
Federal Judge Upholds Harvard's Race-Conscious Admissions Process - tempsy
https://www.npr.org/2019/10/01/730386096/federal-judge-rules-in-favor-of-harvard-in-admissions-case
======
throwawaysea
This ruling is a travesty and I hope the Supreme Court overturns it when this
is appealed. It is very clear that race-conscious admissions are
systematically racist and discriminatory. Take a look at the distribution of
students by race in the University of California system, where they're not
permitted to discriminate in this manner, thanks to Prop 209
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_California_Proposition_20...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1996_California_Proposition_209))
- it is very different (more Asians) compared to private schools like Harvard.

~~~
throwaway_law
> It is very clear that race-conscious admissions are systematically racist
> and discriminatory.

Every time the SCOTUS hears one of these cases they acknowledge that, but the
justification is that these classes are/have been historically discriminated
against and constitutional admissions which take race into consideration are a
temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by leveling the playing
field. So the end goal even according to SCOTUS is for these measures to
eventually become unconstitutional.

~~~
tomschlick
> but the justification is that these classes are/have been historically
> discriminated against and constitutional admissions which take race into
> consideration are a temporary measure to right these historical wrongs by
> leveling the playing field.

So under that thought process... when does the temporary measure end? Is there
a specific goal? Or is it something unachievable like "when income inequality
is fixed".

~~~
bigendian1234
FWIW, I'm a white person who used to think of affirmative action as unfair
discrimination. That was true until I spent time volunteering teaching
technical skills to kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods. Now that I have had
an up close experience with these communities, I'm here to tell you
institutional racism is real and we're far from it making sense to end these
programs.

There simply is not a quick easy solution and those who are not oppressed
simply have no real frame of reference to understand the problem. I encourage
every person who feels these programs are unfair to spend time volunteering in
poor minority communities.

~~~
JPKab
Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions
than poor kids in eastern Kentucky? Because the current policies treat white
kids from trailer parks like white kids from fancy suburbs. And they treat FOB
Asians like they are doctor's children. And black kids from fancy suburbs are
treated as if they came from poor ghettos.

The idea that "oppression" is limited to dimensions of race and gender, rather
than ethnic/economic/geographic/etc is as juvenile as it is political useful.

You have had up close experience with one kind of disadvantaged community, and
act as if that is the only group that has it. The difference between urban
communities and places like Clay County, Kentucky is that volunteers like you
won't ever get sent to Kentucky.

~~~
shadowgovt
> Do you think the kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions
> than poor kids in eastern Kentucky?

Your line of reasoning did a dodge there, swapping out between geographic
demographics and racial demographics.

I don't think all kids in poor immigrant neighborhoods are in worse positions
than poor kids in Eastern Kentucky. I do think that all the white-looking kids
in eastern Kentucky, regardless of other factors stacked against them, will
never be denied a job, loan, or rental opportunity based on the color of their
skin. I can't say the same for the kids from any of those regions who don't
look white.

~~~
nilkn
It’s almost 2020, not 1940. We have major cities that are majority nonwhite.
We have entire statewide school districts that are mostly nonwhite. We have
huge metropolitan areas that are mostly nonwhite. You can walk into an
expensive luxury apartment complex in an immigrant heavy city and find tons of
nonwhite people.

~~~
Volundr
The Little Rock Nine was 1957. What do you believe happened to all those
people who protested and threatened violence against those children? What do
you think they taught their children?

The idea that we have somehow magically eradicated racism over the course of a
single generation astounds me.

Seriously, it's almost 2020. You should get how close to the 1960s that is.

~~~
JPKab
Just want to point out that in the same time period, Asians were heavily
discriminated against in northern California.

And yet there is no trace of it now. I doubt you have set foot in Arkansas,
because your implication that the attitudes haven't changed much is grossly
inaccurate.

------
ravitation
Just so people are aware, this doesn't "set a bad precedent." It doesn't set
any kind of precedent, because the precedent is extremely well established.
This ruling is directly in line with numerous SCOTUS decisions: Fisher v.
University of Texas (2016), Grutter v. Bollinger, Regents of the University of
California v. Bakke, etc... These cases are cited throughout the opinion. The
Supreme Court has consistently ruled that race is admissible as part of an
admissions decision as long as that admissions process stands up to strict
scrutiny.

~~~
the_watcher
Affirming precedent is a part of setting and establishing precedent. It
doesn't set a new precedent, but its absolutely a part of establishing
precedent for the future.

~~~
rolltiide
Then the term precedent is overused and has lost its ability to emphasize the
gravity of any situation.

End

~~~
the_watcher
It has a very precise and important meaning in the context of American case
law.

~~~
rolltiide
and irrelevant in the context of casual conversation.

------
umvi
It's like we have these two irreconcilable ideas:

\- Diversity is good

\- Discrimination is bad

When 50% of the world's population is from China/India, how do you both
promote diversity _and_ not discriminate?

~~~
slg
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 qualified to get into Harvard or
capable of succeeding there.

~~~
dwoozle
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.

~~~
defen
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 instantly make your college
superior to every other one)

~~~
rohit2412
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.

~~~
defen
Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard. Neither Brin nor Page
went to Harvard and are both more famous for their connection to Stanford as
graduate students IMO

~~~
rohit2412
They did bring fame though right?

~~~
defen
Sure, but this is about undergraduate admissions, not graduate.

~~~
sjg007
I mean I don't think the graduate level is that different.

------
deogeo
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/admissions-
statistics](https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics)

[2] [https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-
undergraduat...](https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-
undergraduates/)

[3] [https://features.thecrimson.com/2016/freshman-
survey/lifesty...](https://features.thecrimson.com/2016/freshman-
survey/lifestyle/)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews),
upper estimate used

~~~
habosa
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 also turn it on/off at
different phases of your life. You also can't see religion from the outside
(with some exceptions for example a Sikh turban).

That's not true for race.

