Reply to How Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in college admissions

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Actually, I'm not applying any stereotypes at all.  And I certainly never said that Asian Americans don't have that je ne sais quoi.  The point I am making is that Admissions may be making assessments about candidates' personalities and "soft qualities," as some have referred to them, based on teacher recommendations.  I say this because others have criticized admissions for making these assessments when they've never met the student (i.e., they must be giving them low personality scores simply based on the fact that they are Asian American).  My point is that high grades and test scores and a long list of ECs don't tell admissions officers whether a student has that je ne sais quoi.  But a letter of recommendation very well may.  [b]Unless the plaintiffs in this lawsuit have read every letter of rec for admitted/rejected students, I don't see how they have a case [/b](and, btw, I'm a law professor, so I think I have a pretty good sense of what it takes to prevail in a case like this).[/quote]

Would you apply this criteria to prove gender discrimination at companies against women, or racial discrimination in hiring in police departments against URM's. Think about the controversy about women entrepreneurs getting VC funding in the Silicon Valley. Which women's group will be ready to accept this argument that each case will have to be examined on an individual basis and there may be individual reasons why women are not funded as frequently as men?

This is a spurious argument. Any sane person would use statistical analysis to show bias. Since Asian Americans are not aliens from Mars, unless Harvard is able to prove that statistically Asians as a race are more prone to "get lower personality scores", a big gap in the personality scores between the races would show clear bias.  Having said that, I would love to see Harvard make this argument, when none on their liberal administrators will stand and support Charles Murray making a similar argument about URM IQ's in the Bell Curve

You can't have your cake and eat it too. [b]If you are not willing to accept Blacks and Hispanics have lower IQ's on average, then you cannot argue that Asians have lower personality scores on average unless there is bias[/b]. [/quote]

I never said this!  All I said is that admissions officers rely on letters of recommendation (and personal essays) in scoring applicants' personalities.  I have absolutely no idea what those letters say, and neither do you.  It may be true that the letters of rec written for Asian American students are "lower" on personality scores than for white, black, and Latino students.  But, if that's the case, then it's the authors of the letters of rec who may be biased, not Harvard, right?  But if the letters of rec for Asian American students are just as strong on the personality score as for students of other races, but Harvard ignores those, and rates the Asian American students low, then the plaintiffs may have a case.  But we have NO IDEA what the facts are here.

As to your point about statistics, sure, statistics can matter in a discrimination lawsuit.  Often they are sufficient to make out a prima facie case.  But if there's other evidence that rebuts the simple stats (i.e., letters of rec for Asian Americans are clearly inferior to those admitted students), then plaintiffs don't have a case.  Moreover, if you think it's easy to prove a discrimination case like this, think again.  And even a conservative judge who might like the facts of this case (protecting the "model minority") has to think about the precedent that will be set and how it will be used in a future case.[/quote]

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