The Left Is Gaslighting Asian Americans About College Admissions

No, this article isn't from some right wing rag, it's from The New York Magazine, and written by liberal in good standing (until now maybe) Jonathan Chait.

The Left Is Gaslighting Asian Americans About College Admissions

The Supreme Court announced last month it would hear a challenge that Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants. One problem raised by this news is the strong likelihood that the Court, now firmly controlled by conservatives, will strike down all racial preferences in college admissions. I’d like to call attention to a second, related problem: The institutions that crafted these policies, and the liberals who have defended them, have relied overwhelmingly on dissembling and lies. Whatever the legal merits, the political case for Harvard’s system, and the similar systems used by its fellow elite institutions, has been formed by a stream of insultingly dishonest propaganda.

Harvard itself found in a 2013 internal study that, if it admitted applicants solely on the basis of academic merit, its share of Asian American students would explode from 19 percent to 43 percent. Preferences for legacies and athletes have propped up the white share of students admitted. (One analysis finds the effect of those “pales in comparison” to the diversity benefits stemming from racial preferences.) Asian Americans are punished by both forms of preferences.

Harvard’s method for tamping down its Asian American applicants to an acceptable level has controversially involved using a subjective “personal” score, gauging qualities such as “likability, courage, kindness and being ‘widely respected.’”


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