Does Harvard Discriminate Against Asian-Americans? The Trump Administration Is Looking Into It.
On Monday, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice was seeking attorneys to work on "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions."
The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, "intentional race-based discrimination," cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.
Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.
At first, it looked like the DOJ initiative was intended to root out anti-white bias, but now the department says it's looking into discrimination against Asian-Americans — and specifically a case that sounds a lot like a lawsuit against Harvard. Here's what you need to know.
The DOJ Reportedly Bypassed Its Education Department To Launch The Initiative Scrutinizing Affirmative Action
The Washington Post reported that the initiative was being led by political appointees because career civil servants refused to participate in it.
Two people familiar with the internal discussions at the Justice Department's civil rights division said that the move came after career staffers who specialize in education issues refused to work on the project out of concerns it was contrary to the office's long-running approach to civil rights in education opportunities. As a result, political leadership within the department decided to run the effort themselves, these people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said.
You can read the full DOJ job description here.
The DOJ Now Says That It Is Looking Into A Single Complaint Of Discrimination Against Asian-Americans
At first, a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on the job listing. But after The New York Times and Washington Post reported on the initiative, a spokeswoman issued a statement claiming that the initiative was intended to investigate a single complaint of discrimination against Asian-Americans — a contradiction of the job listing itself, which cited "investigations."
A Justice Department spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores, said on Wednesday that news media reports about the investigation were "inaccurate." The department had refused to provide details about the project on Tuesday. Ms. Flores said the personnel announcement sought volunteers "to investigate one admissions complaint" filed on behalf of Asian-Americans who alleged racial discrimination in "a university's admission policy and practices." …
The DOJ's description of the "one admissions complaint" sounds a lot like a lawsuit filed against Harvard University in 2015.
Ms. Flores's statement described the investigation as an administrative referral about a complaint filed by 64 Asian-American coalitions in May 2015 and that "alleges racial discrimination against Asian-Americans in a university's admission policy and practices." That description dovetails with a dispute at Harvard University that led to a still-pending lawsuit filed on behalf of such students.
The Lawsuit Against Harvard Claims That It Uses Illegal Quotas To Deny Admission To Qualified Asian-Americans
The lawsuit charges that Harvard illegally uses a quota system to determine the proportion of different racial groups on campus. (Harvard denies using quotas.)
Despite being the country's fastest-growing minority group, and despite applying to college in greater and greater numbers, the percentage of Asians admitted at elite schools has, according to SFFA [Students for Fair Admissions], essentially flatlined over the last two decades. "That suggests that Harvard and the other Ivies have a hard-fast, intractable quota limiting the number of Asians that they will expect," said Edward Blum, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and the president of SFFA.
If the DOJ gets involved and finds that Harvard discriminates against white and/or Asian-American students, it could withhold federal funding from Harvard under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Architect Of The Lawsuit Against Harvard Has A History Of Fighting Affirmative Action
Blum, a conservative activist, runs a think tank called the Project for Fair Representation that recruits plaintiffs for lawsuits challenging affirmative action policies. Most famously, Blum's organization was behind white student Abigail Fisher's lawsuit against the University of Texas, which was resolved last year when the Supreme Court ruled that UT's race-conscious admissions policy was constitutional.
For more than two decades, Blum has been the architect of roughly a dozen lawsuits against affirmative action and race-based programs, part of his crusade to create a "color-blind" society. Since 2009, four of them have made it to the Supreme Court, and legal analysts believe Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University could join the list, perhaps as early as this year.
Plenty Of Asian-American Groups Support Affirmative Action And Oppose The Lawsuit Against Harvard
As Alia Wong explored in The Atlantic last year, most Asian-Americans don't actually oppose affirmative action.
In 2012, the National Asian American Survey found that three in four Asian Americans support affirmative action. The 2016 Asian American Voter Survey similarly found substantial support when it asked respondents, "Do you favor or oppose affirmative action programs designed to help blacks, women, and other minorities get better access to higher education?" A majority of respondents—64 percent—said they think it's a good thing, while just 25 percent said it's a bad thing…
More than 160 Asian American groups filed briefs in support of UT's affirmative-action program, representing organizations including (AAJC) and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund… Affirmative action, these supporters argue, benefits all Americans promoting the short- and long-term benefits of diversity.
Affirmative action continues to benefit Asian-Americans from certain underrepresented ethnic groups.
While not every Asian American subgroup remains underrepresented, many are for at least some schools, including Vietnamese, Thai, Lao, Burmese, Filipino, Hmong, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander students. Race-conscious admissions policies give school officials the latitude to take into account the unique experiences of these individuals.
The Justice Department's Initiative Reflects White Trump Voters' Concerns About Racism Against Whites
Hardcore Trump supporters overwhelmingly believe that whites are "losing out" to minorities, and the DOJ's inquiry into "reverse discrimination" looks like an attempt to appeal to Trump's base — even if they claim they are only concerned about Asian-Americans.
For a Republican Party still searching for consensus in the Trump era, Sessions's moves signal that the administration is embracing the base during a time of turbulence and tension, with heavy attention being paid to the concerns of the white voters who lifted Trump into the presidency…
A Washington Post-ABC News poll last year showed 44 percent of registered voters who supported Trump saw "whites losing out because of preferences for blacks and Hispanics" as a bigger problem than minorities "losing out."
Meanwhile, Harvard's Incoming Freshman Class Is The First Majority Nonwhite Class In The College's History
Of the freshmen students admitted to Harvard this year, 50.8 percent are from minority groups, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Native Hawaiians. That's up from 47.3 percent last year, according to the university…
Harvard admitted 22.2 percent of students who identified as Asians, about the same as last year.