Students For Fair Admissions, a conservative organization known for their lawsuits against affirmative action, is suing Harvard University for their admissions policies regarding Asian-American applicants.
The claim presented by The Students For Fair Admissions (SFFA) suggests Harvard is restricting the number of Asian-American students accepted, a claim that Harvard outright denies. Due to past efforts by the SFFA to dismantle affirmative action, many of their opponents speculate that this lawsuit is a mask hiding the goal of eliminating affirmative action permanently.
Affirmative action began in the United States in 1961 when President John F. Kennedy issued an executive order stating that equal opportunity would be given in employment and education regardless of race and gender. Over time, the concept of affirmative action has evolved. Universities began adopting these policies and, slowly, the enrollment of African-American and Latinx students increased.
In 2003, the Supreme Court stated that the consideration of race among many factors, such as merit or background, is beneficial in diversifying universities. However, in the same case, they ruled that quotas and restrictions on certain races are unjust, and only consideration of race shall be permitted in admissions.
Since the 2003 ruling, the proportion of Asian-Americans attending college has risen. By 2016 the amount rose from 74 percent to 87 percent. In the same period, Latinx enrollment rate has increased from 58 percent to 71 percent. Though African-American enrollment has fluctuated since 2003, it stood at 56 percent in 2016, the same percentage as thirteen years earlier.
Affirmative action is generally considered beneficial in bringing diversity to universities and workplaces, gives an opportunity to those who have historically faced repeated discrimination, and is shown to enhance the experience of all students.
That being said, affirmative action remains a very controversial practice. Many lawsuits have been brought to contest affirmative action. In 2016, Edward Blum, the current president of SFFA, worked as the legal strategist for Fisher v. The University of Texas. The case was brought on behalf of two Caucasian women who claimed their rejection at the college was based on their race. In a 4-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the University of Texas. The court declared that “race has had meaningful, if limited, effect on freshman class diversity.” Though the SFFA did not lead the suit, Blum’s participation reveals he has long been an active opponent of affirmative action.
Blum is not an attorney; he finds clients matching his agenda and connects them with lawyers willing to take the potentially high-profile cases. So far, five of the cases he has backed have gone to the Supreme Court. Blum believes that “racial and ethnic classifications and preferences should be abolished.” He maintains “Those policies are not supported by a vast majority of Americans.” However, according to a poll by the NAAS in 2014, the actual approval rate for affirmative action across all Americans was 65 percent.
The Department of Justice (DoJ) has taken an interest in SFFA’s lawsuit. On August 30th, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who leads the DoJ, filed a statement of interest in the lawsuit “urg[ing] the court to grant the plaintiffs the opportunity to prove these claims in trial.” The support of the DoJ has drawn attention to the lawsuit from the press and will most likely propel it to the Supreme Court.
SFFA’s lawsuit has revealed details of Harvard’s admissions methodology to the public for the first time. This information, which Harvard fought to keep private, includes their subjective “personality rating.” Many universities take personality into account. The SFFA finds Harvard’s personality ratings of Asian-Americans suspicious.
In multiple court filings, the SFFA points to descriptions of Asian-Americans as discrimination. Numerous Asians receive characterizations such as “busy and bright” yet “lacking a distinguishing excellence” or “doesn’t go the extra mile.” Harvard scores personality on a scale of 1-6, and when interviewed by Alumni, the scores of Asian-Americans were similar to those given to white applicants. According to the SFFA and DoJ’s analysis, however, Asian-Americans received the lowest personality scores from the Harvard admissions office even if members of the admissions office had never met them.
Harvard countered SFFA’s claim pointing to positive descriptions of students of Vietnamese, Tibetan, Nepalese, and Indian descent. These applicants were described with words such as “fascinating” and often noted as a promising applicant. Out of the examples Harvard cited, none were Chinese, Korean, or Japanese.
The SFFA also cites a preliminary report written in 2013 by Harvard’s Office for Institutional Research (OIR) as a key piece of evidence in their case. The report explicitly stated that “Asian high achievers have lower rates of admission.” Like SFFA’s analysis, the report brought up the issue of Asian-Americans receiving a lower “personality rating” more frequently than applicants of other race.
