As someone who is Asian, I've just kind of accepted this kind of casual racism. The stereotype of Asian men are that we are better at math, science, and logic (sadly enough, this is where I spent most of my working career) and everyone kind of laughs about it and jokes how it's great this stereotype is so positive.<p>Except, of course, that it leads to these kinds of policies. Just like Jewish people are ascribed the stereotype of being good with money leads to other policies that have occurred in the past and probably still continue to this day.<p>To me, though, this is just another example of why higher education is becoming a parody of itself. To become personally angry about decisions that are based on the angle of my eyelids is a waste of my time; and this reaction is overwhelmingly common in the Asian community. It has been for decades since Korematsu v. United States, too. I'm not sure it's the "best" approach, but I've learned to live with it, knowing that others have it a hell of a lot worse. Is that rationalization and "giving up?" Perhaps. But I just can't bring myself to care.
Back when Harvard didn't admit (many) blacks and women, they also had an anti-Jewish quota. See: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...</a><p>Edit: Now that I eventually figured out how to get around the paywall (hint: Chrome makes it easier than Firefox, I wonder why), the article mentions this: "The suit compares its current racial admissions to Harvard’s quotas limiting Jewish students in an earlier era. In both cases, Harvard kept out minorities who would have been admitted based on academic merit."
When talking about Asian's stereotype, one thing is always ignored: the stereotype of Asian in the U.S. is a direct result of the education system and immigrant policy. Most 1st generation Asian immigrants are students who come to the U.S. for grad school. They (and their children) are better at STEM simply because they (or their parents) are/were grad students in that area. As an Asian, I saw lots of students who are not good at STEM and simply did not get an offer from any U.S. university. The immigration policy and universities' admission procedure are intentionally designed to select foreign students who are good in those majors.
As I have tried to point out before, this exact same problem is also present in efforts to bolster minority participation in tech. Asian men are often completely ignored in minority programs, because "Uh, there are a lot of Asian guys in tech", completely ignoring the strongly inferior position that they hold in American society as a whole (in my opinion, definitely one below that of white women; though this is only an opinion.)<p>The response I usually get when I point out this problem on HN is a glib "Hey, it's a free country. Nobody prevented you from starting up your own minority program for Asians." [1] Unfortunately, so far I haven't been able to find a proper response to this.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7524665</a>
To bypass the paywall: <a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCQQqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fharvards-asian-problem-1416615041&ei=aWJxVNX7KsWCPenpgcgF&usg=AFQjCNFx4jAu3iXSX2MOITUbgE1rO6gK_A&sig2=38LP7WVfphG3BkJL9pNFYg&bvm=bv.80185997,d.ZWU" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...</a>
<i>In 1992, 19.1% of Harvard’s admissions offers went to Asian applicants, compared to 25.2% who were admitted to the California Institute of Technology, a school that doesn’t use racial preferences. In 2013 Harvard made 18% of its offers to Asians, while CalTech admitted 42.5% Asian students.</i><p>It is an interesting choice to compare Harvard's racial admissions with that of CalTech. I would think that Harvard vs. MIT or Stanford would create a more convincing argument. So, here are the numbers:<p>Stanford class of 2018: 22.6% Asian [1]<p>MIT class of 2018: 30% Asian [2]<p>Harvard class of 2018: 20% Asian [3]<p>It looks like the writer of the article chose the school with the highest percentage Asian population to make this comparison (excluding Hawaii). [4]<p>[1] <a href="http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile" rel="nofollow">http://facts.stanford.edu/academics/undergraduate-profile</a><p>[2] <a href="http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile" rel="nofollow">http://mitadmissions.org/apply/process/profile</a><p>[3] <a href="https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics" rel="nofollow">https://college.harvard.edu/admissions/admissions-statistics</a><p>[4] <a href="http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-highest-percentage-of-asian-students/2361/" rel="nofollow">http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-with-the-hi...</a>
For those complaining about the paywall or for whom the usual paywall bypass tricks failed, Google "harvard asian lawsuit" or "Students for Fair Admissions" (that's the group that is suing) and filter to limit the search to article in the last week.<p>That will give you a few other sites that have covered the story. Some details might differ from the WSJ coverage, but it will give you enough to be able to appreciate the comments here and participate meaningfully in the discussion.
I noticed the article compared Harvard's admission percentage to Caltech (19% to 25%). If you're going to make that comparison it's worth noting that a significant fraction of Harvard students are athletes and the admissions criteria for athletes is different. Anecdotally, Asians seem to be under represented in athletics, so that probably explains part of the difference.
Shrug.<p>The anti-European ruling class of the Western world is unintentionally hurting Asians as well. No kidding. But they really didn't want this to happen, and any Asians hurt by these policies should try to understand: You are just collateral damage--the real enemy is people of European descent. This has been going on for a long time.<p>I'm sure they'll straighten it out. Trial balloons on the topic are always going up.
Diversity in education may be more valuable to Harvard (and, probably, the rest of us) than a few tenths of a GPA point or handful of SAT points. This seems perfectly valid. (IMO) Diversity helps creates better solutions to better problems than you're likely to get with slightly higher performing but less diverse populations.