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Harvard Hit With Racial Bias Complaint
An anonymous reader writes: A coalition of 64 organizations filed a complaint against Harvard on Friday alleging the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants hoping to attend classes there. "Many studies have indicated that Harvard University has been engaged in systemic and continuous discrimination against Asian-Americans during its very subjective 'Holistic' college admissions process." One such study shows Asian-Americans had to score an average of 140 points higher than white students on their SAT test to have an equal chance of getting in. The complaint seeks a federal investigation and demands Harvard "immediately cease and desist from using stereotypes, racial biases and other discriminatory means in evaluating Asian-American applicants."
Isn't racial discrimination the definition of affirmative action? I'm not sure what makes them think they have any actionable complaints against the university.
The corner of a round room
It's because they can't say "Pahk the Cah At Hahvad Yahd".
They're always going to find SOME way to maintain exclusive eligibility for their yacht club.
"The complaint seeks a federal investigation and demands Harvard "immediately cease and desist from using stereotypes, racial biases and other discriminatory means in evaluating Asian-American applicants.""
OR... we could just evaluate students on their merits, rather than their skin color. Remove the race/ethnicity indicators from the application forms altogether and don't make them a factor during interviews.
while(1) attack(People.Sandy);
I'm 100% against using race or gender as a first pass system for sorting HOWEVER, it's a private school, they can accept who ever they want to. If the government was flipping the bill for post secondary education then the story would be different but the second you are funded by the students, then you can the decision about which students you want to let in . If you really want to fix this issue, you need to conceil the identity of the student down to a numeric identifier.
Yesterday I was going to be with an Asian girl. I settled down on Arab girl. Am I now racially biased or working with the enemy?
You have to be kidding me. Harvard is the Chinatown of Cambridge. There's probably more Asians represented than any other minority.
He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
and gaming the system in any other way they can think of. Harvard knows this.
I'm just trying to keep track since first they weren't white, then they were white when everyone wanted to attack the tech industry and particularly google for being "too white", and now apparently they're not white again. Is there a newsletter I can subscribe to? Maybe a calendar or twitter feed that keeps us all up to date on who's "white" or not today?
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
According to Hillel (http://www.hillel.org), Jews are 25% of the undergrads, and 63% of graduate students.
It's not whites crowding out qualified Asian-Americans, it's Jews.
Someone is about to learn about Simpson's paradox: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
Yes, it's news. Yes, it's probably important. But WHY IN THE HELL is it on Slashdot? It's crap like this that keep my away.
If there are racist recruiters, there should be little difficulty tracking them down and firing them.
However, if there is racism, it is presumably systemic bias that is inadvertent and unconscious and there is no single person who is actually acting in a prejudiced way. Telling them 'cease and desist' is ineffective.
It's quite conceivable that there is discrimination that is not based on race but only loosely correlated with it, perhaps actually due to income, culture, or command of English, which might or might not be part of a legitimate application process.
Hopefully Harvard has a few people with knowledge of statistics to figure it out.
It would be 100% asian without the cap. There is no ideal solution.
I see the problem: they are thinner on average than other ethnic groups and therefore perform weaker at football. As a result they cannot enter University college.
Acceptance to universities should not be judged on anything but scholastic merit. I would even argue against using sports as a basis for acceptance, but we know that will never happen.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
I thought this was going to be about how Homer Simpson's family is colored yellow, while Asians in the Simpsonsverse are white.
Simply don't list your race on your application if you are Asian. Other/nondisclosed.
and damned if you don't There are only so many seats. They either try to distribute those as evenly as they can ( affirmative action ), or they fill it up with just the best candidates ( read that, test scores ) where they later catch nothing but hell because their student population isn't diverse enough. :|
So they get hit with discrimination claims either way. Just from different groups.
What this really shows is that not all colleges are equal. A Law degree from X is not the same as a Law degree from Y.
So the folks complaining about discrimination are themselves enabling it, just later on down the road.
In case I lost you with that last sentence here's how I explain it.
Folks go to the Ivy League schools why ?
Because they know top tier employers will choose students from those schools over other qualified candidates who didn't go to an Ivy League school.
Two perfect candidates for the job, one with Ivy League credentials, one without. Who do you think will get picked up ? :|
( and everyone knows it, thus the competition to get in )
While not race based, it's still discrimination based on school reputation. Were all schools funded and staffed equally, this becomes a non-issue.
Harvard would rather not have 1500 spots of every 1600 member freshman class be the sons and daughters of mainland Chinese billionaires, that's why.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Harvard does give extra credit for children of Harvard graduates and they surely are also appreciative of wealthy graduates who donate large sums who have sons and daughters seeking admission. Also athletes may get some extra consideration and some areas of the world emphasize sports other than what we play in America. Factors like that may well completely explain the apparent disparity in admissions. There is also the matter of comparing grades when the quality of high schools in foreign nations may not be recognized or known. I would not want to be a lawyer attacking Harvard for discrimination based solely on the items in this complaint. I also wonder if Harvard reserves a certain number of seats for in state applicants.
Yeah stop discriminating against the dummies. Blacks just can't compete when it comes to test scores. If they focused on their basketballing as hard as Asians focus on test taking, they could get in. Stick to what they are good. I'm black waa waa. I'm Asian waa waa. I am a white guy who works for what I have, and I don't bitch about it. (except for this time)
If the Asians had rich parents, Harvard would "let" them in. Who needs Ivy League? There are plenty of institutions to take your money and let you goof around for 4 years. The diploma is never a guarantee of success or happiness, but is likely a guarantee of debt. If you want better jobs at your choice of company, make friends. Networking is easily as important or more important than the piece of paper.
Harvard let Conan Obrien in
An Asian-American argues in favor of admission policies that disadvantage Asian-Americans. Whether you agree, it's worth thinking about.
http://askakorean.blogspot.com...
I seem to remember having to write essays for college admissions about why I want to attend. I even did volunteer work to show I had a duty, altruism, etc. Not many students can sell themselves in an essay and many don't volunteer more than a required minimum, if it's required at all.
What if the Asian students were adept academically but lacked other distinguishing differences to set them apart? If you have a plethora of something exceptional, even if it's exceptional, it will become common and then there's a few that are more exceptional or unique... people go for variety.
It's also probably not so cut and dry... maybe they all look the same in the face of admissions?
A part of a college education can be meeting and interacting with people of different cultures and backgrounds. If a private school wants to have this type of culture they should be free to create it by whatever means they determine is best for their school. You have no right to attend the school.
Now if this was a public school they might have an argument.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
An offer from Harvard is supposed to require an IQ of 130.
Taking generally agreed avg IQs for Asian-Americans (105) and Ashkenazi Jews (110)
we would expect Asians and Jews to exceed the 130 hurdle at 3x and 5x the rate of the general population (IQ 100).
Asians constitute 5% of the pop of the US, Jews 2%.
Asians are 15% of Harvard admissions, Jews 10%.
Exactly in line with a blind meritocratic admissions policy.
The admission rates for African Americans, Latinos and Native-American Law professors are unnaturally high,
at the expense of white-bread applicants.
Maybe Harvard can get Larry Summers to run through the math for the court?
So the main complaint seems to be that admitted Asians have significantly higher test scores than their counterparts. This would be slam-dunk evidence if really good SAT scores were all it took to get into Harvard, but they aren't and never have been. They are going to have to go into a lot more in-depth with their analysis to prove their point.
Also, to echo a point made on Reddit, haven't we been saying for years that standardized test scores are not good indicators of performance? Why in this case are we suddenly acting like they are the only criteria that matter?
I am getting all the idiots together to file a class action lawsuite against Harvard. I should find a bunch of them here on this board. So what say you. Want to get together and sue these elite entitled white bastards. Just because i'm a moron and can't pass the classes does not mean that I should be kept out of the elite ivory league brunch parties. I want to party with the Kennedys and the Gores.
