Harvard denies discriminating against Asian-Americans

[DonViejo]

By Deirdre Fernandes GLOBE STAFF JULY 27, 2018

Harvard strenuously denied allegations that it discriminates against Asian-American applicants and sought to discredit the legal challenge to its admissions policies in court documents filed Friday.

The Ivy League college, whose admissions practices are at the center of a federal affirmative action lawsuit, argued that it values the ethnic backgrounds of its Asian-American applicants and has not capped the number of students it lets in based on their race.

Harvard called the statistical analysis done by Students for Fair Admissions, which mounted the discrimination lawsuit, “deeply flawed,” fostering a “misleading narrative.” The university offered a paragraph-by-paragraph rebuttal to what it described as the plaintiff’s “900 paragraphs of supposedly undisputed facts — many of which are neither undisputed nor even facts,” according to court documents.

Harvard’s filings on Friday were the first formal response to allegations by Students for Fair Admissions that the school limits the number of Asian-American applicants it accepts and that across the academic spectrum those applicants receive lower ratings on their personal traits from the university’s admissions officers than their peers.

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https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/07/27/harvard-defends-its-admissions-policy-october-trial-looms/gLczn8lT8UhvXjXdOCTM6M/story.html

[braddy]

1. Putting Asians into the racism statistics mix really shakes things up, they get discriminated

against where affirmative action is supposed to be in play, they escape traffic stops more than any other race, get bank loan approvals at a higher rate than all other races, etc., etc.

[Tipperary]

2. Escape traffic stops? Does that mean they do not get pulled over as much as other races? Or

that they do not get tickets when they are pulled over? And who keeps those kinds of stats? The cops come in from their shifts and say, “Today I pulled over a white guy, a black guy, and an Asian guy. I let the Asian guy go.”

[braddy]

3. It means that they get stopped less (Asians tend to obey laws), many race statistics include the

Asian race, it's just that Asians get left out of the reporting.

[Tipperary]

5. I never get stopped either. I obey laws on the highway. So that really has nothing to do with race.

[braddy]

6. I was pointing that out, I doubt cops are favoring Asians because of their race, they just don't

have reason to stop them.

[progree]

8. "It means that they get stopped less (Asians tend to obey laws)" Interesting.

If, for example, I compared black pull-over rates with white pull-over rates and concluded that "whites tend to obey laws" particularly without any statistics on law obedience rates (how would one measure that?), other than stereotypical biases, I would be about 15 minutes from being PPR'd for such a sweeping racial statement.

[Igel]

4. Making it worse is the word "Asians."

Like other Western-derived ethnic terms, it's an exonym that's been appropriated by what's not really a group.

"Asians" includes those from S. Asia; Koreans, Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese; Indonesians and Malaysians; Vietnamese, Cambodians ...

They pattern differently. Some of those subgroups have high achievement on test scores, high income, etc., etc.; some have low. The average "Asian" stats gloss over the differences.

It's the same kind of statistical "let's ignore in-group diversity" that the terms "black," "Latino," and "white" mask, except that in the case of "Asian" there are largish groups we care about that really don't like having their disadvantage and oppression masked.

[oberliner]

7. Also the word "White"

Which includes a hugely diverse group of people from a variety of different countries and backgrounds.