What is SFFA seeking in this lawsuit?

 

 

SFFA wants to ban inclusive, whole-person admissions practices nationwide by getting a Court ruling that “any use of race or ethnicity in the educational setting” violates the Constitution and federal law.

 

As to Harvard, SFFA asks the court to prohibit Harvard from using race as a factor in admissions. Alarmingly, SFFA seeks a “permanent injunction requiring Harvard to conduct all admissions in a manner that does not permit those engaged in the decisional process to be aware of or learn the race or ethnicity of any applicant for admission.”  SFFA Complaint, p. 119.

 

This injunction would prevent Harvard from:

• Learning applicants’ names

• Conducting interviews

• Recruiting applicants in person

• Viewing athletic, drama, music, or other performance, either on video or live.

 

And it would prevent students from:

• Submitting essays and recommendations that discuss how race or ethnicity has impacted their educations or lives

• Listing awards and activities indicating race or ethnicity, such as President of the Black Students Association or Choreographer for the Indian Classical Dance Company

• Writing about their immigrant stories, whether they have come from Russia or China.

 

The order SFFA seeks would gut the Harvard admissions process and require applicants to strip key parts of their identities and experience. Furthermore, Prof. Card found that without considering race, even using the “race-neutral” alternatives proposed by SFFA, Harvard is unlikely to be able to achieve a student body comparable in diversity to its current composition without decreasing the overall quality of the admitted class on a variety of dimensions, including academic ratings.

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What else does the data show about Asian Americans?

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• SFFA’s expert found that Asian Americans generally are admitted in higher rates than whites in the set of applicants he threw out of his analysis:  athletes, legacies, and others with Harvard connections. Similarly, Prof. Card found that Asian American legacies, who are growing in number, are several percentage points more likely to be admitted than white legacies with similar characteristics. His analysis also showed that Asian American applicants are more likely than white applicants to identify medicine or health as their intended career, a category  with a lower admission rate than other intended careers.

 

• Prof. Card found Asian Americans from California, who comprise 30% of all Asian American applicants, have a slightly higher probability of admission than white candidates with the same characteristics. He notes, “If Harvard’s admissions process sought to limit the number of Asian-American applicants, it would be unlikely to favor Asian-American applicants relative to White applicants in the region in which Asian-American applicants are most concentrated.”

 

• SFFA’s expert's model shows that Asian Americans have an unexplained advantage in Academic and Extracurricular ratings (both of which include subjective components) and an unexplained disadvantage in Personal Ratings. The Personal Rating is not a “personality rating” but instead reflects applicant essays, teacher and counselor recommendations, alumni and staff interviews, anticipated career, parental occupation, and other factors. In formulating Personal Ratings, admissions officers consider what all these inputs say about an applicant’s character, potential contribution to college life, openness to new ideas and new people, and the kind of roommate a person will be.

 

• SFFA dismisses the unexplained advantages that Asian American applicants have in Academic and Extracurricular Ratings as resulting from “unobserved differences”, even though these ratings include subjective factors, but claims that the disadvantage in Personal Ratings must be due to racial bias by Harvard admissions officers. SFFA’s claim of racial bias in Personal Ratings is undermined by the fact that its expert analysis did not include applicant essays – a significant part of the Personal Rating. (Essays were not produced in the litigation to protect applicant privacy).

 

• Prof. Card reports that the Personal Ratings align with recommendations and interview reports (alumni interviewers also give Asian American applicants slightly lower ratings than white applicants). Notably, ratings rely on inputs from high school/other sources, so if implicit bias is a factor, it is not located in Harvard Admissions alone. Certainly, we believe that Harvard must work against intentional and implicit bias and structural inequality affecting any racial group, both within the institution and from other sources impacting the admission process.  

 

 

What about the OIR Documents?

In 2013, some employees of Harvard’s Office of Institutional Research (OIR) began to try to model the admissions process without the full admissions database and without a full understanding of the admissions process. Based on this limited model, the OIR analysis predicted that the percentage of admitted students who are Asian American would be higher if Harvard considered only an applicant’s academic achievement. Of course, Harvard values more than high grades and test scores. Moreover, the OIR documents themselves acknowledge that the analysis was preliminary and had limitations, and Prof. Card explains in detail that OIR analysis was limited in ways similar to that of Peter Arcidiacono, SFFA’s expert. For example, it did not include measures of socioeconomic status, the role of the personal essay, or cases of exceptional talent. As noted by Kimberly West-Faulcon, a former civil rights attorney who has litigated cases of race discrimination in higher education, the expert reports submitted on June 15th – which considered many more key factors – are much more thorough and relevant than the preliminary, internal OIR report.​