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).

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’.

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.