
What Statistics Can't Tell Us in the Fight Over Affirmative Action at Harvard - huihuiilly
http://bostonreview.net/law-justice/andrew-gelman-sharad-goel-daniel-e-ho-what-statistics-cant-tell-us-fight-over
======
fromthestart
Somehow in the late 20th century we became so focused on nurture that we've
totally and irrationally come to disregard nature. This fallacious tabla rasa
thinking justifies the modern conflation between equality of outcome and
equality of opportunity, and leads to penalization of those who are better
able to achieve, ostensibly in the name of equality, and so called progress.

But the true outcome of failing to consider half of the achievement equation
is a regression toward incompetence, as we effectively hold back those who can
in a vain attempt to bring up those who cannot. All of society then suffers in
the name of a false, unattainable equality.

------
johnny313
> Qualitative grounding of statistical findings is important to avoid
> misleading conclusions; it is not enough to control for a factor in a
> statistical analysis without clarifying its role in admissions goals and
> educational objectives.

This is a crucial point. Contextually framing an analysis, and it's results,
is one of the most important parts of a project. In this case, it also forces
the question - what does it mean for an admissions process to be biased?

------
throwawaysea
> The personal ratings look different depending on who awards them: alumni
> interviewers or Harvard’s internal admissions staff. On average, alumni give
> white and Asian American applicants similar ratings, but Harvard staff give
> whites substantially better reviews than they give Asian Americans. For the
> alumni-assigned ratings, 50 percent of Asian American applicants and 51
> percent of whites were rated as having “very strong” or “outstanding”
> personal traits. But for personal ratings awarded by Harvard’s internal
> admissions staff, only 18 percent of Asian Americans were in the top group,
> compared to 23 percent of whites. White applicants received these top
> ratings about 30 percent more often than Asian Americans.

What would the response be either in mainstream media or social media or from
proponents of Affirmative Action policies, if African-American or Hispanic
applicants or other demographic groups (e.g. women) were given measurably
lower scores on personality traits Harvard rates like 'likability' or
'integrity' or 'helpfulness'?

------
scarejunba
It will be wholly unsurprising to me when fifty years from now we will talk
about the overt discrimination against Asian people in America. I’d expect to
read “Despite being highly educated, Asian Americans only held X positions of
note...”, “A pervasive culture of emasculation and fetishization of Asian
Americans was hidden by the fact that many of them were highly paid”,
“Explicit discrimination against Asian Americans on the grounds that subtle
factors revealed they were unfit for college admission was hidden under a
notion of ‘holistic’ admission”.

Boy! The sociologists of the future are going to have a field day. I can’t
wait. After all, back then college authorities said “most Jews are socially
untrained” and “the social characteristics of the Jews are peculiar”, and they
_did_ use precisely the same language about outside interests. We’re going to
look like complete morons for having bought this bullshit story college
authorities are selling.

Anyway, I leave you with an excerpt from Harvard President Lowell’s remarkable
letter from the 1920s extolling the virtues of quotas limiting Jewish
enrollment

> The anti-Semitic feeling among the students is increasing, and it grows in
> proportion to the increase in the number of Jews. If their number should
> become 40 per cent of the student body, the race feeling would become
> intense. When on the other hand, the number of Jews was small, the race
> antagonism was small also. . . . If every college in the country would take
> a limited proportion of Jews, I suspect we should go a long way toward
> eliminating race feeling among the students, and as these students passed
> out into the world, eliminating it in the community.

~~~
turtlecloud
It is because of America’s unwillingness to embrace the Asian Americans that
will cause them to lose future conflicts with Asia.

As of today, a large number of the Chinese PhDs are returning back to China to
develop technology there because they find the climate (social / political )
too apprehensive and demeaning.

------
paulsutter
Family connections as a form of merit, interesting!

> non-academic factors, including athletics, character, and family connections

Rural and elite students, but NOT children of engineers?

>Harvard’s open preference for... strong athletes and the children of alumni,
faculty, and donors... Harvard may, for example, favor students from rural
communities and disfavor the children of engineers.

