…unless your racial origins would cause an imbalance in our carefully constructed palette of backgrounds, abilities and hues…
Asian-American groups filed a federal lawsuit challenging Harvard University’s affirmative action policies as discriminatory, and the Justice Department backs of plaintiffs who say the university is discriminating against Asian-American applicants. (I wrote about the lawsuit here.) Of course they are discriminatory. In its quest for “diversity,” Harvard and other schools have penalized Asian-Americans, who confound Charles Murray-haters and racial-privilege mongers by being disproportionately excellent in academics. On a level playing field, in a purely merit-based admission system, they would dominate elite institutions, with numbers far beyond what demographics alone would predict. Can’t have that! (This the leftist reaction, and they run U.S. education. My reaction: what an inspiring American success story!) Thus Harvard and other schools have used de facto quotas to reject Asian Americans who would have been admitted easily if they were a different color.
Outgoing Harvard President Drew Faust, a feminist proto-totalitarian who has shown an eagerness to stomp on basic human rights like speech, due process and association during her disastrous tenure, sent the campus a message this week attacking the law suit. Here it is:
Dear Members of the Harvard Community,
In the weeks and months ahead, a lawsuit aimed to compromise Harvard’s ability to compose a diverse student body will move forward in the courts and in the media. As the case proceeds, an organization called Students for Fair Admissions—formed in part to oppose Harvard’s commitment to diversity—will seek to paint an unfamiliar and inaccurate image of our community and our admissions processes, including by raising allegations of discrimination against Asian-American applicants to Harvard College. These claims will rely on misleading, selectively presented data taken out of context. Their intent is to question the integrity of the undergraduate admissions process and to advance a divisive agenda. Please see here for more information about the case.
Year after year, Harvard brings together a community that is the most varied and diverse that any of us is likely ever to encounter. Harvard students benefit from working and living alongside people of different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives as they prepare for the complex world that awaits them and their considerable talents.
I have affirmed in the past, and do so again today, that Harvard will vigorously defend its longstanding values and the processes by which it seeks to create a diverse educational community. We will stand behind an approach that has been held up as legal and fair by the Supreme Court, one that relies on broad and extensive outreach to exceptional students in order to attract excellence from all backgrounds.
As this case generates widespread attention and comment, Harvard will react swiftly and thoughtfully to defend diversity as the source of our strength and our excellence—and to affirm the integrity of our admissions process. A diverse student body enables us to enrich, to educate, and to challenge one another. As a university community, we are bound across differences by a shared commitment to learning, to pursuing truth, and to embracing the rigor and respect of argument and evidence. We never give up on the promise of a world made better by an assumption revisited, an understanding expanded, or a truth questioned—again and again and again.
Last month, I presided over our Commencement Exercises for a final time and reveled in the accomplishments of our graduates and alumni, and in the joy and pride of the faculty who educated them, the staff who enabled their manifold successes, and the family members who helped nurture them and their aspirations. Tercentenary Theatre was filled with individuals from the widest range of backgrounds and life experiences. It was a powerful reminder that the heart of this extraordinary institution is its people.
Now, we have an opportunity to stand together and to defend the ideals and the people that make our community so extraordinary. I am committed to ensuring that veritas will prevail.
Sincerely,
Drew Faust
Such transparent deceit is seldom trumpeted so loudly. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 
Men are pigs, and how dare they stereotype us?
Alizia Tyler, the provocative arch-conservative Ethics Alarms iconoclast whose comments here are frequently far longer than the posts she comments on, delivers the Comment of the Day. It involves the controversy regarding the Harvard soccer team’s cruel “scouting report” on the sexual attributes of their female counterparts, and the college’s punishment it brought down on the team’s members.
Alizia’s particular focus is the response by the members of the women’s team, which was not the primary focus of the Quiz. Indeed, Alizia’s post is what first brought all of it to my attention. My reaction was, simply, that it is pure, indefensible bigotry. This isn’t about “men,” this is about jerks, and the letter tells us that these women think the two are one and the same. They are not. This is the same as blacks asserting that all whites are racists. It is a bigotry double standard. When women posture in public forums about their innate superiority, the reaction should be exactly as indignant and condemning as when a man says that women should be kept barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. It never is, however. Misogyny is disgusting. Misandry is cool.
If Harvard president Drew Faust had integrity and was not a biased, feminist social justice warrior, she would end the women’s soccer season too. It is, however, a useful microcosm of what men can look forward to under President Hillary.
Alizia has more to say. Here is her analysis of the letter, a Comment of the Day on the post, Ethics Quiz: The Harvard Soccer Team’s “Locker Room Talk”: