" as a short-hand for "is in compliance with Title VI, which means it would be fine for a public college to do it as well under the constitution".

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

#313
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the debate from progressives is the definition of the term discriminate. We all agree choosing an unqualified person over a person who is qualified based on their race is discrimination. However is it discrimination to choose the diverse candidate when presented with two candidates that are equally qualified in every other regard? Because that is often the situation. There is no shortage of people who are qua…

> ... when presented with two candidates that are equally qualified in every other regard? ... Because that is often the situation Is that the case? I always thought that the case is brought on because the diversity candidate is NOT often "equally qualified,"

If you read the argument, he/she is setting a lower bar and calling everyone qualified. They do not even acknowledge that their policies discriminate.

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

#314
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harvard and UC are trying to do different things. Harvard is trying to admit the future leaders of the world, so it can point to them and say “They are Harvard men.” UC is trying to give an academically rigorous education to the most academically qualified students.

Honestly not sure why this is being downvoted. UC and Harvard are practically opposites in terms of the character they are looking for. One has alumni interviews for every serious applicant, the other has a gpa cutoff to filter out most students and then still just goes off numbers. Replace the words 'college' with 'job', and this whole thing looks silly.

> Replace the words 'college' with 'job', and this whole thing looks silly.

I don't know about silly, it certainly looks unlawful to me.

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

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. Maybe I'm wrong? Jewishness is a more closely knit identity which Jews are lucky enough to have, whereas even whiteness is an ever expanding identity leaving many white people with nothing but 'American'.

> I was under the impression that Jews commonly don't think of themselves as being white whereas the rest of the 'white' groups did. In the Anglosphere, Jews have pretty much always been considered "white". For example, both the Confederacy and Apartheid South Africa, two regimes obsessed with racial classification, never even considered that Jews might not be white. The conception of Jews as a separate race, has his…

>For example, both the Confederacy and Apartheid South Africa, two regimes obsessed with racial classification, never even considered that Jews might not be white.

Not true about South Africa:

"Shortly after the Union of South Africa received dominion status in 1910, the new Boer rulers proposed to re-classify the Jews as "coloured" because they originally came from the Middle East, and hence were not really European. The Jews of South Africa fought tooth and nail to retain their privileged status as "Whites""

https://www.quora.com/Were-Jews-during-South-African-aparthe...

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

#316
post #263
post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't that the whole idea of affirmative action?

My understanding was that affirmative action was supposed to correct the under-representation of minorities by eliminating the over -representation of non-jewish whites. Not that it was designed to under-represent them.

Have you been living in our world for the past five years or so? Surely you've figured it out by now.

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

#317
post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they are not. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/ Diversity efforts sit in a gray area that is nowhere close to race quotas.

I-1000 is literally called "Affirmative Action and Diversity Commission Measure" https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affirmat...

It's a referendum. It's not law yet.

You'd be more right if it was passed, but it's not.

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

#319
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The distinction between Jewish and non-Jewish whites has been contextually important when discussing the history of discrimination in college admissions. The original move towards subjective ranking of applicants was in part a way to limit the number of Jewish applicants: https://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-d...

There's lots of sneaky ways they tried to limit Jewish access to higher eduction in Russia. Jewish Problems, for example: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556

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

#320
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…

Haha sounds like there is discrimination against non-jewish white people... Liberals seem to be saying the opposite
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