It's sad that we have to rely on the actions of Asians to point out socially approved racism. While I support the right of any non-government institution to act racially, I personally don't like the idea of attempting to 'even the scales' for things that might or might not have happened to your great grandfather. No-one cares about my problems and limitations because I'm white. Which is fine, I made it work because I make my own destiny.
Let me put it this way, as a nerdy, wimpy white guy competing in a race against giant black men in a 100 meter sprint, I may be disappointed that I always lose, but I don't question the fairness of the race nor wonder why more than 14.2% of the winners of the race are black (and oddly that there are 0 total hispanics in the race at all though 17% of the racers should be).
. . . based on their academic performance, see: http://www.theamericanconserva...
I could care less if Asians consistently beat out me and other whites, provided that only objective measures were used, like a uniform test. I therefore think that all the extracurricular activities the admissions process expects (being in a charity, sports, etc.) should be done away with just to make the process fairer. Heck, if only Asians dominated, or Blacks, or some other racial group, I wouldn't mind as long as the process were standard and objective.
for Asian rule. Let us all bow to our alcohol dehydrogenase impaired masters.
That was interesting reading, but...
"...Asian-Americans had to score an average of 140 points higher than white students on their SAT test to have an equal chance of getting in"
So their isn't based on admission rates (alone) but with regard to the primary admission criteria. (unless you consider the holistic mumbo jumbo of great importance).
...One Wednesday last July, and I noticed something: a large percentage of the people on campus were Asian. I have no idea which were students and which were just other visitors, but on that day at least the campus teemed with Asians, many in large groups.
Social justice warriors, go ahead and hate white people and all that "colonialist," "imperialist" civilization has wrought. I saw our worthy successors that day in Cambridge, and when you try to take them on you will wish you still had our compliant legal system to use as your playground. Asians will build their bullet trains and their giant telescopes wherever they want to, totally ignoring whatever standards of political correctness you have been used to imposing on everyone else. Long may they rule.
So their claim isn't based...
*All* Asians make up ~5.6% of the population of the United States, but they make up 20% of those admitted to Harvard. Discrimination?! https://college.harvard.edu/ad... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D...
I'm just floating a theory here, so please don't pounce all over me.
For hundreds of years, getting into the better jobs meant passing written exams in China. Thus, the population may have been genetically filtered (bred) to be better test takers.
Table-ized A.I.
They do not under perform because of race. They under perform because the schools are crap, they don't get funding, can't get new school books, can't get good teachers (well they get some, but not a uniformly higher level)
I just have to laugh when reading the crap that you have written!
I came from China, and when I landed on the US soil, I actually went to Chinatown to work (kitchen helper) because I was practically penny-LESS at that time
I did not go to school for at least 8 months and when I did, I went to a public school where the blacks were like 80% of the school population
Don't you tell me about broken school, lack of new books and all those shits, I have been through all that
And yet, I went to college on my own (without any help from anybody) and from there I move up my career ladder
Do I have to tell you that I didn't speak one word of English (nor understand anything) when I arrived at the US of A?
I just have to laugh at you guys regurgitating the same old SHIT every single time when AA has been questioned --- if an Asian kid like me could move up, why can't the Blacks/Hispanics?
And no, I didn't have my "tiger mom" with me --- I came to USA by my own, as a refugee, my family was still in China at that time
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Where I was from it was 100% Asians
Where I am now it's a mix
Where I was in the HS it was 80% Blacks, less than 2% Asians
But when I get to the U the ones who can compete against me are the Whites
So don't gimme that " 95% Asian / 4.9% Caucasian " thing. You know it ain't true
It might probably be in the ratio of 30% Asian / 68% Caucasian / 2% others, but if that is what it is, I say let it be
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
First of all, let me just say that I'm a white dude in SF who was once literally did by an Asian landlord not to bother trying to rent in his neighborhood, the Outer Richmond. He also refused to rent to me. (Eventually some other Asian landlord did.)
But I don't see how that's relevant. Whites, blacks, Asians... every group discriminates. That's why they're identifiable as groups! (Well, that and they've been discriminated against. But adversity is it's own identity.) And, yes, some do it more than ourselves. So what?
