The Supreme Court ruled to strike down affirmative action, or race-based admissions practices on college campuses, but Harvard has a way around the decision.
The court ruled 6-3 that the admissions committees at two schools – Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill – used discriminatory practices against Asian and white applicants.
“Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
Democrats responded quickly, decrying the decision as harmful to minority communities.
President Joe Biden issued his own statement after the ruling.
“I believe our colleges are stronger when they are racially diverse,” he said. “I also believe that while talent, creativity, and hard work are everywhere across this country, not equal opportunity. It is not everywhere across this country.”
He also tapped in to progressive activist language, touching on “socioeconomic advantages”.
“Today for too many schools the only people who benefit from the system are the wealthy and the well connected,” Biden said. “The odds have been stacked against working people for much too long. We need a higher education system that works for everyone.”
Harvard Finds a Loophole
Harvard’s leadership responded to the decision with its own statement that “diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence” and that they would “preserve” these essential values through a mechanism alluded to by the court.
“The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions ‘an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.’ We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision,” the statement read.
Harvard appears to be saying the will identify race for admissions purposes by asking students how race impacted their life through essays and other parts of the application process.
How many other colleges will do same??
You are still providing preferential treatment based on race. Every kid of color who comes through admissions is going to claim discrimination and Harvard, then, will reward them with entitlement. But will the decision also be based on merit? Will the same consideration be afforded to a poor white kid who has the academic grades to be admitted or, will they be discriminated against, because ALL white children come from privilege. What we are doing in this country is raising one group up at the expense of another.
Affirmative action = reverse discrimination!!
Don’t accept the leftist definitions. Affirmative action = Racial discrimination.
“Reverse discrimination” is a FALSE term created to suggest a difference between it, and discrimination by a different party.
All federal funding for Harvard should be eliminated. While this won’t make any difference to plushly endowed Harvard, eventually this policy would make a difference to other less appreciative colleges and universities. Harvard and the other elites (Princeton long ago announced they would find ways around a Supreme Court ruling that it didn’t like) are thumbing their noses at the U.S. Government and the taxpayers who support it.
Can whites , straights, Asians talk about how discrimination has ruined THEIR lives? Because it HAS, just as demonstrably!
In fact, it was racial discrimination in favor of “blacks” and against “Asians” that prompted the case on which the SCOTUS just ruled.