Court case alleges Harvard aware of anti-Asian admission flaws

NEW YORK: A judicial battle pitting Asian students against Harvard University heated up Friday with allegations that the faculty was aware of anti-Asian flaws in its admissions policy.

The Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) organization sued the prestigious university in 2014 for allegedly preferring whites, blacks and Hispanics at the expense of more deserving Asian students.

On Friday, the SFFA filed documents in a Massachusetts federal court indicating that Harvard had analyzed the admissions policy in 2013. The study highlighted a policy that was unfavorable to candidates of Asian origin, with academic results that were generally higher than those of other ethnic groups.

It showed that because of the policy, Asians represented only 19 percent of admitted students, whereas they would have been 26 percent based on non-racial admissions criteria and 43 percent on academics alone.

According to the SFFA, Harvard has long been applying a system aimed at maintaining a virtually unalterable proportion of students from different ethnic groups. The system dates back to the 1920s, when Harvard and other universities were attempting to limit the number of Jewish students, the SFFA says. Today, that policy works against Asians.

While not opposed to the desire for an ethnically diverse campus, the SFFA says that "as other elite universities have shown, increased utilization of non-race-based criteria, such as socioeconomic preferences, can promote diversity about as well as racial preferences."