In Harvard’s Magical Admissions Process, Nobody Gets Hurt
The university said using race can only help, and never hurt, applicants. Can you believe a judge bought it?
Affirmative reaction.
Photographer: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg
If parts of Judge Allison Burroughs’s decision in the Harvard affirmative-action case don’t seem to make sense, it’s not entirely her fault. She was bound by the Supreme Court’s precedents on the subject, and the justices have been refining absurdity ever since they took up the issue in 1978.
The question this time was whether Harvard was unlawfully discriminating against Asian-American applicants. Harvard “testified that race, when considered in admissions, can only help, not hurt, a student’s chances of getting in” – as the New York Times reported with a straight face. Judge Burroughs bought it, writing that race “is never viewed as a negative attribute” by Harvard’s admissions department.