Oral arguments are typically about an hour per case. UNC took 3 hours. Harvard took 2 hours.
Ketanji Brown participated in the UNC case but not in the Harvard case.
I’m not sure how to respond to a thread like this without being political, and it’s tagged breaking news, so I guess I’ll thank you for sharing the video and be on my way?
Did you mean to post this in P&E?
And could those of us not familiar with the case get a summary?
The question was whether race can be used as one of the deciding factors when admitting students into those schools. Schools use a variety of factors when deciding, including veteran status, parental status, disability, race, probably other things. This lawsuit is about taking race off the list.
The schools say that they have many more applicants that meet academic status than they have positions, so using race as one of many criteria just provides more diversity, which is something the schools want.
No I did not mean to post it to politics and elections. It gets too political there and people.
Affirmative action is a judicial exception to the 14th amendment and Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race.
Through a series of cases dating back about 50 years the courts recognized a limited exception for schools to consider race as a factor in determining admissions. As the law developed, the courts expanded and clarified this position and in 2003, while upholding a racially discriminatory admissions to promote diversity, the court expressed in dicta (non-binding words in opinions that give you an idea of where things might be headed) that affirmative action is supposed to be a temporary thing that they do not expect to be around in 25 years.
Fast forward to about 2017 a group that had previously failed to challenge affirmative action in Texas of all places decided to challenge current affirmative action practices at UNC and Harvard. The allegation was that these selective school imposed a penalty against asians. The trial level and appellate level courts all agreed that whatever discrimination may exist, it was all within the bounds of permissible racial discrimination under the law as it exists today. The current petitioners would probably like to see the whole thing go away but the case is about how it is being applied to affect decisions regarding asians.
During discovery it was revealed that the primary reason asians at harvard were accepted at lower rates than their academics and extracurriculars would indicate was that they did not score well on their personal score which measured things like “courage” “likability” and “effervescence”, etc. The thing is that the alumni ratings of personal scores (from alumni interviews) for asian applicants was about the same as white applicants but the admissions committees gave asian kids much lower personal scores.
Harvard has a history of discriminating against model minorities and implemented their current “holistic” admissions process to keep out jews who had been getting into harvard in increasing numbers. Harvard apologized for this past bigotry but assures the court that they are not discriminating against asians and their admissions practices meet requirements of current caselaw in applying racial preferences in their admissions process.
EDITORIAL: There seem to be 6 votes that are going against harvard and at least 5 against UNC. Some members of the left side of the bench seemed to be making an argument for incrementalism to preserve some form of affirmative action for a little while longer. It really seems like a done deal, the Harvard counsel did a particularly bad job. He seemed to be answering the questions he wished the justices asked rather than the questions they actually asked.
YMMV. If you see it different then that’s cool. I don’t want to argue.
I agree that affirmative action is dead at this court.
I think there’s more to filling out an incoming class than grades and that diversity of backgrounds and ethnicities is a positive at college. I think that Harvard and UNC get way more very qualified applicants than they can admit, so other aspects like race, religion, whatever, is fine for them to consider, although it will shortly be unconstitutional.
I don’t see how you can compare (1) the discrimination against Jews (at the time, highly disadvantaged) to make sure enough whites (the dominant demographic at the time) get in to (2) the discrimination against everyone but Blacks and Hispanics to try and fill out the incoming class. Blacks and Hispanics, especially Blacks, still face all kinds of obstacles that whites and other minorities don’t really face. But, I know there’s no discussing this with you, so I’ll leave it there.
To the mods – I’ve tried to make my response apolitical, hopefully enough for MPSIMS.
…I don’t see what “the thing is” about that. The people who were accepted to Harvard had high “personal scores”, and the people who graduated from Harvard have high “personal scores”. That’s exactly what you’d expect, assuming that you have some way of assigning a “personal score” to begin with.
Harvard alumni interviews Asian applicant and generally gives Asians personal scores that are about as good as white applicants. Harvard admissions committee never meets applicant and gives them significantly lower scores. These scores measure things like courage, character, integrity, etc.
Too late to edit, but I realize that my previous post has a gratuitous personal attack. I apologize for that. I will report my post and bow out of this thread.
Sounds a lot like the issue Sheryl Sandburg raised about women being penalized by the Likability Penalty. I wonder if this is a racial version of the same.
Moderating:
Thanks for recognizing that and apologizing.
Yeah. I do alumni interviews for Harvard. The instructions are totally race-neutral. And Harvard doesn’t do “affirmative action”, they actively seek diversity in many dimensions for the benefit of the other students in the class. (dimensions other than race include interests, talents, economic class, country of origin, and several others.) But that statistic is a real red flag to me. The alumni interviewers meet the kids, and are supposed to be judging them on things like courage, character, and integrity. (And “would they be a good roommate?”) I’m really suspicious that the admissions committee rates them lower than the interviewers.
Almost every alumni I know does interviews and the interview process builds a lot of confidence in the process for alumni. The personal score discrepancy is the thing that most consistently get Harvard alumni who defend the admissions process to reconsider. They aren’t always convinced that the discrimination exists but they are usually less sure of that it is a fantasy
Yeah. I support the process as they claim it is. I really believe that “your classmates” is one of the best things about going to Harvard, and selecting a diverse class makes it better for everyone who attends. It increases the value of the degree I’m just suspicious of that one rather important detail.
(And i also don’t feel bad for the kids who don’t get in. First, Harvard can’t possibly take all the superbly qualified kids. At some level, it’s going to be a crap shoot, and lots of qualified kids will lose. And second, the kids who don’t quite get accepted to Harvard will all be accepted by other excellent schools.)
We are starting to approach debate territory. I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on some things for now.
We may disagree.
I’m annoyed that all the headlines are about Harvard and affirmative action, when they really aren’t engaged in affirmative action by its usual meaning. It’s not about giving disadvantaged kids a leg up. It about building a class with a lot of kids who are different in ways that will be interesting and enriching to the other kids.
And that’s why they have to limit some populations need on race?
Typo?
Yes, but not worth correcting, it was a throw away comment and might have invited debate.
I am just shocked at how poorly Seth Waxman presented his case to the court. Even if he knew it was a lost cause, it reflected poorly on him YMMV. He was asked about the personal score by several justices and became evasive and argumentative. He’s a veteran at this and he knew better. If there was any middle ground that could have been reached on Harvard, I think it essentially vanished in those moments.