This latest missive from City Journal just came in....
....and pertains to two groups which share a number of characteristics.
And....relates to a third group with an ingrained propensity.
The first two groups....Asians and Jewish folks.
1. ".... in a federal civil rights complaint charging Harvard University with discrimination against Asian-American applicants. The complaint documents a pattern of bias, at Harvard and other Ivy League colleges, that, in its methods and its impact, closely parallels the imposition of de facto Jewish quotas at these schools in the 1920s. By spotlighting how racial preferences for other minorities have ironically contributed to this reprise of Harvard’s bigoted past, with Asians playing the role of modern-day Jews, the plaintiffs hope to prompt the Supreme Court to overturnBakkev. Regents of the University of California, its 1978 decision allowing the use of such preferences in college admissions. For, as the complaint starkly illustrates, whatever merit affirmative action may once have had, it is a policy relic of an essentially biracial society of the 1970s that has become ludicrous in the multiracial America of 2016.
2. The anti-Semitic history is eye-popping. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz calls the Harvard Plan “one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American higher education in general, and of Harvard College in particular.” The SFA complaint draws on Dershowitz’s research and that of sociologist Jerome Karabel, whose 2005 bookThe Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princetonchronicles this story.
As early as 1907, the dean of financial aid expressed his preference for “sons of families that have been American for generations” rather than the “increasing class [of] foreigners, and especially the Russian Jews.”
3. Admissions records at Harvard and other elite colleges over the past quarter-century reveal an uncannily similar treatment of Asian-Americans. Asians, of course, have often been termed the “New Jews” in reference to their focus on academic achievement. But as Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden observed in a chapter with that title in his 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, this status has also meant “inheriting the mantle of the most disenfranchised group in college admissions. The nonacademic admissions criteria established to exclude Jews, from alumni child status to leadership qualities, are now used to deny Asians.”
4. To put it another way: Asians need SAT scores 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and an incredible 450 points higher than blacks (out of 1,600 points) to get into these schools. An Asian applicant with an SAT score of 1,500, that is, has the same chance of being accepted as a white student with a 1,360, a Latino with a 1,230, or an African-American with a 1,050. Among candidates in the highest (1,400–1,600) SAT range, 77 percent of blacks, 48 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of whites, and only 30 percent of Asians are admitted."
Fewer Asians Need Apply by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Winter 2016
Now this: the very same political perspective is responsible for the discrimination.
Yup...
Liberals and Progressives.
Color me shocked!
....and pertains to two groups which share a number of characteristics.
And....relates to a third group with an ingrained propensity.
The first two groups....Asians and Jewish folks.
1. ".... in a federal civil rights complaint charging Harvard University with discrimination against Asian-American applicants. The complaint documents a pattern of bias, at Harvard and other Ivy League colleges, that, in its methods and its impact, closely parallels the imposition of de facto Jewish quotas at these schools in the 1920s. By spotlighting how racial preferences for other minorities have ironically contributed to this reprise of Harvard’s bigoted past, with Asians playing the role of modern-day Jews, the plaintiffs hope to prompt the Supreme Court to overturnBakkev. Regents of the University of California, its 1978 decision allowing the use of such preferences in college admissions. For, as the complaint starkly illustrates, whatever merit affirmative action may once have had, it is a policy relic of an essentially biracial society of the 1970s that has become ludicrous in the multiracial America of 2016.
2. The anti-Semitic history is eye-popping. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz calls the Harvard Plan “one of the most shameful episodes in the history of American higher education in general, and of Harvard College in particular.” The SFA complaint draws on Dershowitz’s research and that of sociologist Jerome Karabel, whose 2005 bookThe Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princetonchronicles this story.
As early as 1907, the dean of financial aid expressed his preference for “sons of families that have been American for generations” rather than the “increasing class [of] foreigners, and especially the Russian Jews.”
3. Admissions records at Harvard and other elite colleges over the past quarter-century reveal an uncannily similar treatment of Asian-Americans. Asians, of course, have often been termed the “New Jews” in reference to their focus on academic achievement. But as Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden observed in a chapter with that title in his 2006 book The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates, this status has also meant “inheriting the mantle of the most disenfranchised group in college admissions. The nonacademic admissions criteria established to exclude Jews, from alumni child status to leadership qualities, are now used to deny Asians.”
4. To put it another way: Asians need SAT scores 140 points higher than whites, 270 points higher than Hispanics, and an incredible 450 points higher than blacks (out of 1,600 points) to get into these schools. An Asian applicant with an SAT score of 1,500, that is, has the same chance of being accepted as a white student with a 1,360, a Latino with a 1,230, or an African-American with a 1,050. Among candidates in the highest (1,400–1,600) SAT range, 77 percent of blacks, 48 percent of Hispanics, 40 percent of whites, and only 30 percent of Asians are admitted."
Fewer Asians Need Apply by Dennis Saffran, City Journal Winter 2016
Now this: the very same political perspective is responsible for the discrimination.
Yup...
Liberals and Progressives.
Color me shocked!