~~~
cobweb1
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'.

~~~
dcolkitt
> 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 historically been an Eastern
European idea. Even in 1930s Germany, the Nazi party's base of popularity was
always firmly rooted in the most Eastern federal regions.

~~~
keiferski
Jews were kicked out of numerous Western European countries throughout the
Middle Ages and early modern era. I hardly think Eastern Europe has a monopoly
on anti-Semitism.

~~~
InitialLastName
Sure, but in a world dominated by the Christian church, isn't it possible that
the discrimination was based more on religion than on race?

I don't remember where (help me, please!) but I read an account by a medieval
European monk visiting monasteries and Christian communities in Africa. He
described their religious practices, traditions, culture architecture and food
in great detail, but mentioned their (certainly much darker) skin tones only
in passing.

"Race" (boiled down to skin melanin contents) as a distinguishing point
between groups of people is not a permanent fixture in human history. It is
especially overwhelmed by religion, language and culture/tribal nationality in
terms of its use as a dividing point between "us" and "them".

~~~
gdhbcc
Depends on the place I suppose. In Portugal it was primarily because of
religion (many time out of fear that they had secretly kept their Jewish
religion, rather than actually converting to christianity).

It doesn't really make sense to talk about the expulsions in the 1500s as
being motivated by race, given that there was no meaningful difference in race
between the Jewish and Christian populations in the area, and they had widely
intermingled.

While I have read plenty of accounts of riots and expulsions that either
explicitly or implicitly state their reasons as being motivated by fears of
new Christians still Secretly practicing Judaism, I haven't seen a single
account naming race or some ethnic distinction as the cause.

------
newfoot
Harvard does tend to favor wealthy legacies though:

"According to The Harvard Crimson, 43.2% of legacy students and 20% of
athletes in Harvard’s Class of 2019 come from households that earn more than
$500,000 a year, compared to just 15.4% of the overall class.

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said that many of the legacy students
applying to the university would be in the most desirable applicant pool
regardless of their status.

“Their applications tend to be well put-together," Bacow told NPR. "They have
deep knowledge of the institution. So it's a self-selected pool, which, as a
group, by almost any metric, looks very, very good relative to the broader
applicant pool.” "

[https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/09/penn-upenn-
philadelphi...](https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/09/penn-upenn-philadelphia-
harvard-admissions-legacy-athletes)

~~~
namdnay
Yes it is interesting to see that the focus is on the racial aspect, when to
me as an outside it is the classist aspect that really screams out

------
CivBase
"Race-Conscious Admissions" obviously implies that a candidates race
influences the criteria they must meet for admission to the university. So
Harvard is obviously trying to balance the racial demographics of their
students according to some ratio.

What I really want to know is what ratio they are balancing towards and why
that particular ratio is better than any other.

I could pick any arbitrary ratio. How about a ratio that matches the modern
demographics of Cambridge? Or Massachusetts? Or the United States? Or North
America? Or all of Earth? Or the demographics of the US in 1636 when Harvard
was established? Or the demographics some designer thinks looks good in
pictures? Or the demographics of the wealthiest 5% of US citizens? Or the
demographics of the _poorest_ 5%? So on and so on.

What is the incentive? Is it political? Is it just a ratio that Harvard admins
think will keep them safe from political criticism? That clearly didn't work.
Are they getting a kickback somehow? Is it a personal agenda to promote
education in places the admins agree lacks it? Is it simple bigotry?

I doubt the answers would change my mind, but I'm still very interested.

------
opportune
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, somewhere like Berkeley. Not getting into the tippy-top
schools only hurts you if you want to do high octane finance (which these days
is less attractive than tech IMO), and maybe puts you slightly behind where
you could have been regarding internships or where you land your first
job/grad school.

I felt like I had "caught up" to where I would have likely been if I had got
into Harvard by the time I hit 23. I had to work a bit harder and smarter than
if more opportunities were handed to me on a silver platter, since I went to a
slightly worse school, but it wasn't a big deal. Meanwhile there are probably
people who got into Harvard for which it was actually a completely make-or-
break, life-changing event in their lives. Arguably, they deserved, and
certainly needed it, more than someone like me.

~~~
paulcole
> I had perfect test scores and grades

If Harvard wanted to admit 1,000 kids with perfect test scores and perfect
grades they’d just take the first 1,000 applicants and call it a day.

They can be and are _much_ choosier than that. Why wouldn’t they be? If you
have the choice between a 4.0/1600 kid and a 4.0/1600/world-class pianist, who
would you take?

When applying to Harvard grades and test scores aren’t even worth mentioning.
If you’re counting on those to get you in then you’ve got almost no shot.

~~~
jessriedel
Sort of. They certainly could take a class that had only perfect scores, and
they also certainly select based on other criteria, but selecting on these
other criteria seriously impact the typical scores of admits. I think Caltech
students do noticeably better on every quantitative metric, both in terms of
means and medians.

------
sgustard
In response to this, schools will continue to devalue the importance of test
scores, and lean more on the interview, essay, "personality" and "well-
roundedness" of the candidates. Make the process more subjective so that you
cannot be shown to be biased according to some numeric criteria.

~~~
userbinator
It will undoubtedly happen that someone hired due to diversity and not skill
will do something very wrong, and possibly cause great harm to others. I
wonder what the reaction will be then...?

Luckily, the world still follows the laws of physics.

~~~
dlp211
People have been put into undeserving positions for the history of humanity.

------
zarro
I don't see how it is possible for someone to argue that discrimination based
on race isn't racist and prejudiced.

I also think the presupposition that an increase in "diversity" is always
"good" isn't necessarily always "true".

------
cobbzilla
Recent article on Harvard "legacy" admissions by Tyler Cowen of MR:
[https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-23/harvar...](https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-09-23/harvard-
s-legacies-are-nothing-to-be-proud-of)

The "oh wow, that's odd" part:

"The most shocking number in the paper is this: Of the white students admitted
to Harvard, more than 43% are in the so-called ALDC category — that is, they
are recruited athletes, legacy admissions, applicants on the “dean’s interest”
list and children of Harvard faculty and staff. Furthermore, in the model
constructed by the authors, three quarters of those applicants would have been
rejected if not for their ALDC status."

------
blhack
How about: who cares? Isn’t this hacker news? Aren’t we all supposed to be
hackers who are upending the existing system?

How about we build our own Harvards where anybody who wants to study can come
and learn whatever they want? And the network comes from being surrounded by
other people who cared enough to learn.

We don’t need these places anymore. We’ll find our own funding and do our own
research and screw the system. We’ll build our own system.

~~~
gdy
"We’ll build our own system."

...with blackjack and hookers!

~~~
blhack
We’ll build our own system! With bitcoin and tensorflow!

------
zhugeIiang
We have to consider not about who gets into Harvard. What is more important is
the incentive structure that our education system is creating. If our system
rewards people who play "victimization" games, that would encourage the next
generation to prioritize writing stories that complain about the barriers in
their way. If we had a system that rewarded learning a skill like mathematics,
reading, writing, and only focused on these, we would have the next generation
devoting more time, money, and energy to obtaining mastery over these. You can
look at China, where families and students spend thousands of dollars on
tutors, and some tutors are millionaires. Encouraging investment and
dedication to learning is a good thing. True, you might take it too far, but
it is far better to have an educated population that can think for itself.

The SAT should transition to something like the National Exam in other
countries. Offered only once a year, entirely free, very rigorous, and
encompassing all subjects. This will provide both the carrot and the stick for
the next generation to apply themselves to education. We need a culture that
loves education and learning, not just sports and drama.

~~~
lunaru
How about a balanced culture that can appreciate eduction, sports AND drama?
We don't need a culture where everyone strives for excellence in one
dimension. That's a very boring world and implicitly creates a pyramid/caste
system where the high academic achievers get the lion's share of attention and
praise. There's a reason National Exams in Asian countries are sometimes
viewed negatively.

~~~
zhugeIiang
Sports and drama are fine as long as they aren't the overriding factor. The
research on the Harvard statistics show that playing a sport will increase
your admission chance from 10% in the top academic bracket to 50%. Sport,
legacy (rich), or dean's list (kushner rich).

I would say given the rapid economic growth of Asian countries, the success of
Asians around the world, and the need of America to import Asian engineering
labor, we have a lot to learn from Asia.

Just look at the 2012 CIA debacle in China. The entire CIA informant network
in China was decapitated because China has superior engineers that hacked the
CIA communication system. We need to open our eyes and realize that playing
silly games have left us weak. We have a weak minded electorate that elects a
weak minded president while China is racing ahead with CRISPR and rail guns.

------
supernova87a
I think the thing I find most objectionable about the AA policies is that they
proceed from an intellectually lazy and flawed premise -- that a group's
representation following a selective process should exactly equal its
representation in the general population.

That is demonstrably false from general experience in life.

~~~
dlp211
It's only false because of the extreme inequality of opportunity in this
country.

------
doctorpangloss
They ought to do more to at least make students feel less discriminated
against.

The question is really how to add transparency and systemization to the
process in a way that cannot be gamed. I don’t think everyone believes
standardized testing is the answer, so what is it?

My personal opinion is that they will actually create separate admissions
pools, under the cover of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The
transparency will be about “Fine, for this specific program, we will simply
admit the top 400 test scorers” or whatever. Each department will have its own
admissions policy and students will be able to choose which to apply to.
Everyone gets the same education, opportunities and degree. They will wind up
with the same exact class but at least the deal being cut with students is
more transparent.

~~~
cpr
This is a truly hard problem.

I read somewhere (citation needed) that if truly race-blind admissions were
used in the UC system, they'd have 98% Asian students.

(As a dead white male, that's amusing. Just shows how culture affects
outcomes.)

~~~
Glyptodon
Does this mean 98% of the students meeting guaranteed UC admission thresholds
are Asian or is that something California did away with? (IE ~98% of the top
9% however that's defined I think.)

~~~
CallOfTheWilde
This only applies to the "least elite" UC schools (Merced and Riverside, or
perhaps just Merced at this point).

------
dcolkitt
This specific ruling at the lower court is mostly inconsequential. DOJ will
immediately appeal, and I don't think anyone doubts for a second that it will
ultimately be decided by SCOTUS.

~~~
larrik
I didn't think the DOJ was involved here?

~~~
favorited
It's absolutely hilarious that the person you're replying to is so sure what's
going to happen next without even knowing who the plaintiff is.

~~~
dcolkitt
Quit being pedantic. The DOJ is openly backing the lawsuit.

[https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/harvard-race-
affirm...](https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/01/harvard-race-affirmative-
action-admissions-015815)

------
zhugeIiang
I propose creating a school that only looks at quantitative measures, gives a
single test once a year that is grueling in mathematics, science, logic,
reading, and writing. They just pick the top x-percentile of students. If
there is a tie, students are picked randomly. We can call it the HackerNews
Academy.

~~~
pnako
That would be Ecole Polytechnique (or indeed all engineering schools in
France).

------
ummonk
This ruling was expected. The judge had been stalling on making a ruling to
make it take time to work its way through the appeals courts and get to the
Supreme Court where the policy might actually get ruled unconstitutional.

