Asian-American groups denounce Harvard ruling

Members of Asian-American organizations denounced a judge's decision that Harvard University's undergraduate admissions policy doesn't intentionally discriminate against Asian applicants.

"Today marks a dark day for millions of Asian-American children nationwide," said Zhao Yukong, president of the New Jersey-based Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE), a group representing more than 260 Asian-American organizations nationwide that had closely followed the lawsuit since it was filed in 2014.

The plaintiffs vowed to appeal the ruling to the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals and, if necessary, to the US Supreme Court.

In a 130-page decision issued on Tuesday, US District Court Judge Allison Burroughs said that Harvard's admission's policies were "not perfect" but that "the Court will not dismantle a very fine admissions program that passes constitutional muster, solely because it could do better."

The judge said the university's admission policies follow Supreme Court precedents and don't violate federal civil rights law.

Burroughs said "race is an important consideration in deciding to admit many African-American and Hispanic applicants" but it is never the "defining feature" of an applicant and any boost based on a student's race is minor because all admitted students are well qualified.

"Our nation has witnessed another immoral attempt by America's ruling class to continue their institutionalized discrimination against Asian-American children and treat them as second-class citizens with regard to educational opportunities," Zhao said.

The lawsuit by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) argued that university admissions should be based on merit. The plaintiffs alleged the university engaged in "racial balancing", a practice similar to quotas, and therefore limited the number of Asian-American students admitted. The group is led by Edward Blum, who has filed similar lawsuits against the University of Texas-Austin and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Students for Fair Admissions challenge about 40 years of Supreme Court rulings that have said universities are permitted to consider an applicant's race in admissions because a diverse student body has educational benefits, including preparing students for the global economy.

Asian-American students make up about 25 percent of Harvard's freshman class, but Asians comprise about 6 percent of the US population, evidence presented at the non-jury trial showed. The judge therefore concluded, "It is reasonable for Harvard to determine that students from other minority backgrounds are more likely to offer perspectives that are less abundant in its classes."

In a statement to China Daily, AACE criticized the ruling as a "biased alliance with the defendant on a basis of political correctness and elitist arrogance."

It "failed to explain why Asian-American applicants were held to the highest admission standards, had the lowest admissions ratios and were consistently rated lowest in personal rating'', according to the statement.

The judge said Students for Fair Admissions "did not present a single Asian-American student who was overly discriminated against or who was better qualified than an admitted white applicant when considering the full range of factors that Harvard values in its admissions process''.

"The consideration of race, alongside many other factors, helps us achieve our goal of creating a diverse student body that enriches the education of every student," said Lawrence Bacow, president of Harvard, in an open letter Tuesday to the Harvard community.

He hailed the court's ruling, saying "today we reaffirm the importance of diversity — and everything it represents to the world".

"The court emphasized that the university has followed the high court's standard that race and ethnicity can be considered within a narrowly tailored framework as one factor in a holistic admissions review," said Ted Michell, president of the American Council on Education, in a statement.

"Race-conscious college admissions is not a zero-sum game," wrote the Harvard Radcliffe Asian-American Association, a student organization representing the Asian- American community at Harvard, in a statement lauding the ruling.

"Asian Americans are not a monolith, and the broad diversity of experience of our membership gives us a richness of culture on Harvard's campus," the statement said.

A Chinese-American researcher at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, who said he has followed the case for years, told China Daily under anonymity that he was "very disappointed" by the ruling and found it "difficult to understand".

"I fully support diversity, but I could not understand why diversity is defined by race," he said. "I refuse to believe that we should define diversity based on skin color."

Harvard's school newspaper, the Crimson, on Wednesday quoted students both praising the decision and criticizing it.

Jeannie Park, president of the Harvard Asian American Alumni Alliance, and Coalition for a Diverse Harvard co-founder and board member, told the newspaper that she found Burroughs's use of alumni and student testimonies to be the most "gratifying" part of her ruling.

"She really heard what the alumni and students said in terms of how inextricable race is from their lives, from their lived experiences, from their education and from presenting themselves in the application process,'' Park said.

Kelley A. Babphavong of the Class of 2020 said that while she wasn't surprised by the ruling, she hopes it will be changed on appeal. "I want this to make its way all the way to the Supreme Court," she said. "I do not believe in affirmative action in the way it currently stands today."

Scott Reeves in New York contributed to this story.