Harvard Still Asks About Race, Without Asking About "Race."

This Time Supreme Court Intervention Is Unlikely.

Harvard’s stadium (Wikimedia Commons)

“Harvard has long recognized the importance of enrolling a diverse student body,” begins the first short-answer question of Harvard's new application.

It may seem brazen to those who missed MartyG Reports last month, when the Supreme Court released its opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, especially given the headlines elsewhere about the end of race in college applications.  Harvard, however, is merely using the method the Supreme Court specified to ask applicants about race without expressly asking them about “race.”  This was foreseen and likely the court’s intent, as MartyG Reports predicted at this link here.

The issue now is, will Harvard use its Supreme Court-approved essay question as a thin veneer for simple racial quotas?  Remember that Harvard never admitted to such conduct affecting Asians.  Instead, Harvard insisted it had honestly and individually evaluated Asian applicants for “personality,” and that their proper “personality” scores really were lower than other applicants’.  A century earlier Harvard disingenuously and systematically used “character” as a proxy to limit Jews.  (Again, MartyG Reports covered all this last month at the above link, as well as Harvard’s centuries-long exclusion of African Americans.)

Given its sad, prejudicial history, Harvard’s admissions department would do well to review the university’s “Honor Code,” which states: “falsifying data, or any other instance of academic dishonesty violates the standards of our community, as well as the standards of the wider world of learning and affairs.”

But, perhaps intentionally, Harvard applies its “Honor Code” only to its students and not to the university itself and its admissions staff.