~~~
thrill
Unlikely to be ruled unconstitutional with the current makeup of the Supreme
Court. A case brought against the University of Texas in 2016 ruled 4-3
basically the same way, with one justice recusing and another justice had died
and not yet been replaced.

~~~
gnicholas
Really? Kennedy is gone and was replaced by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was in the
majority (pro-AA) in the 2016 case, and I would venture to guess (based on
nothing more than the discussions in the legal circles I'm in) that Kavanaugh
would not be as friendly to affirmative action as Kennedy was.

If I were a betting man, I'd put the odds north of 2:1 that this will be
overturned if the current SCOTUS sees it.

~~~
thrill
Kagan, an Obama nominee, skipped the Texas case. I think it'd be ruled the
same way this time.

~~~
gnicholas
I would guess it would be 5-4 against Harvard, with Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh,
Gorsuch, and Roberts in the majority. Which one of these would you have ruling
in favor of Harvard's AA plan?

~~~
thrill
I believe Roberts would vote with Harvard.

~~~
gnicholas
The same Justice Roberts who said: " _The way to stop discrimination on the
basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race._ "?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Involved_in_Community_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parents_Involved_in_Community_Schools_v._Seattle_School_District_No._1)

~~~
thrill
Yep - I believe he will wordsmith it to use words like "race-conscious"
instead of "race-discrimination" and vote with Harvard.

------
dbjacobs
I think its clear that Harvard's selection process is more about predicting
(and admitting) those who will be successful than those who are most deserving
(by some definition of deserving). This is how they increase their brand's
value. I'm not sure how you realign an institutions incentive's to change this
priority.

~~~
oarabbus_
It's pretty clear that Harvard's selection process is more about letting in
wealthy and legacy students. This population tends to be more successful in
life.

~~~
opportune
Elite institutions need to juggle a few responsibilities:

They need to let in the children of the ultra wealthy for the status symbol,
money, and networking for students.

They need to let in the children of high paying donors (not always the same
group as above) for the money.

They need to let in a lot of smart students to give legitimacy to the above
groups and create new families of donors.

They need to have a demographic profile that roughly approximates the US
demographic profile to not appear racist. They also need to have a balanced
gender ratio, not overly favor a single region, etc.

They want to have a balanced class, i.e. not everyone studying computer
science and economics, people who can play trombone, people for the Fencing
team.

You can argue that it's basically all about giving legitimacy and prestige to
the ultra donors and wealthy, but it's also about introducing high-achieving
people from less privileged backgrounds to those from more privileged
backgrounds in the hope that you will get new generations of wealthy donors.

~~~
oarabbus_
>They need to have a demographic profile that roughly approximates the US
demographic profile to not appear racist. They also need to have a balanced
gender ratio, not overly favor a single region, etc.

I don't think this is true of any Ivy League institution (that the racial
demographics mirrors that of the nation). The gender ratio and "regionality"
are well-balanced, however.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
IMO the smoking gun for racism is this:
[https://imgur.com/IeJeUDw](https://imgur.com/IeJeUDw)

Asians have the highest "personality" scores among alumni interviewers who
meet with the applicants and the lowest "personality" scores among admissions
officers who don't.

------
ikeboy
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".

~~~
underpand
I always thought that it was illegal for private organizations to racially
discriminate. I know it is illegal for them to racially discriminate for
employment. Is discriminating against customers/users (students in this case)
fair game?

~~~
ikeboy
It's illegal in many contexts under federal law if the business is a "public
accommodation". It's not unconstitutional. It may be against state laws in
other contexts as well.

Note the title here and at NPR originally said that the Judge said it was
constitutional.

------
cpr
What they should have been examining is why "legacy" (read: people who have
already donated, or are likely to donate seriously to Harvard) candidates are
so favored...

(Speaking as an old Harvard alum ('76).)

~~~
wendyshu
Does it really need an explanation?

------
thowthisaway
So we use tell the kids to study hard, get good grade and test well in the
SAT/ACT. What exactly do we tell them now? How exactly do you tell a kid to be
"awesome"?

~~~
ngngngng
My kid is mixed race so he can check whatever is fashionable at the time on
his college applications.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
My kid is also, unfortunately, he probably isn’t going to get many advantages
from either white or asian.

------
gist
What is interesting about this entire issue and the discussion is this. It's
what I will call the 'Sophia Loren without a nose is not Sophia Loren'
paradox.

If you have a University like Harvard and you have it whereby students are
admitted strictly on merit and further if you have more people than can be
accommodated by merit then is it still Harvard?

If you have a celebrity that is admitted to Harvard (or any 'top' school) is
it possible that that person provides more or a better experience in some way
to other students then someone who was raised or related to a less notable
person?

Pretend for a second you attend school with the daughter of a US President or
the son of the head of a major corporation. Do you think that that would
provide in itself benefits to other students than in the environment they were
raised in? Indirectly in some way?

------
ridaj
What I don't get is, what happens if you don't declare a race, or declare
"Other", during admission? Why wouldn't Asian candidates do that?