I don't get why people are basically saying 'fuck you, tough shit'.
These are kids who worked their asses off to get into college and have to OUTPERFORM peers to to get into the same schools. This is not the case of an under qualified or underachieving person getting in simply because of their race (which I never liked), but getting pushed out even though THEY'RE BETTER CANDIDATES because of their race.
How does anyone think this is fair or just? Jesuz fuck people, imagine if that was your kid....
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
However, if there is racism, it is presumably systemic bias that is inadvertent and unconscious and there is no single person who is actually acting in a prejudiced way. Telling them 'cease and desist' is ineffective.
Not necessarily. Admissions as a practical matter are often done in a whole-person type way which is nevertheless guided *Strongly* by what the people involved think the ideal class should look like demographically, including race.
Like when peaceful white protesters have had dogs and fire hoses set on them by all black police departments? When white families were denied access to housing in black neighborhoods? When job applicants were looked over simply because they had a white sounding name? When white kids were more likely to be suspended or expelled from school for the same offenses as black kids? When black felons were more likely to get a job offer than a white person with a clean record? How about when whites were directed toward subprime mortgages while black counterparts at the same credit rating were given better interest rates? When whites were given the death penalty at higher rates than blacks for the same offense? When white jail time in general was longer than blacks for the same offense? When unarmed, non-resisting whites are much more likely to be killed by police than blacks? You mean when whites are referred to as "thugs" in the media when black folks aren't?
You must mean that "reverse racism" since that has been the racism that black folks have been living through, but in reverse.
- I don't need to go outside, my CRT tan'll do me just fine.
I don't know if I can belive this
http://www.abogadoamigo.com/
When I went to UC Berkeley, there was a cry from the African-American community claiming they were being discriminated against since their enrollment numbers had been going down for three to five years. Turns out, with the exception of Asians, ALL groups including whites had gone down; Asians had gone up. It was pointed out that affirmative action legally can only be used to help minorities, which included Asians, not restrict them, so there was nothing that could be done to help the African-American enrollments without changing the law.
There was a similar funny situation at a place I worked, though with regards to women. It turns out they had a couple men doing secretarial jobs, which made the percentage of women doing the job something like 95% which was below the national average. Turns out it doesn’t matter how high the women’s percentage is, if they fall below it, it is assumed to be discrimination and our company was under threat of legal consequences because there were two male secretaries.
Can SJW's please get off *my* internet, preferably *before* they piss me off so much, I'm going to kill one?
Just don't (a) answer accurate about "race" or (b) don't ask about it.
Skin color is irrelevant. The overt racists who keep asking and caring about skin color should be shunned.
What is the cutoff for a "race"? With 23andme, AncestryDNA etc, it will show a lot of people who have traces of every race.
....they want affirmative action but not racial discrimination...which is what affirmative action is...
Oh, and isn't harvard private?
for math, reading and science, the top seven countries are:
Shanghai China
Singapore
Hong Kong China
Chinese Taipei
Korea
Macao China
Japan
The US is 36th.
Even Vietnam is higher than the US, at 17th place.
That is how both Canadian and American post-secondary education is set up to work. There is nothing below board about it, I think there are laws that demand they leave room for minorities like Africans, Native Americans, and Whites. I am pretty sure you would have to sue the government if you wanted this changed.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I understand the desire for students to want to get into Harvard. It's not like what they teach there is much different from what they teach anywhere else, academia being what it is. Harvard might have some ever-so-slightly better professors that other Ivy League colleges. Mostly the value of Harvard is in networking with professors and other students that will be the movers and shakers of the next generation of business and politics. That said, I think it would be just as well for a few wealthy Asian American tycoons to found their own college. If you can't join 'em, beat 'em.
That's the last time I run code posted in somebody's sig...
Unless they have a "smoking gun" the case is unlikely to succeed.
If only there was some sort of test that people could take to unearth their biases...
Oh, here are some! https://implicit.harvard.edu/i...