The SFFA points to a Harvard OIR-produced simulation based on years of admissions data. In the simulation, students’ acceptance was based purely on merit and did not take into consideration any other factor such as race, class, and background. The simulation increased the percentage of accepted Asian-Americans from 22 percent of Harvard’s population to more than 43 percent. SFFA’s conclusion from the preliminary report is the controversial claim that race-based admissions harm Asian-Americans.
After the OIR report was submitted, the Harvard dean of admissions, William R. Fitzsimmons, did not respond with any changes to the admissions process. SFFA uses this evidence to try to show how Harvard swept this report under the rug and prove Harvard’s knowledge of their alleged restrictions. Though many facts indicate that the report may be incomplete with inaccurate findings, the SFFA does not mention these doubts in their briefing. After the admissions office received a follow-up report, the administration questioned the legitimacy of both reports, and nothing was officially done to address the potential problem of an unbalanced admissions process.
Harvard claims that the accusations made by the SFFA are either statistically flawed or incorrect, and they have the evidence to back this up. A review of the admissions database conducted by the University of California concluded that there is no evidenceof discrimination in Harvard’s admissions process. Harvard also states that the amount of Asian-Americans admitted has grown by 27 percent since 2010, showing progress. rather than inequality. Harvard rejects the SFFA’s position as “invectives, mischaracterizations, and in some cases outright misrepresentations.”
Policies like affirmative action are in place to benefit those who have commonly faced discrimination. However, the number of upper-middle-class Asians is rising, and though Asian-Americans still face discrimination in their everyday life, their class and background are starting to remove them from the pool of affirmative action beneficiaries. Stereotyped as model minorities, Asian-Americans are left to continue working hard to achieve the “distinguishing excellence” that Harvard seeks. “This vicious cycle forces Asian-American students into behavior closer to the negative stereotype that they are nothing but personality-less ‘nerds,” wrote The Asian-American Coalition for Education, in a brief.
SFFA’s lawsuit may also encounter difficulty because it is allegedly filed on behalf of all Asian-Americans. Asian-American is an extremely general term, and different Asian groups face different impacts from the admissions processes of colleges. These disparities lead to a divide within the Asian-American community on affirmative action. In particular, in 2016 Chinese-American support for affirmative action dropped to 41 percent while other 73 percent of other Asian-American groups support it. Overall, two-thirds of all Asian-Americans support affirmative action, but that still leaves one third in disagreement. The differences between ethnicities are quite vast: a 2004 study revealed that Southeast Asian-Americans — those from Indonesia, Vietnam, The Philippines, and eight additional countries — make up 25 percent of Asians enrolled at selective colleges, compared to the 35 percent of just Chinese-Americans. Many groups such as Southeast Asians who don’t benefit from the model minority myth feel that affirmative action is beneficiary to them.
Many see this lawsuit putting Asian-Americans against each other and portrays inaccurate views of the Asian-American community. Sally Chen, a Harvard alumni, claims Blum isn’t fighting for Asian-Americans, but instead, getting rid of policies that benefit minorities, “Blum doesn’t have the best interests of students of color at heart, we should not be swayed by his efforts and that of other folks to label Asian-Americans as a model minority that doesn’t need affirmative action.” However, it is not just Asian-Americans that are impacted by this case. Cecilia Nuñez, the vice president for the group Fuerza Latina, states, “We have an important stake in this. It could affect us. We could lose 50 percent of students of color if we were to eliminate the race-consciousadmissions policy. It’s important that we speak out.”
In a brief, the SFFA requested that the court bar students and alumni of Harvard from speaking during the trial, the third time Blum’s organization has tried to prevent students from testifying. The judge, Allison D. Burroughs, ruled that eight supporters consisting of students and alumni will nonetheless be permitted as witnesses. Groups supporting Harvard see this attempt at silencing the voices of students evidence of the SFFA’s hidden anti-affirmative action agenda.
A Boston district court began hearings for the lawsuit on October 15. This case could dictate the future of affirmative action for American minorities. If the judicial system ultimately rules in favor of the SFFA, the standard for affirmative action in universities across America will change. Though the conflict of whether or not Harvard is practicing affirmative action or discrimination will be decided, this case will either solidify the positive outcomes of affirmative action or weaken what universities can potentially do to diversify their campus.