~~~
sonnyblarney
The Eng. and Rural bit may simply be a matter of trying to spread the field.

Growing up in a rural area, 'Harvard' is just some place you hear about from
TV, few think they can get it. In a way it's kind of like economic classism,
but from a different angle.

As for 'family' ... Queen's U in Ontario does this because they think there is
value to that kind of coherence. I believe this to be true, at least to the
point wherein a Uni should be able to do this if they want. Obviously,
problems arise when it gets to elitism (!) but at face value there's something
to it.

It's a tricky subject no matter what. Admissions at Harvard has to be in some
ways one of the worst jobs in the world as I suggest they'll be right in the
middle of the culture wars from here on in.

------
sp527
What’s it going to look like if they ruled in favor of Jewish students as a
harmed class back in the day and then against Asians this time around? Should
Asians all get their skin bleached to not be abused in the elite college
admissions process? Should we get Anglo names, avoid Asian extracurriculars
and other indications of Asianness, and mark ourselves as White?

> Certain private universities, most notably Harvard, introduced policies
> which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted to the
> university. According to historian David Oshinsky, on writing about Jonas
> Salk, "Most of the surrounding medical schools (Cornell, Columbia,
> Pennsylvania, and Yale) had rigid quotas in place. In 1935 Yale accepted 76
> applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those applicants were Jewish and
> only five got in." He notes that Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions were
> remarkably precise: "Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian
> Catholics, and take no blacks at all."[15] As a result, Oshinsky added,
> "Jonas Salk and hundreds like him" enrolled in New York University
> instead.[16] Physicist and Nobel laureate Richard P. Feynman was turned away
> from Columbia College in the 1930s and went to MIT instead. See also Numerus
> clausus in the United States.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota)

Trigger warning: as an Asian, I don’t care about helping Black and Latino
people if it means hurting me, and especially when society has already chosen
not to exert equivalent unfair treatment on another race (and the optics are
especially not great when said race can be lumped in as ‘White’).

~~~
betterunix2
The argument for affirmative action is not simply that some groups were
historically disadvantaged by university admissions bodies. Some groups are
still put at a disadvantage long before they begin the college admissions
process (which is often compounded by the historical efforts to disadvantage
their parents). Some groups may never have been specifically targeted by
universities, but because of systematic repression elsewhere in society they
are unrepresented in some fields of study. There is also the general benefit
of having a diverse student body, so that people from different backgrounds
can bring different ideas, experiences, and ways of thinking with them to the
university, which benefits all students (regardless of why they were
admitted).

You do not have to agree with those points, but you should at least know what
it is that you are disagreeing with.

Also, as a Jew, I would rather not see minority groups using the history of
antisemitism as a wedge against other minorities. While everyone is arguing
about affirmative action, Harvard is admitting "legacy" students simply
because their parents happened to attend Harvard, which helps to lengthen the
effects of Harvard's discriminatory policies against earlier generations (to
the detriment of Jewish, Asian, Black, and Latino applicants).

~~~
fmajid
Studies show the grandchildren of Vietnam war draftees still suffer an
economic hit 2 generations later, so it’s unsurprising slavery casts a pall to
this day.

“Diversity” in elite colleges is a scam, essentially rich urban whites
throwing poor rural whites under the bus to give themselves a good conscience.
Most of the “African-American” candidates have either one white parent of are
of Caribbean origin, not the descendants of slaves, and the bonus for them is
not means-tested. Don’t expect to find many kids from inner-city ghettoes or
the barrio there.

It’s easy to get statistics on racial diversity at US universities but getting
numbers on socio-economic diversity is like pulling teeth. SFFA’s suggestion
to give a bonus to poor students has a lot of merit, but of course it would
upset the elite apple cart at Harvard, which is why they resist it so
strenuously.

~~~
sp527
It should be noted that if admissions were perfectly race blind and did
(rightfully) correct for financial means, you would likely still end up with
more poor Jews and Asians in the student body than Blacks and Hispanics. And
that is why they don’t do it. Because it still wouldn’t give them the pretty
superficial picture of diversity they’re looking for. The uncomfortable truth
here is that they’re using a coarse-grained and super messed up attribute
(race) to correct for a problem that goes much deeper than pure economic
disparities.

------
whatshisface
I will pass by all of the obvious things that could be said to arrive at the
following hot take: whether or not Harvard is using them as cover to
discriminate, "holistic qualities" do actually exist. There is definitely an
aspect to human value that goes beyond lists of achievements, I have known
some terrible people that were extremely accomplished and some great people
that had coasted through highschool mostly paling around. In fact, the best
people I have known consistently focus on the aspects of life that aren't
measurable: to pick one random example, the quality of their relationship with
their parents. Someone who sacrifices all of those things could ruin
themselves in the pursuit of greatness, and we don't want to make that a
necessary precondition for admission to a good school. The fact that objective
"facts of record" are harder to abuse than just about anything else should not
trick us in to eliminating everything but numbers from our society out of fear
of abuse.

~~~
SerialOwl
And of course it's just a coincidence that these "holistic qualities" happen
to be found more frequently in some races than others?

~~~
sonnyblarney
Maybe not even a coincidence!

Maybe extremely high SAT and grades are correlated with poor 'holistic'
qualities such as social skills, communication, leadership, creativity, 'round
character' (i.e. athleticism, disposition, generosity, musicianship).

 _I 'm not saying they are_ \- I'm saying it wouldn't really surprise me if
they were, and then we have to think about it a little bit!

It's a tricky subject no doubt.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Maybe extremely high SAT and grades are correlated with poor 'holistic'
> qualities such as social skills, communication, leadership, creativity,
> 'round character' (i.e. athleticism, disposition, generosity,
> musicianship)._

If that were so, it would affect members of all ethnicities who had the same
high SAT scores and grades equally.

~~~
sonnyblarney
Good point, but those 'other qualities' may not be distributed very evenly
among the remaining applicants. This is an ugly problem to have. I don't envy
anyone in this situation.

------
Causality1
University applications should not contain any data such as race, name,
gender, or place of origin that would allow the university to discriminate for
or against the applicant based on their genetics.

We've decided as a nation to outlaw discrimination based on race, gender,
sexual orientation, or national origin. We should fucking act like it. If the
Asian kid down the street who spent five hours a night studying gets into
Harvard and I don't, that's the way it should be.

~~~
wycs
When this is tried, it does not output ideologically-pleasing student
demographics. Presumably because all objective tests of merit are hopelessly
biased.

Caltech is such a school. And its population is largely largely Asian and
Jewish, both demographics Harvard has a history of discriminating against.

I am sure Caltech’s administration is considered hopelessly reactionary, but
their graduates have the highest number of Nobel prizes per capita. But again,
what sort of merit does a Nobel prize prove? Look at the demographics of the
winners.

~~~
ForHackernews
Caltech is an unusually focused school. If your only goal is to churn out
future STEM PhDs, admitting based on an objective math test is probably not a
bad approach.

Harvard's goal, traditionally, has been to [re]produce the ruling class of
America, and their admissions criteria are geared accordingly.

~~~
trhway
as a math grad myself i wish the ruling class consisted of Caltech and similar
math/physics/other "real" sciences graduates :)

~~~
wycs
See Singapore for such a country.

------
honkycat
It's all a joke. Legacy students make up 30%[0] of the Harvard student body.
The best way to get into Harvard will always be money, everybody else is just
fighting over the scraps.

Edit: This number is incorrect. Legacy student acceptance rate is 30%, 5 times
the alternative. The number of legacy students PRESENT at Harvard is closer to
15%

~~~
goler
“Today, according to Harvard, legacy students make up around 14 percent of the
undergraduate population.”

[https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-
admissions-o...](https://www.npr.org/2018/11/04/663629750/legacy-admissions-
offer-an-advantage-and-not-just-at-schools-like-harvard)

~~~
betterunix2
Which is 14 percent more than they should make up, at least if we are going to
pretend that Harvard is interested in any reasonable standard of admissions. I
understand the arguments for diversity in the student body; legacy admissions
work against that goal. I understand the arguments for a strictly objective
standard; legacy admissions work against that goal too.

~~~
nugget
Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary, wouldn’t we expect legacies to be
over-represented in any meritocracy that partially selects for such a trait? I
don’t think Harvard is a pure meritocracy, it’s more of a theoretical
question.

