Ugly Admissions Bias At Harvard -- And The Ugly Places I Think This Sort Of Thing Takes Us
Harvard, disgustingly, deems Asians to have bad personalities as a way of keeping them out of the school -- in many cases, with their admissions people never having met the applicants they gave poor scores to.

The personality area was "subjective enough to be readily manipulable to serve Harvard's institutional interests," writes Wesley Yang in The New York Times.

The title of Yang's piece reflects Harvard's ugly actions against Asian applicants: "Harvard Is Wrong That Asians Have Terrible Personalities"

There's a court case now, via Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit group representing a dozen Asian-Americans denied admission by Harvard:

The report by the plaintiff's expert witness, the Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono, revealed that Harvard evaluated applicants on the extent to which they possessed the following traits: likability, helpfulness, courage, kindness, positive personality, people like to be around them, the person is widely respected. Asian-Americans, who had the highest scores in both the academic and extracurricular ratings, lagged far behind all other racial groups in the degree to which they received high ratings on the personality score.

"Asian-American applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time only in the top academic index decile. By contrast, white applicants receive a 2 or better on the personal score more than 20% of the time in the top six deciles," wrote Mr. Arcidiacono. "Hispanics receive such personal scores more than 20% of the time in the top seven deciles, and African Americans receive such scores more than 20% of the time in the top eight deciles."

Even if the very worst stereotypes about Asians were true on average, it beggars belief that one could arrive at divergences as dramatic as the ones Mr. Arcidiacono documents by means of unbiased evaluation.

...Mr. Arcidiacono found that an otherwise identical applicant bearing an Asian-American male identity with a 25 percent chance of admission would have a 32 percent chance of admission if he were white, a 77 percent chance of admission if he were Hispanic, and a 95 percent chance of admission if he were black. A report from Harvard's own Office of Institutional Research found that even after alumni and athletic preferences were factored in, Asians would be accepted at a rate of 26 percent, versus the 19 percent at which they were actually accepted. That report, commissioned back in 2013, was summarily filed way, with no further investigation or action taken.

No innocuous explanation can account for the extent of these disparities. Yet Harvard is insisting that those who call it what it plainly is -- racial discrimination -- are advancing a "divisive agenda."

On June 12, President Drew Gilpin Faust of Harvard University sent an email to all alumni of the college warning of a forthcoming attempt to use "misleading, selectively presented data taken out of context" in order to "question the integrity of the undergraduate admissions process."

...Harvard's lawyers will soon tell the highest court in the land that Casey Pedrick's Asian students are less respected because they are less likable, less courageous, and less kind than all other applicants. The university has decided that this is necessary for the greater good. The reality is that it is a carefully considered act of slander.

I think one problem behind this is the notion that discrimination is needed to provide "a good mix" to a college -- as if the student body is a blend of coffee to finesse, not a bunch of individuals.

The other damaging notion is that prior discrimination against groups of people justifies discrimination against a particular individual -- rather than taking them on their own merit.

This is ugly -- and as this type of discrimination comes out, it's likely to lead to more divisiveness between different races and groups, not some beautiful kumbayah color-blind world.