Asian American Discrimination in Harvard Admissions [pdf]

The assumption underlying these arguments against Harvard's admission is that GPA/SAT scores represent merit and that any deviation from the distribution of GPA/SAT scores in admittance is unjust discrimination. But this is missing what is at stake for Harvard. Harvard wants to increase its prestige, and it does so by having future CEOs, Senators, and Presidents go to Harvard. But the distribution of potential leaders of society is not equal to the distribution of GPA/test scores past a certain point.

But this isn't even mostly about leadership potential. It's about the social environment that makes it so people with certain traits will more likely rise to leadership positions in society. Power concentrates not by merit, but through complex social and cultural factors, and race is very politically relevant. Existing institutions and cultural factors will favor a white Harvard graduate over an Asian graduate becoming a leader of some political institution. So in service to Harvard's goal of having the next generation of leaders in society go to Harvard, they are correct to bias their admissions towards whites (and blacks, hispanics, etc).

Did you read the paper?

What the hell kind of pathological justification is that? We are taking the absolution of institutions so far now days. Everything is absolved as ‘makes business sense’.

That's like saying that you won't hire black employees because your customers are racists who don't want to see n-words while they're shopping.

I made no moral claims in my post. My post was simply to establish the facts and motivations in the case that tend to get overlooked in these discussions. Whether or not institutions should be able to bias their admissions as to maximize certain outcomes, and what criteria for discrimination is justifiable, is what should be debated. These silly semantic arguments that try to paint the facts as racism against Asians or entirely innocent attempts at diversifying their student body are entirely unhelpful.

Sure, I recognize the analogy. But we have determined that economic services are sufficiently critical to override one's right to free association in the context of operating a business. The question is whether admittance to a private educational institution can justly discriminate in their admittance based on race (SCOTUS says yes, presumably with caveats), and what sort of justifications are acceptable. Are the racial biases inherent in society that influences life outcomes across demographics a justifiable criteria? I don't know. But the purpose of my comment was to highlight that this is what's at stake, and this is the debate we should be having.

> "But this is missing what is at stake for Harvard. Harvard wants to increase its prestige, and it does so by having future CEOs, Senators, and Presidents go to Harvard."

Well now, let's examine that.

-Do Asians not have renowned businesspeople and CEOs? The past and present CEOs of Toyota, Alibaba, Sony, Foxconn, Nintendo and other Asian corporate giants demonstrate that this is not true.

-Do Asians not have great heads of state and other statesmen? Naming any individual is likely to be contentious but it's clearly false say that Asia has had fewer great heads of state and politicians across its millennia of history than the West.

-Do Asian not have great minds, whether artistic, scientific, or otherwise? Judging by the STEM (e.g. TSMC, Sony) and artistic output (e.g anime) of Asia, no, that's self-evidently not the case as well.

Thus examined, there is no justification for the suggestion "future CEOs, Senators, and Presidents" are less likely to be Asian and so the above statement becomes apparent for what it is: an attempted justification for racism.

If anyone is still not persuaded: if a poster had attempted to make the same statement regarding _any_ other minority, gender, or religious group, ask yourself what would have happened to that post?

To be clear, the prestige of Harvard derives from being the institution that forces American political and business leaders.

So, you are suggesting that Asians' drive and capability in Asia would vanish for Asian-Americans in the United States? That too is immediately disproven based on the number of highly successful Asian-Americans in the US, such as the CEOs of nVidia and AMD.

I'm not sure what your point is. But no, I'm saying that in aggregate, all else being (mostly) equal, a white American has an easier time becoming a Senator, CEO, or President in America. Whether Asians can be successful in Asia (i.e. where cultural and political institutions are biased towards Asians) is irrelevant to what happens in America.

> "a white American has an easier time becoming a Senator, CEO, or President"

Which is a statement of a racist nature. QED

I don't know what that means. But I'm pretty sure it's a factual statement. So regardless, its relevant to the discussion.

What is the best metaphor for the phenomena you are describing? Deer season right? We have too many deers, make it open season for them. It’s not discriminatory towards deer, because we’re prepared to do the same for Elks.

Is that the gist of it? Harvard, the great academic Noah’s Ark, two of every race, and nothing more.

The larger issue is less actionable than the issue at hand. Point out Harvard’s bias, have them fix it. This is an actionable step in breaking the market preferences of what you suggested in so many words - the white, male, connected, rich Ivy Leaguer that will undoubtedly fit right into a Goldman, ripe for the inevitably bump to head the SEC, or similarly equipped to make a run for Congress or the Presidency. This is something we as a society have discussed ad nauseam, and it’s better to take whatever incremental steps we can than sit here and go ‘gee I wonder what the real root cause of the issue here is? Is society racist?’.

Put the Asians kids into Harvard. They a historically an American scape-goat, and now somehow even in their attempts at uplifting, we found out some stupid ass explanation how it’s fucking up Harvard’s diversity, which I’m willing to bet is still mostly white.

I'm just not sure we should demand Harvard change their admissions to be based on some particular metric. Ensuring Harvard's student demographic matches the demographic of peak GPA and test scores just harms Harvard in the long run while doing nothing to improve the systemic issues in society that lead to institutions like Harvard. Harvard isn't creating business and political leaders, they just won the game of getting future leaders to come to their school. And that's the paradox of this whole thing, a Harvard that's mostly Asian isn't Harvard. Wherever the rich well-connected white males are going will just be the next Harvard. The underlying issue here is systemic and can't be solved by punishing Harvard.

Thank you for making these comments. You get to the crux of the issue. Rest of the threads here are just about expressing outrage and virtue signalling

Not sure, but the best metaphor for your comment is: knocking down a straw man

He said “has” not “should have”. It’s an observation. You can prove or disprove but not impose moral judgement.

Very true. The non-quantitative client facing jobs at places like Goldman Sachs don’t really need very smart people... they need people who can comfortably speak with and engender trust with the descendants of Rockefellers etc. Right now Harvard is where you get that stamp but if Harvard becomes a place mostly for kickass Asian students to excel in math and computers then the Goldman Sachses will start using a different imprimatur like the right polo camp or similar.