~~~
aquadrop
I don't understand why do you even have to declare a race during admission?
Does it happen in all US universities?

~~~
chelmzy
Yes. You have to claim your race when applying for just about anything now.

------
zhugeIiang
Stuyvesant used to have 13% African American students in the 1970s, matching
the overall population. The test system didn't change, but the African
American demographics in Stuyvesant dropped to 1%. Does this mean that the
impacts of discrimination increased over time?

------
shiado
I find it quite funny that the judge donated to Elizabeth Warren in 2012, a
candidate who infamously listed herself as Native American on her Harvard
affirmative action forms. The solution is clear. Just lie about your race.

------
abhisuri97
Yeah. Reading the opinion, it looks like SFFA only could make an argument via
statistics and it failed to establish how those statistics related to reality.
About 20-30 pages of the opinion are about comparing and contrasting Card and
Acidiacono and honestly...it seems to me that both models are just
inconclusive. Neither ends up taking into account what goes through the mind
of an admissions officer and leaves out (what are arguably) critical
components in an applicant's profile. In general, it does not seem there is a
way for us to point to statistics and say "look...this is discrimination"
there are human factors involved that are too complex (whether that be school
support ratings, racial biases of interviewers/admissions officers, or just
luck of the particular application cycles we have data on). I'm unsure whether
the supreme court would take this case on...there doesn't seem to be much here
that SFFA could argue in its favor.

~~~
underpand
The difficulty of arguing the case is by design of Harvard Admissions and it's
very problematic. The point of holistic admissions is to make it almost
impossible to prove discrimination even if it clearly exists.

------
JumpCrisscross
Does anyone have a link to the opinion?

~~~
edflsafoiewq
[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX-
KTEl/view)

------
dba7dba
I am readying stories about legacy admissions. Let me tell you about a little
conversation I had about legacy admission to IvyLeague/Stanford.

A family I know (both mom/dad are children of immigrants) had a kid who got
into Harvard and/or Stanford. (not specifying which one to protect identity).
Both parents went to public college for undergrad and then went to top school
for law/medicine.

Their kid went through K-12 in private school.

When their child got into the top college for undergrad, I asked how many from
that same high school got into the top Harvard/Stanford.

Mom said 3 got into that college.

And later, dad said 6 from the high school got into same college, and
mentioned 3 out of 6 were legacy admissions.

As far as the mom was concerned, the legacy admissions didn't even count as
real admittance. :)

------
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.

~~~
lozenge
Because life sucked for black people in the 60s and they managed to change the
law?

~~~
zarro
I don’t see how that has anything to do with forcing a private institution
into serving customers it doesn’t want to.

The argument is: Imagine you and a friend have a private tutoring business.
You should be able to have the freedom to pick whatever customers you want,
your not a slave, your not obligated to provide a service for someone if you
don't want to. Over time if there is demand for private tutoring that you and
your friend aren't willing to meet, there will be others who will provide that
service because there is profit in it.

~~~
lozenge
Your laissez faire approach was tried and it didn't work. For example, the
backlash from white customers and suppliers could be enough to make it "not
worth it after all". Only when the law made private businesses treat all
customers equally regardless of race, could outcomes begin to equalise.

Just like we require certain minimum wages and environmental laws, disallowing
racist behaviour in businesses is just something that the government can and
should impose on commerce.

------
lsh123
As a private company, Harvard can have any admission process it wants.
However, it should have zero federal or state grants if their admission
process is using race (or gender, or ...) as part of the decision.

------
WomanCanCode
Disappointing ruling. This will encourage other universities to discriminate
in the admission process however they see fit as long as they claim to use
'diversity' as a measure.

------
NTDF9
I wonder what judges and people would think if Asians started an Asian
majority/conscious university?

To me this seems like a slippery slope.

------
chicob
Non-American here.

I have never witnessed the dynamics of reparation policies. The closest thing
we have in Portugal, if it could be so called, is the Jewish Law of Return, a
bureaucratic shortcut for granting Portuguese nationality to descendants of
15th and 16th century Portuguese Jews that were forced to flee the country,
escaping persecution.

In Portugal, the concept of race has been recognized _on the fly_ , and only
in terms of the Constitutional Rights of citizens in the case of
discrimination. This might change in the near future. As such, I follow this
subject in American politics and news, since the USA are an obvious case-
study.

As I see it, the fact that the concept of race is meaningless in
anthropological terms, as informative as it can be, is not helpful in fighting
prejudice in general or racism in particular. A bit like explaining basic
geometry to a flat-earther: in most cases, it is pointless. On the other hand,
it seems to me that acknowledging the dynamics of the division of people by
racial categories (self-reported or not) is a dead end, and one that might
betray its very purpose.

At best, this strategy will sustain the social conscience of the issues of
race, without eroding the poisonous constructs associated with it. As in other
areas of discrimination, like gender, strategies that favour outcome in
detriment of opportunity might have some value to it, as this is a kind of
social bailout that could just work. In some European countries, positive
discrimination works only as a temporary exception.

But unlike social concepts like gender, or nationality, whose fundamental
aspects are less troublesome (there being, as far as I know, no equivalent of
transgenderness in race) or whose arbitrariness (like geography) can be
critically questioned in different fora, race has the problem of been deep
rooted in physical appearance and prejudice.

I don't see how a humanist society can deal in a meaningful way with such a
stratification without risking to reinforce racist preconceptions. Am I
missing something?

------
AlexCoventry
Anyone got a link to a pdf of the judge's decision?

------
rongenre
Clearly the university business is ripe for disruption.

------
dmak
Isn't there a more fundamental issue? The category "Asian-American" is too
broad and covers so many people.

------
droithomme
This has been true since the 1978 Bakke decision. Judge is only upholding
clearly established SCOTUS precedent.

------
40acres
Unfortunately this is bigger than Harvard and the Asian American students are
'collateral damage'. Fundamentally, the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow
permeates every facet of American life, education especially. You can't fix
hundreds of years worth of discrimination without tipping the scales in a way
that seems discriminatory to others, seems like the Judge in this case
understands that.

~~~
pyronik19
I'm sorry, is this a judge or a legislator? I don't think their job is to
"fix" anything. If the government is going to discriminate against me over my
skin color I want to be able to hold them accountable at the ballot box.

