Posted by David Bernstein:
DOE Complaint Alleging Bias In Admissions Against Asian Students at Princeton
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2006_11_12-2006_11_18.shtml#1163700959
It will be interesting to follow this one. I remember many years ago
reading an article in one of the newsweeklies (that I wished I had
saved, but didn't), that contained a couple of startling bits of
information. One was a quote from an official at one of the U.C.
schools, I think it was Berkeley, protesting that "if we admitted
students just based on their academic credentials, we'd wind up with
80% Jewish and Asian freshmen" (horrors!), or words to that effect
(the 80% figure, along with the blatant acknowledgment that it would
be problematic to have a class that's "too Jewish" and "too Asian"
stuck in my mind). The other was that several Asian-American parents a
year (this was in the 1980s) threatened to sue the U.C. system over
discrimination in admissions, and the response of the system was to
quietly admit these students to avoid litigation.
Anyway, [1]here's the story:
Yale freshman Jian Li has filed a federal civil rights complaint
against Princeton for rejecting his application for admission,
claiming the University discriminated against him because he is
Asian.
The complaint, which was filed with the U.S. Department of
Education's Office for Civil Rights on Oct. 25, alleges that the
University's admissions procedures are biased because they
advantage other minority groups, namely African-Americans and
Hispanics, legacy applicants and athletes at the expense of
Asian-American applicants.
"We've been notified of the complaint and asked to provide
information to the Office of Civil Rights, and the University will
provide the Office of Civil Rights with the information that it has
requested," University spokeswoman Cass Cliatt '96 said yesterday.
"But I will say that we do not believe that the case has merit."
The case, first reported this weekend by The Wall Street Journal,
injects new life into a longstanding debate surrounding affirmative
action and whether race can or should be a factor in college
admissions. Li's minority status adds a new twist to the story,
however, since previous complaints about universities' racial
preference policies have been filed by white students alleging
bias.
Li cites a recent study conducted by two Princeton professors as
evidence for his case. The study, published in June 2005, concluded
that removing consideration of race would have little effect on
white students, but that Asian students would fill nearly four out
of every five places in admitted classes that are currently taken
by African-American or Hispanic students. ...
Princeton maintains that its admission policies do not discriminate
against Asian-American or members of any other race. "We treat each
application individually and we do not discriminate on the base of
race or national origin," Cliatt said. "To the contrary, we seek to
enroll and do enroll classes that are diverse by a multitude of
measures."
References
1.
http://www.xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=525610&mc=78&forum_id=1#6982737
_______________________________________________
Volokh mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.powerblogs.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volokh
