Investigating Discrimination at Harvard

Terry EastlandEducation

I wrote this piece last month (for The Weekly Standard) on the case in which a student group is charging that Harvard College in its admissions program racially discriminates against Asian American applicants. The case could prove a turning point in the more than half-century-old debate over the use of race in admissions. The arguments in favor of using race have become weaker and weaker, as this article shows. The trial is scheduled for October 15. Visit us here at the Center for Equal Opportunity for our continuing treatment of the issues at stake. The judge in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard …

Too Many Asian Americans: Affirmative Discrimination in Elite College Admissions. (Harvard, MIT, Caltech)

Roger CleggDocuments, Education

Last Friday, Students for Fair Admissions filed its motion for summary judgment against Harvard for its admissions discrimination against Asian-American applicants on the basis of race. You can read the motion and the various supporting documents here. Edward Blum, president of the organization, said, “Today’s court filing exposes the startling magnitude of Harvard’s discrimination against Asian-American applicants,” adding that it “definitively proves that Harvard engages in racial balancing, uses race as far more than a ‘plus’ factor, and has no interest in exploring race-neutral alternatives.” He also said, “We believe that the rest of the evidence will be released in the next …

Affirmative Discrimination in Elite College Admissions

Terry EastlandEducation

It’s against Asian American applicants Last week’s news brought the story that New York City mayor Bill de Blasio wants to scrap admissions policies for three public high schools in the city that are among the best in the country. Apparently, too many Asian Americans get in while too few blacks and Latinos do. De Blasio speaks favorably about new policies based on “new definitions of merit.” Let’s hope that the mayor recovers his wits before he imposes a cap or ceiling on the number of Asian Americans the schools accept. Our research fellow Althea Nagai discusses below in a …

Our Amicus Brief in a Felon Voting Case

Roger CleggVoting Rights

Late last week the Center for Equal Opportunity filed an appellate amicus brief supporting the state of Florida in a case that challenges the state’s procedure for reenfranchising felons only on a case-by-case basis after they have appeared before a state board.   Below are a few excerpts from last week’s brief, which is available below for download.  By the way, CEO has filed dozens of amicus briefs on our issues — opposing racial preferences, criticizing the “disparate impact” approach to civil-rights enforcement, and so forth — as the brief last week explains.  INTEREST OF AMICUS CURIAE The Center for Equal …

The Mismatch Game

Terry EastlandRacial Preferences

It’s been 13 years since I wrote the article below (for The Weekly Standard) on Richard Sander’s intensive study of affirmative action in American law schools. Sander, a lawyer and economist, found “a system of racial preferences that, in one realm after another, produces more harms than benefits for its putative beneficiaries.” Sander became one of the most compelling critics of affirmative action, the co-author with Stuart Taylor of Mismatch. Read my article as an introduction to the mismatch school of thought. Pick up the book for the full treatment of the topic.   Affirmative action emerged in the 1960s …

Too Many Asian Americans

CEO StaffPress Releases

AFFIRMATIVE DISCRIMINATION IN ELITE COLLEGE ADMISSIONS A new study by the Center for Equal Opportunity finds that elite schools often discriminate against Asian American applicants.        In recent years, Asian Americans applying to elite colleges and universities have asked whether admissions offices fairly treat submissions by students of Asian lineage. Scholars have found that Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted compared to whites, African Americans, and Hispanics, even when statistically controlling for other variables including social class, gender, and extracurricular activities. It would seem at least possible that Asian American applicants are being discriminated against. …

A Half-Dozen Push-Backs

Roger CleggUncategorized

One of my articles that I link to most is “A Half-Dozen Push-Backs for Faculty Hiring Committee Meetings,” which the National Association of Scholars kindly published on its website eight years ago.  It’s useful whenever I’m responding to a suggestion that this or that faculty should increase its “diversity” — and those suggestions appear practically every day on higher-education websites.  Many of the points it makes, alas, apply as well to Corporate America these days and its “celebration of diversity” (I testified specifically against those practices before the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which you can read here and here). …

Google in the Dock

Terry EastlandEmployment

When diversity morphs into discrimination. A Google engineer objecting to racial preferences in employment got my attention when he was fired earlier this year. In telling Arne Wilberg’s story, published last month in The Weekly Standard, I was struck by the extent to which Google managers thought they could actually use hiring initiatives that categorically excluded from consideration job candidates of a certain race or sex. You’d think that at least one of those managers would have recalled Martin Luther King’s dream “that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged …

Setting the Record Straight

Roger CleggUncategorized

A never-ending project of the Center for Equal Opportunity is setting the record straight when the media get it wrong on a civil-rights issue — or, less frequently, applauding them when they get it right.  Below are some examples from this year of each (the first was published in the Washington Post, the next on the following day in the Wall Street Journal, etc.). Washington Post: The April 7 editorial “Disparate school discipline, in black and white” wrongly urged the Education Department to leave in place an Obama administration “Dear Colleague” letter that coerces schools into imposing racial quotas when …

Roberts Rules

Terry EastlandUncategorized

Chief Justice John Roberts and his colleagues debate Brown v. Board of Education. Limiting the ability of public school districts to use race in making school assignments, a five-Justice majority generated five opinions taking up 185 pages that mentioned the Brown case a total of 90 times. My piece on the case, originally published by The Weekly Standard, discusses the “colorblind Constitution,” Justice Harlan’s still persuasive interpretation of our supreme law of the land. The Supreme Court, in its very last decision of the term, limited the ability of public school districts to use race in determining the schools that …