~~~
lawrenceyan
> Given that IQ seems to be >50% hereditary,

You're kidding right? That is such a painfully incorrect statement.
Intelligence is an incredibly complex hugely conserved trait. Bloodlines and
power/intellect passed down through the generations is a great fantasy novel
setting, but not so much for reality.

~~~
wycs
You are just
wrong:[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ)

I know it is ideologically uncomfortable but this is a fact you will have to
get used to. Cognitive genomics is coming. The undeniable is becoming
laughable to deny.

~~~
lawrenceyan
Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have
no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good
education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get
the same education for example. But these are different than the pure genetics
by themselves. The Wikipedia article you link to yourself highlights the
importance of how it defines the meaning of "heritability" that I think you
should take a closer look at.

I'm sure at some point in the future, we will be able to genetically engineer
our children to be smarter. Yet this is still a completely different idea
compared to the paired mating of people which has currently been proposed.
Intelligence is something that is incredibly complex, and humans are likely
very close if not already at its peak within some local maxima.

~~~
wycs
>Have you considered the possibility that confounding variables exist? I have
no doubt that coming from a family where your parents have received a good
education makes it much more likely for you to personally also go on to get
the same education for example.

Yes.

If you read the citations you will see this is based on twin adoption studies,
which control for confounding variables almost perfectly.

I assure you, ever single objection you can think of off the top of your head
has been raised and overcome.

The heritability of IQ is not a conclusion psychologists wanted to affirm. It
is fact the field was forced to come to from the data, despite the ideological
drifts of the last 50 years yearning (or in the case of Stephen Jay Gould
outright falsifying data) for the opposite conclusion.

~~~
lawrenceyan
Psychology is a field notorious for being derided against as a soft science
particularly because of how little data exists with poor sample sizes and
ideology / purposeful tampering coming into the way like you've said.

Any meaningful evidence for a conclusion requires a much better understanding
of the brain both biologically and also as a function of general cognition.
This will require many more breakthroughs within the fields of biology and
computer science. We're definitely getting closer and closer everyday on that
front, but as of right now, the tools that we have access to are far too crude
in my honest opinion.

Psychology in that respect is akin to the alchemy that was a precursor to
chemistry. I'm not saying no real science was done by the alchemists of
course, just that it was far and away from what the field of chemistry would
ultimately become.

~~~
wycs
I sense this is a lost cause, but we can already predict ~10 percent of the
variance in educational attainment with the genome alone.

Once we get data sets with millions of genomes tagged with their donors IQ,
this number will rise. If we can predict, say, 60% of the variance in IQ
(based on the genome alone) will you change you mind?

That is, what sort of data would change your mind?

[https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-018-0147-3)

~~~
lawrenceyan
Again, I'm not trying to dispute the fact that genes are the blueprints to our
bodies.

The point I'm making is in regards to the OP's comment about how people coming
from legacy will be much higher due to the fact that smart people reproducing
with other smart people greatly increases the chances of producing a resultant
smart baby. Random variation has much greater effect in determining the end
result of that baby's genome is what I'm saying. You could have paired the
person with almost any other human being, and the resultant IQ outcome would
be no less likely to occur.

Only through concerted effort to discover and understand how the brain is
constructed genetically in addition to developing methodologies for testing
changes to those key markers will it be possible to meaningfully alter the
statistics of intelligence. Anything else will be lost in the noise primarily
because of, again, what I stated above. Intelligence of humans is likely
already very close to some local maxima and it is also a highly conserved
trait.

~~~
nugget
I used to believe everything you’ve stated until I dove into the twin studies,
and more recently the GWAS data from Europe. Read the literature yourself with
an open mind and you may be surprised. Ironically, as society has become more
environmentally equal, ie the decline of lead, pollution, and clinical
malnourishment, Nature has pulled even further ahead of Nurture, because it’s
much easier to remove IQ points than to add them.

