Harvard Is Doing America’s Best Students No Favors

The evidence that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-American applicants seems clear. A lawsuit against the university uncovered evidence that admissions officers tend to rank Asian-Americans much lower than whites on so-called personality measures, despite alumni interviewers ranking them similarly. This clearly seems to reflect the negative and inaccurate stereotype of Asian-Americans as, in the words of writer Wesley Yang, “textureless math grinds.” Meanwhile, schools with explicitly color-blind admissions, such as the California Institute of Technology, admit many more Asian applicants and a lot fewer whites.

Harvard’s defenders, meanwhile, are not necessarily racist — many fear that a court-ruling against anti-Asian discrimination could open the door to a general repudiation of race-based affirmative-action policies, which would then hurt black Americans and other underprivileged minorities. Indeed, this does seem to be a part of the motive of the group that brought the lawsuit.