Most likely they worked their asses off doing the wrong things. Most Asian cultures - from India across the continent to Japan, focus exclusively on getting good marks in exams to the exclusion of other activities that make a person "well rounded", including actual learning (as opposed to studying). Many of them also have a strong sense of entitlement, particularly if their parents are wealthy, so this complaint does not surprise me in the least.
Japan is a pretty bad example to use for affirmative action.
They don't need Affirmative Action because they allow very few foreigners into the country to begin with. They are proud of this.
One or more of those words do not mean what you think they mean.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
It's just the exercise of power by the people in power. Humanity and empathy don't matter to them. The only fairness and justice they care about relates to events from 50-200 years ago, because their power stems from organizing against those old grievances. Fairness and justice here and now would limit their power, so they're eager to advocate unfair and unjust policies. That's who you're dealing with.
This must be the only thing on the internet called "Simpson's ..... " that has nothing to do with the TV show. That and the donkey.
correction: "genetic influence", not "generic".
Table-ized A.I.
Someone who is really sure that they did it all without help and is a goddamn Heinleinian superman feels like I pissed in their Cheerios. You didn't build that bowl of cereal, either.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm a teacher. I run a lot of after-school groups, and get referenced by a lot of students on their applications. As such, I get calls from Harvard (and other institutions) about students applying to their school. If they're calling me about you, they're impressed by your transcript; your grades are clearly good enough to consider you as a candidate for admission.
When I get a call from Yale, they never ask me about grades - why would they? Your grades are a matter of record.
They invariably ask me about one thing: extra-curricular activities.
That said, it's been my own - admittedly subjective - experience (and not necessarily anyone else's) that a disproportionately large number of Asian-American students sabotage themselves in two ways when applying to schools:
1) They attend a bunch of extra-curricular clubs/teams for a single year, every year, and do very little while they're there. They show up to have their attendance marked down, and then leave, or do their homework when they should be contributing to the group. Many will join groups that have conflicting schedules, and try to hop between the groups - attending each every-other week.
As if we wouldn't notice.
2) They inflate the size of their contribution to the group. I'm not talking about carefully wording the contribution to maximize it's impressiveness - I mean outright lying. I've had a student claim to be the concert master for a string orchestra that they never joined. Another claimed to be an assistant conductor for a group they had been in for 3 weeks before dropping out.
This kind of resume padding, which might have been acceptable 30 years ago, is now so prevalent that admissions boards are forced to follow up by phone and/or email.
And so these schools contact me, asking me to verify the claims put down on applications. The conversation typically runs something along the lines of "David appears to have been a part of 7 extra-curricular groups in his last year. Can you confirm that he was a member of your choir, that he was the bass section lead, and that he was responsible for running sectionals?"
To which I am too often forced to reply: "David was an introductory member of the bass section until the end of November. After I caught him doing his math homework in rehearsal for the fourth time (AND/OR) having David miss three rehearsals because he signed up for another group with the exact same time slot I was forced to ask David to leave the group."
(AND/OR)
"David who? I've never heard of this kid."
As I said, it certainly IS NOT ONLY Asian-Americans pulling this nonsense, and it IS NOT ALL Asian-Americans. Still, of the calls that I receive from schools all over the country asking me to verify information on an application, I am forced to refute information submitted by Asian-American students more often than any I can think of.
Remember, this is subjective. I'm not submitting statistical fact, I'm submitting my own personal experience.
My advice to ANYONE (regardless of race) who considers doing this: stop trying to game the system. Join a couple of groups and make a positive contribution over a number of years. Joining seven different extra-curriculars per year, every year, and contributing nothing doesn't make you look like a hard worker - it makes you look like a dilettante that can't focus.
And for pity's sake, stop lying. When Harvard calls me and asks me if you were my assistant conductor, you'd better be my assistant conductor: if you can't be trusted to submit truthful information *before* you get into school, how can you be trusted to submit truthful information after you're in?