~~~
40acres
The legal basis behind affirmative action, which is the means by which we
"fix" these things, has been challenged many times. This case is simply a
reaffirmation of the principle.

------
ehmaybe
Should the goal be to achieve parity with global demographics instead?

It seems without some sort of control the worlds most prestigious universities
would only admit the wealthiest from the most populous regions - meaning
white, Chinese and Indian students, no?

------
baggy_trough
Absolute madness. Of course they discriminate against Asians.

~~~
tasogare
Somehow racism is fine when it’s targeting Asians and Whites.

------
Invictus0
Where can I read the decision? Article is paywalled.

Edit: here it is:
[https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.165519/...](https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.165519/gov.uscourts.mad.165519.672.0_2.pdf)

~~~
moate
[https://www.npr.org/2019/10/01/730386096/federal-judge-
rules...](https://www.npr.org/2019/10/01/730386096/federal-judge-rules-in-
favor-of-harvard-in-admissions-case)

Also links to an SC case that will likely be cited should they decide to take
up this one (which seems unlikely IMHO).

~~~
dang
We changed the URL to that from [https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-
determines-harvard-s-race...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-determines-
harvard-s-race-conscious-admissions-policy-is-
constitutional-11569958184?mod=rsswn), which is hard-paywalled.

------
jletienne
i'm interested if wealth is an omitted variable here. how does a 10k increase
in household income effect probability of acceptance.

------
nybsop
if society's intuitions began instituting racist rules like this, would
everyone have to become racist just to compete?

------
growlist
Interested to know: are there any hard numbers that define when we will have
achieved egalitarian nirvana?

------
user982
"Race-conscious" is a handy euphemism.

~~~
crazygringo
It's not though. Although you may disagree, in common usage when referring to
policy that affects groups:

"Racism" is continuing to disadvantage a group that is already at a
disadvantage -- blatantly unfair.

A "race-conscious" policy seeks to give advantage to a group that is at a
disadvantage, which necessarily will disadvantage a group that is at an
advantage. In this thinking, once the disadvantage goes away, then the policy
can go away too.

Even if you disagree with race-conscious policies, conflating them with racism
is disingenuous.

~~~
hdfbdtbcdg
Racism is discrimination on the grounds of race.

Stop re-inventing language.

------
Meekro
Others here have pointed out, quite correctly, that this ruling follows a long
string of precedents. But with the new conservative majority on the Supreme
Court, I wouldn't be surprised if we see affirmative action knocked down in
the next few years.

Fisher v UT (2016) gave us a look at where the justices stand, and the three
most conservative justices at the time (Roberts, Alito, Thomas) wanted to
strike down UT's affirmative action policy. If the new conservatives (Gorsuch
and Kavanaugh) join them, we could have a new majority that believes
affirmative action at a public college is always unconstitutional.

------
dhairya
So a couple of disclaimers. I used to work at Harvard as an institutional
research analyst (this was about 3ish years ago). My group worked closely with
collecting and analyzing institutional data to advise senior leaders in
strategic decision making and policy. Our group provided some of due diligence
analysis when the lawsuit first surfaced. I personally didn't work directly
with the lawsuit, but I was around those conversations.I also did work on the
preliminary demographic analysis for the Inclusion and Belonging Taskforce
([https://inclusionandbelongingtaskforce.harvard.edu/](https://inclusionandbelongingtaskforce.harvard.edu/)),
which emerged around the same time as the lawsuit was gaining traction.

I just wanted to offer some observations from my time there.

1\. Admissions at Harvard is actually more competitive than most folks
realize. There was a running joke that Harvard was moving towards a 0%
acceptance rate. With the common app, Harvard has seen an increase in
applications every year but the amount of seats available is fixed (~2,000).
This year it was about 43,000 applications. That number of available seats is
not quite that. The Dean of College has a reserved set of seats that he use at
his discretion. There's a set of reserved seats for athletic scholarships. So
the actual number smaller of available seats is smaller.

2\. Each application is looked at least twice. The entire admissions
department locks itself away for about 2 weeks and reviews all the
applications. Each officier is responsible for a geographic area and each
application is reviewed by 2-3 different officers and scored using an internal
rubric. The rubric counts many factors (some of which is discussed in the
lawsuit). After meeting a few of the admissions officiers, I have a lot of
empathy and respect for them. They were all kind, considerate and very patient
folks.

3\. I can't speak too much what goes into the admission selection
(confidentiality) but there are many factors that play into it outside of just
grades and scores. It's worth noting that exceptional candidates are easier to
identify (Olympic athletes, students doing groundbreaking research, students
with amazing life stories), but they make up small portion of the applicants.
Most of the applicants are highly qualified (high test scores, gpa, extra-
curriculars) and if there wasn't a limited number of seats, would have been
admitted.

4\. The troubling narrative that surrounds around race-conscious admissions
policies is the implication that under-represented minorities would not meet
admissions standards. This is simply not true. Nearly all the students
considered for admissions (under represented minority or otherwise) were in in
atleast the 98% if not higher. They also had high GPAs and other factors. All
the students were very qualified and accomplished. I often wondered if you had
a lottery system, would that be better?

5\. The variation in SAT score at the upper end corresponds to very tiny
percentile differences. The difference between say a 1400 (95%) student and
1600 (99.9826%)is small and honestly (my view) meaningless.

6\. One of the interesting things I had to do was review the original case
literature on affirmative action. A theme that folks don't talk about is the
diversity is not just race/ethnicy that was actually considered in the case
law. Geographic diversity and social location do play into Harvard assemement.
And the underlying literature is fascinating. Cognitive development literature
shows college-age young adults are still developing their world views and
college is space where they will run into uncomfortable situations. When faced
with the choice of challenging their views or retreating to saftey of thier
lived experiences, diversity places a critical role. But not in the way might
think. Having others who different from you (not just race, but geography,
lived experiences and other factors) plays a significant role. So say you have
a student that goes to a local college with the same geographic makeup and
lived experiences as their highschool but is otherwise racially diverse, that
student is less likely to exposed to experiences that challenge thier world
views and help them develop.

7\. Harvard and really all other elite college's admissions policies are based
on scaricity and it seems outdated. I know the common argument is that
scarcity is what drives prestige but Harvard Business School literally allows
outsiders to buy their into its network. HBS has like 3 day executive
education programs that allow you to say you're an HBS grad and have access to
their alumni network for the small cost of 80k (yeah 80k for 3 days!).

Now Harvard's campus is pretty tiny and there is limited space, so that makes
sense from the on-campus perspective. But it also has the infrastructure to
allow students to attend remotely through its DCE program and Harvard X
courses. The stigma of continuing education aside (which is complicated and
often unfair), the university should open its traditional programs up. There
is precedent for this in the UK at top universities like Oxford, Cambridge,
and ICL all of which offer thier main degrees to remote students (of course at
price). And there's many problems with this suggestion (who gets access to on-
campus vs remote, pricing, fairness, etc) but it's something Harvard and
others like it should consider.

Sorry ended up being so long. Hopefully it provides some other views to
consider as you think about college admissions.

~~~
dnhz
> After meeting a few of the admissions officiers, I have a lot of empathy and
> respect for them. They were all kind, considerate and very patient folks.

I'd imagine that the admissions officers, many of them alumni of Harvard or
other elite schools, are bright and thoughtful. But I always wondered how they
deal with donor admits. "Mmmm, I'm doubtful about this Jared Kushner fellow,
but the Development Office has his application marked as a must-admit. Oh
well?"

> The difference between say a 1400 (95%) student and 1600 (99.9826%)is small
> and honestly (my view) meaningless.

If you mean the difference is meaningless (or at least small) when SAT score
is figured into the holistic appraisal of the applicant, then I might agree.
But I think there's a substantial difference in SAT-taking skill between a
1600 and a 1400. A 1600 means nearly 100% correct answers throughout the test.
Someone scoring 1600 knew all the necessary vocabulary, understood the reading
passages, and could handle all the math. Someone with a 1400 still could
deserve admission, but for excellence in other areas.

------
yucca_plant
The entire problem is that we categorize people into different buckets.
"White", "Black", "Asian", etc.

Admissions must be race blind. In general our society must be race blind.
"White" people were once Polish, Italian, German, etc. Yet these identities
have melted away over generations in large part because society did not and
does not actively reinforce these identities.

By forcing people into these buckets we reinforce the very divisions that we
want to overcome.

~~~
Miner49er
But people in the Black bucket are way behind economically because people in
the White bucket have been stealing from them for 100s of years, and the
people in the White bucket created the buckets in the first place to do the
stealing.

So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? The only
way is to either completely dismantle Capitalism, and start over with it or
something else again from scratch were everyone starts on even ground again,
and it never mattered what bucket people were in. The simpler option is to use
the buckets and say that people in the Black bucket get special benefits at
the cost of people in the White bucket to right the wrong that happened, and
this needs to continue until they're close to even again.

It's like if a friend steals money from you. The only way you're likely ever
going to fix that friendship is if the friend at the very least gives the
money back and apologizes. Pretending like it never happened isn't going to
work.

An additional thing is that you still have people using the buckets for their
benefit, or just because they don't know better. In order to counteract the
actions of those people, and recognize who's hurt by them, you have to also
use the idea of the "buckets".

~~~
AdrianB1
"So how do you make that right without continuing to use the buckets? "

2 wrongs don't make it right.

~~~
Miner49er
How is paying someone back for a crime a wrong?

~~~
AdrianB1
Who are you paying back to? The person who did the crime or some other people
based on similarities with the criminal? How about putting on the death row
everyone in the neighborhood of a murderer? This is your logic.

~~~
Miner49er
I'm saying that white people have inherited a lot of wealth at the cost of
black people. Wealth statistics clearly show this. The average black family is
10x poorer then the average white family. The stealing was done through Jim
Crow, slavery, red lining, etc.

If you inherit money that your parents stole, that money is taken away from
you by the police and given back to the person it was stolen from.

In this case, white people's ancestors stole from black people, and therefore,
white people should take responsibility for that and pay back black people
since they are still benefiting from that theft at the cost of black people
today who would have otherwise inherited the stolen wealth.

~~~
AdrianB1
"White people" is a vast generalization, it includes people that came in US
much later than the history you are talking about. How can you even consider
punishing them for something they did not do, just because they are the same
race as the people that did something bad a long time ago? This is racism in
the purest form.

~~~
Miner49er
Most (all?) of Europe benefited from colonialism and slavery, it wasn't just
America doing it.

------
nannePOPI
Reading about things like this I love the way we select people for university
in Italy. There is a written test, multiple-choice questions.

Those who score higher, pass. Yes, it sounds like a system that favors test
takers, but there are so many seats to take that if you don't score enough you
really don't deserve the place (I say this as a person who was never smart not
good at tests).

Nobody will consider anything else. Sadly, I've noticed a slight shift towards
a more american way of talking about things like race and sex, even in
universities, but I hope the legal system is strong enough to keep having
neutral admissions.

Our economy is already in a bad place, last thing we need is young people
being discriminated for anything but their ability to perform a task, even if
arbitrary.

~~~
tathougies
> There is a written test, multiple-choice questions

So we have this in the United States but it has been accused of being
discriminatory because the outcomes differ by race. You can't make this stuff
up people!

------
mrtweetyhack
Asians should just boycott Harvard. Overall quality of Harvard grads will drop
and Harvard will become nothing.

~~~
ARandomerDude
Imagine the uproar if you had instead said

> Whites should just boycott Harvard. Overall quality of Harvard grads will
> drop and Harvard will become nothing.

~~~
zhugeIiang
Why not both?

~~~
ARandomerDude
If by "why not both?" you mean "why aren't people outraged about both
comments?" then I agree completely. That's why I said what I did. People seem
to think racism against whites isn't racism. By reversing the roles, hopefully
it's more obvious that it's equally wrong.

------
umeshunni
Wow - this sets a bad precedent. This might now encourage companies to now
discriminate against Asias in hiring as well.

There are already murmurs in the Valley about how there are too many Asians in
tech.

~~~
munchbunny
Why do you think that? Discriminating by race for hiring is explicitly
illegal, so wherever it's happening, it's already happening despite the law.

~~~
javagram
Discriminating by race for college admissions is also explicitly illegal.
(Edit: see
[https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq43e4.html](https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/hq43e4.html)
)

The law only matters inasmuch as it can be enforced. If judges decline to
enforce the law when they believe it’s in the interest of diversity to
discriminate against a specific race like Asians, it could equally apply to
employment where similar diversity initiatives are taking root.

~~~
munchbunny
That's not true the way you claim it to be.

I just read the full decision, and there's a pretty decent number of citations
of existing case law discussing what does and doesn't count as discriminating
by race, specifically within the context of college admissions. It's in the
last 1/3 of the document after the findings of fact and discussions of
statistical analyses.

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX...](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1mzqBPL57yCRWHZGE7A6U6re3cGX-
KTEl/view)

You might disagree with the reasoning of the decision, but there's already
case law separating education from employment. Past that we get into slippery
slope territory that this decision specifically avoids.

~~~
javagram
My point is that case law vs an explicit statement of law is not the same.

Judges in the future may rule that tech companies can pass strict scrutiny if
they are discriminating against Asians in favor of other races, using similar
arguments to those in education law.

This area of law is slippery because the text of Federal civil rights law
doesn’t allow for discrimination, but case law (and arguably the original
intent of the law’s authors) does.

There is currently a large movement in favor of “diversity” programs in hiring
and I can see judges upholding them.

Absolutely reading the decision will be informative to everyone though.

------
rr-geil-j
This feels reminiscent of 'diversity hires' where females and/or members of
the LGBT+ community are preferred not because of competency/merit but to
improve a company's diversity metrics. Disclaimer: I haven't experienced this
myself. I only read/heard of these complaints from other people.

~~~
kache_
This ends up hurting females and L/G/B/T people in our industry because people
will have a preconception that they may have been hired for reasons other than
merit.

To bring it back to the article, imagine being a black harvard graduate.
People may judge you as lesser compared to asian harvard graduates, because
they know that you've been held to different standards, even if you had the
merit and deserved your placement in that university.

~~~
mywittyname
> people will have a preconception that they may have been hired for reasons
> other than merit.

Said people have those perceptions regardless.

~~~
wendyshu
Is there a study on this?

------
shadowgovt
Hacker Newsies employing all their training in computer engineering and
sciences to the questions of racial discrimination.

I, for one, cannot _wait_ for the n-gate summary of this thread. It'll be one
for the ages.

------
choiway
The issue of discrimination is real but the intent of this lawsuit is not as
honorable as you think. Check out the commentary online about the plaintiff,
Students for Fair Admissions, and their anti-affirmative action bias.

------
oh_sigh
Frankly, this is good for the plaintiffs, because they will almost certainly
be able to be heard at the Supreme Court, and the time is as right as any for
a reversal of race based standards based on the general composition of the
USSC.

------
akhilcacharya
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

~~~
tathougies
Indeed no one is entitled to go to Harvard, but Harvard is also not entitled
to federal research grants that are being funded by taxing Asian Americans
under the same laws as other Americans, so I guess we are at an impasse.

~~~
CobrastanJorji
Harvard's endowment is around $40 billion. They're awarded about $600M in
Federal grants per year. Though I'm sure they'd prefer to keep receiving them,
they'd be just fine without them. It seems like turning down Federal grants
and handling admissions as they like would satisfy everyone.

~~~
travisoneill1
The real money is paid directly to students through federal student loans and
then to the university.

~~~
tathougies
In order to qualify for the scholarship, a student must be attending a
university recognized by the federal government. You can't get a government
loan or aide to attend tathougies's super cool pottery school -- for good
reason. Some educational institutions are illegitimate.

And that is just scholarships. Harvard is a graduate institution, which means
the federal government also funds research projects at the graduate school
level.

~~~
travisoneill1
And I would argue that Harvard is also illegitimate as it practices racial
discrimination. Guess we'll see if the supreme court agrees.

------
40acres
When it comes to affirmative action cases like these people need to think a
bit deeper than Harvard or even race in general. This involves our own
collective notion of what is 'fair' and what is 'justice'.

I recently heard that the Spanish government is offering citizenship to a
subset of the Jewish population that was kicked out of Spain during the
Inquisition. Is this 'justice' for the descendants of those Jews? Is this
'fair' for migrants to Spain who have arrived legally but may be denied the
benefits of Spanish citizenship? Has your child ever stomped their feet and
crossed their arms when they perceived to be on the negative end of a 'fair'
or 'just' ruling by you? Is it fair to the spouse and child of someone who has
been committed of a crime that they are institutionalized? Is it fair to the
employees of WeWork that they won't get to exercise their shares because it's
CEO is a fraud?

