Harvard Vs. Asians

                An Asian-American group sued Harvard University in 2014 for discriminatory admissions policies that they claim have targeted Asian students for decades. The group demanded the public release of admissions data on hundreds of thousands of applicants, saying the records show a clear pattern of discrimination “going back decades,” according to The New York Times. The group was able to view the documents due to its lawsuit and said in a letter to the court recently that the documents were so compelling there was no need for a trial and they would ask the judge to rule summarily in their favor based on the documents alone. In addition, the plaintiffs said that the public had a right to see the evidence the judge would consider, noting that the federal government directs more than half a billion dollars of taxpayer money into Harvard every year.

                Remarkably, Harvard countered that the documents “were tantamount to trade secrets,” The Times reported. “Trade secrets?!” That begs the question: WTF??!! It’s not like the school is protecting the colonel’s secret recipe or the identity of President Trump’s personal hair stylist. This kind of obfuscating nonsense and self-importance should be met with the utter disdain it richly deserves. This kind of legerdemain should make all Harvard official’s faces Crimson.

                Yet, a cabal of university presidents and professors told the U.S. District Court in Boston: “In a nation that is more connected and racially and ethnically diverse than ever,” a ruling in favor of the Asian-American plaintiffs “would deprive many students of the critical benefits of campus diversity and thus the education they will need as citizens and leaders in the 21^st Century, according to The College Fix. Well, it would certainly deprive Asian-American students of the benefits and education.

                The American Association of University Professors, the American Council on Education, and numerous other groups filed a friend-of-the-court brief siding with Harvard, even though the school’s own data show that its practice of considering race in admissions has functionally capped Asian-American enrollment for at least the past decade, even as the Asian-American population has grown substantially.

                Virtually all of the other Ivy League schools filed a separate brief arguing that a race-neutral admissions policy “would make non-white students at these institutions feel more marginalized,” according to The Fix. Do they think Martin Luther King would approve of the color of one’s skin being used as a determining factor in college admissions? Progressivism is regressive. Classical liberalism is progressive.

                The College Fix summed up the sad, sad situation by stating that presidents and professors told a federal court overseeing an Asian-discrimination lawsuit against Harvard University that “Requiring colleges and universities to evaluate applicants without regard to their race is an attack on education itself.” Stupefying.

                That belief is an attack on education itself. It is also an assault on the capabilities of non-white students, equality under the law, and on logic and reason.

                The core values of institutions of higher learning have been perverted, their core mission inverted. Instead of exposing and expanding minds, they now shield and protect narrow-mindedness from contradiction and controversy. What was open is now closed.

                If merit is meaningless, and the color of one’s skin is paramount in deciding who gets favored treatment, “progressives” will have effectively—ironically?-- repealed The Emancipation Proclamation.