
Harvard University 'discriminates against Asian-Americans' - doppp
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44505355
======
jadedhacker
I think this may be true may be not, but it's a distraction. People are
fighting over Harvard's admissions process because it's one of the few
relatively sure pathways to exit poverty (or maintain wealth) and become a
"success".

I raise the question, why do elite Universities even have a right to exist? We
should make the public system free and excellent like in other countries. When
I meet international students and postdocs at ivys they think our system is a
travesty. People are "buying" degrees when in their country only the rich and
stupid have to do so. Furthermore, the undergraduate culture on campus is one
completely divorced from the rest of society and doused in unexamined
privilege.

Nationalize Harvard!

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Its a conundrum - does a Harvard degree bestow riches and success? Or do only
folks destined for riches and success, pass Harvard's induction process? Some
of both I suspect.

~~~
jadedhacker
Harvard sets itself up to always increase it's influence with business and
national leaders. Every decision they make should be seen through that lens.
That means that they'll attempt to induct meritorious freshmen, but will also
gladly accept the failsons and daughters of the hereditarily powerful.

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warent
Pretty inflammatory title. Should be changed to something like "Lawsuit
alleges Harvard discriminates against Asian-Americans"

~~~
atonse
Yes you're technically right that it's alleged, but again, I think the quotes
are sufficient. There's ample evidence of this, as shown in the unsealed
document that Harvard fought to keep secret.

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nostromo
[I can’t delete this comment so I’m blanking it out. I decided there’s
probably not a productive conversation to be had here. Apologies.]

~~~
mkempe
[Parent suggested more intrusive Federal control of employment decisions and
college admissions.]

There is a third, peaceful path. Keep the government's nose out of all
private, contractual relationships unless one party initiates the use of
force.

~~~
mkempe
This way _nobody_ is to initiate the use of force: neither individuals, nor
corporations, nor the State. What a revolutionary ideal... securing rights.

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temp-dude-87844
Thought experiment: if you made all admission decisions by lottery, by
randomly admitting a previously decided, fixed number of n applicants out of
all valid applications received, and the resulting cohort of admitted
individuals was later found to significantly differ in demographic composition
from both the local and nationwide composition of population, would that be
discriminatory? If not, would it at least be problematic? What if it differed
significantly from the demographic composition of the pool of all valid
applications received?

This case is very unfortunate, because it literally pits racial categories
against one another, and claims that Asian-Americans are being unfairly
disadvantaged by affirmative action applied to Hispanic and Black applicants,
whose likelihood of successful admittance is proportionally much higher, in
part due to their race. What's unusual is Asian-Americans apply to Harvard at
much higher rates that they occur in the population, which complicates the
math, and encourages some reflection about the roles of affirmative action,
e.g. whether it intends to counterbalance a pipeline shortfall, or improve
absolute outcomes among groups whose society-wide outcomes have lagged behind,
or to right past wrongs. These are questions worth asking among ourselves when
we see that in some cases, and when faced with the allocation of a limited
number of a resource (a chance for a Harvard education) to a large group of
people.

It's hard to avoid thinking that this may be an edge case of affirmative
action that was purpose-selected by this group to force the courts to consider
a larger issue.

~~~
CyberDildonics
I personally think that instead of organizations trying to show how diverse
they are, they should try to show off the neutrality and lack of bias in their
decision making process.

I think it's unfortunate that the response to countering discrimination has
been to discriminate in the opposite direction instead of working towards pure
meritocracy.

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sebleon
It’s reasonable for admissions to take into account your access to resources.
Growing up in a poor, single parent home is like going through life in “hard
mode”, and getting decent grades is impressive.

Sadly race is a good proxy for socio-economic background, and people get
treated differently depending on their skin color. Getting these different
perspectives in the class is a positive.

~~~
jfnixon
Using race as a proxy for "access to resources" or socio-economic background
is almost certainly a suboptimal idea in the 21st century. Geographic proxies
are probably better (think rural Appalachia or poor areas of Detroit), but
looking at parents' income tax returns is better still.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17320360)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17325778)

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cycrutchfield
Is there any evidence they are directly using race as a factor in admissions
and not factors that are strongly correlated with race, such as socioeconomic
status and region of the country where the applicant lives?

If you designed an admissions process that only tried to normalize for those
factors, would it also give the same appearance as being race biased as the
current Harvard admissions process?

Note that I am not bringing up the subjective “likability” factor from the
Harvard application process. Since it appears to be a subjective rating system
it should probably be addressed separately.

~~~
Alex3917
> Is there any evidence they are directly using race as a factor in admissions
> and not factors that are strongly correlated with race, such as
> socioeconomic status and region of the country where the applicant lives?

I can't speak to how Harvard works specifically, but from what I've seen
elsewhere if you're an underrepresented minority your application will get
flagged and go through a different process where they take a deeper look into
your background. For a white applicant who isn't a recruited athlete or
flagged for any other reason, the admissions committee most likely makes a yes
or no decision in 3 - 5 minutes just based on your GPA, SATs, and reading the
first couple paragraphs of your essays. If your application gets flagged for
some reason (being an underrepresented minority, a recruited athlete, letter
from a big donor, etc.) then they'll actually take a deeper dive into your
background before making a decision.

The colleges also get their simulated US News rank updated a couple times per
day based on the GPA and SAT averages of students admitted so far, so what you
need in terms of basic stats can vary substantially depending on whether your
application gets read in the morning or afternoon.

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ausjke
Harvard being an all-left campus that claims supporting human rights and
opposing discrimination, is doing the exact opposite, how ironic, though not a
surprise.

hypocrisy, hypocrisy.

Being a private school you can do whatever you deem right, the problem is
that, when you lose honesty, you lose everything.

