Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

This is obviously a controversial topic, and I have mixed feelings.

The bottom line (for me) is that diversity at universities and other organizations is either good, neutral, or bad. We've (mostly?) collectively agreed diversity is good as diversity in sex/age/race bring diversity in thought, which presumably results in more innovation/competition/challenging of status quo/etc. The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities...

Either that or universities need to dedicate a large amount of funding marketing to minorities so that they get more competitive applicants from said group. However, discrimination is easier and cheaper to implement.

I think Harvard should be 10x bigger than it is. Why can't we have that? This needn't be zero-sum.

Because there is potentially merit in having institutions that are concentrated with the most talented. Not that it necessarily works out that way in practice, but 10x would entail lowering admission standards.

>The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities...

That's kind of like saying, "I can either take money out of my wallet or put it in the cashier's hand."

Or allowing people who are equally as qualified get in? My understanding is the issue is capacity and not quality.

The value of Harvard is in its exclusivity. If they just let anyone in over some SAT/GPA cutoff then the value of a Harvard diploma drops.

The value of a brand is derived from its exclusivity. If you making 10x bigger, then a degree from there won’t be as valuable.

I’m not saying that is right, but most exclusive colleges do brand management based on exclusivity.

> "The only way to increase diversity is to practice negative discrimination on dominant groups or positive discrimination on minorities..."

Uh, are you saying that Asian-Americans are a dominant group and not a minority? If so, a lot of us would have something to say about that...

Qualification is a continuum, there is no such thing as "equally as qualified." Regardless, if Harvard accepted 50% of applicants rather than 5%, the student body would not be equally as qualified.

The number of people “qualified” to go to Harvard is probably more than 10x the current capacity of Harvard, though. Maintaining scarcity/exclusivity in the brand is more valuable than servicing the number of people technically qualified to go there, from Harvard’s perspective.

Yes, but many of those people choose to go to other prestigious schools. If Harvard admitted 50% of applicants, I don't see how you can claim quality wouldn't suffer.

> diversity at universities and other organizations is either good, neutral, or bad

That phrasing suggests there isn't a tradeoff involved. Instead: diversity is either more important than, equally important to, or less important than avoiding discrimination.

> We've (mostly?) collectively agreed

Back when I took Justice (the class at Harvard), one week's homework involved a mandatory online poll and debate about affirmative action. Opinions were split 50/50 for and against. My own strategy was to pick the (slight) underdog and argue for it -- and evidently others were doing the same thing, because the poll kept bouncing between 49/51 and 51/49.

So no, I don't think we have collectively agreed, even though the administration certainly likes to pretend that we have.

i think by dominant group s/he likely meant over-represented group

I think OP means they are dominant in performance, which would lead to "over representation" if that was the only admissions factor.

That's just as bad. As the paper notes, these Asian-Americans have justly earned their representation through demonstrated capability and hard work and they are being deprived of it.

The problem is that we have also (mostly) agreed that discrimination is bad. In the case of discrimination being bad, we had a massive civil rights movement, and enshrine the notion into constitutional law.

Much of the success of the civil rights movement occurred on the legal front, with a strategy based heavily on fighting against discrimination.

In the case of diversity being good, we (or at least some circles of us) have a general sense that it is good, but no where near the cultural (or legal) momentum behind the notion.

It used to be the case that discrimination was so bad, that fighting against discrimination and fighting for diversity were nearly indistinguishable. Because of how much progress we have made on those fronts, the two camps now realize that they did not actually have the same goal in mind and are now starting to become opposed to each other.

I do not think that either camp has fully internalized this new reality yet, so still assumes that the old coalition all belongs to their camp.

I should also mention that discrimination in collage admissions (in the form of affirmative action) is one of the textbook examples of when we decided that discrimination was justifiable in the name of diversity under some circumstances.

> "I think OP means they are dominant in performance, which would lead to "over representation" if that was the only admissions factor."

"Other admissions factors" sounds rather similar to Harvard's tactics used to keep out excessive Jewish applicants in the 1920s (https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/harvard-s-jewish-proble...) because they were earning too many seats because of their performance as well, doesn't it?

Diversity isn’t necessarily always good, even if this is treated like gospel these days. For example in less diverse societies it’s often true that there is more trust between people [0] and that can provide several benefits like more safety or perhaps a stronger social contract.

I do wonder if there has ever been any peer reviewed scientific proof that diversity does indeed bring the benefits you mention. Personally I think in an institution like a university it’s best to just bring the brightest minds together, that’s probably more effective than filtering people based on race, gender, etc...

—

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/05/world/americas/05iht-dive...

Makes you wonder if OP would say the same about the NBA?

Darryl Morey (Houston Rockets) said one of the reasons he didn’t draft Jeremy Lin is because he’s Asian, despite Lin meeting all his criteria.

Same reason why clubs want to be exclusive and keep a long line of non-VIPs outside waiting to get in.

I claimed no such thing :D

You said that they should admit 10x. Presumably that would mean 50% rather than 5%. I think quality would go down, you said it wouldn't. Seems clear cut to me.