Sadly, Ivy League colleges have been discriminating against Asians for at least 20 years - in the same way that they limited Jewish enrolment before WW2.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-myth-of-american-meritocracy/
Have you read the other comments here? One of the arguments goes that these kids are outperforming their peers by optimizing their performance on key metrics (e.g., receiving SAT coaching; accumulating high value ECs; etc), rather than developing a well rounded knowledge and experience base. That would be all well and good if the world outside of academia were as easily contrived, but it isn't. You can't just practice your way into innovating or doing great things; those require skill and creativity.
America Should Stop Issuing Visas To Indians, The Most Racist People On Earth;
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
http://www.change.org/p/indepe...
Casteism
Malcom Gladwell wrote about this identical issue in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in). The concepts applied especially to Jews, and to all the Ivy-League institutions. The problem the Ivys were addressing was that if they based their admissions criteria on grades and test scores alone, Harvard would be nearly all Jewish and Asian. But those students, even with their high scores, would not achieve in life any better, or even as well, as students selected in part based on subjective traits such as "manliness." The Ivys have perfected a system that identifies future high achievers and convinces them to enroll at their institutions. That is one explanation of why if you are admitted to Harvard, it makes no difference to your future success whether you enroll: You have been identified as a future high achiever.
sincerely, Everyone-that-is-doing-fine.
Malcom Gladwell wrote about this identical issue in the New Yorker (http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/10/10/getting-in). The concepts applied especially to Jews, and to all the Ivy-League institutions. The problem the Ivys were addressing was that if they based their admissions criteria on grades and test scores alone, Harvard would be nearly all Jewish and Asian. But those students, even with their high scores, would not achieve in life any better, or even as well, as students selected in part based on subjective traits such as "manliness." The Ivys have perfected a system that identifies future high contributors to society, and convinces them to enroll at their institutions. That is one explanation of why if you are admitted to Harvard, it makes no difference to your future success whether you enroll: You have been identified as a future high achiever. (Apologies if this appears as a duplicat post -- I am new to posting on ./)
Interesting that in the "full" article the upset Asian aspirants to the sacred halls of Harvard proposed a new basis instead of race for entrance: income. Here is a more detailed account which doesn't leave out the most important aspects of this article: http://www.theguardian.com/edu...
I would like to say I'm surprised but the angry white libertarian bullshit seems to be exploding here. Any articles that deal with womens or minority issues immediately gets filled with dismissive crap. Some of the sexism pieces aren't great, but this is pretty much a "here is the stats, this is wrong" issue. It doesn't even necessarily mean an intentional bias, it may be they didn't know they were doing it but we have plenty of unintentional racial biases and thats where numbers like these are important, but most people here seem to just immediately rationalize them in a way that makes them feel better.
This isn't new. In the 20's and 30's, Jewish Americans were the up and coming academic top achievers, and based on merit would have become the largest ethnic fraction of the school. So, the administration found ways to get the kind of WASP-heavy demographic they wanted. Harvard (and the other Ivys) aren't just universities, they are positional goods and attendance is a form of signaling: our next class of business/political elites. To have a demographic that doesn't look like the parents of the current 1% (never mind 0.1%) would signal to them that the school was no longer providing the economic good they send their kids there for.
Luke, help me take this mask off
People need to stop complaining about having awesome lives of privilege. Seriously.
"It sucks to be rich because I don't like paying all these taxes." Then give away your money, asshole.
"It sucks to be the king because I have to make all these hard choices." Then abdicate, asshole.
"It sucks to be beautiful because everyone just looks at me." Try being ugly, asshole.
"It sucks to be Asian because it's harder for me to get into Harvard." It sucks harder to grow up outside of a high-achieving community, asshole.
Yes. There is racial bias against Asians for college admission, and to a lesser extent against white people too. Boo hoo for us, we'll have to be content with out leg up in everything else. Does it suck a little? Yeah, a little, and WAY LESS than the alternative, so stop complaining.
How long will we need AA? I'd estimate ten times longer than we had slavery, so something like a thousand years. Then we can get rid of it, that will be a great day.