What Hillsdale can teach Harvard
What Hillsdale can teach Harvard
On Monday in federal court, Harvard denied accusations that it discriminates against Asian Americans in the same way that it once discriminated against Jews. The race, insisted his lawyer, was just one of the many factors considered, and could only help the possibilities of admission of an applicant, not harm them.
On substance, this is a dubious proposition. The students for Fair Admissions, who filed the lawsuit, have produced considerable evidence that Harvard uses various means to exclude Asian-Americans, even when they are more academically qualified and have better records of extracurricular activities than other accepted students. These media include suspiciously lower ratings given to Asian Americans for personality traits such as "friendliness" and "sympathy."
The claim of Harvard is that it is possible to favor one race without discriminating against others. A 2009 Princeton study shows the opposite. He discovered that an Asian-American aspirant to an elite university has to earn 450 more points in the SAT to enter than a black aspirant, 270 points more than a Latino and 140 points higher than a white one.
For all this, Harvard has an argument here. In a footnote in its motion for summary judgment, the university says that "this case involves a private university, which has a strong interest in academic freedom, protected by the First Amendment, in electing its students and determine how they are educated (including through the judgment about the educational benefits that a diverse student body follows) "Translation: we must be free to decide who we admit and who not.
Only a teenage problem. It is called Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and "prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance." Harvard receives millions of federals each year, directly through grants, as well as indirectly through federal financial aid.
All of which conflicts two fundamental principles. The first is that people should not be discriminated against because of their race. The second is that private institutions should leave their own stores without the federals telling them how to do it.
Can these principles be reconciled? Tiny Hillsdale College suggests they can. In the 1970s, the federal government demanded that the Michigan-based university begin counting its students by race and sex as a condition of the federal loans that some of its students received.
For an institution whose founding charter became the first university in the nation to declare itself open to all students "regardless of nation, color or sex," and who had a long and noble history of blind admissions to color, this was an insult. In 1956, for example, his undefeated football team refused an invitation to the Tangerine Bowl instead of fulfilling official demands that the university not attend to its black players.
Like Harvard, Hillsdale believes he knows how to run his school. Unlike Harvard, he made the difficult decision to rely on this principle. To avoid the regulatory chains that come with federal dollars, in 1985 Hillsdale decided to forego all federal dollars, including financial aid for its students.
To put this in perspective, Hillsdale now has around 1,500 students, charges approximately $ 27,000 tuition for a liberal arts education and has a modest grant of nearly $ 600 million. The Harvard endowment amounts to $ 39 billion. If little Hillsdale can give up taxpayer dollars to stay true to his principles, surely Harvard, big and rich, can do it.
As Richard Epstein, a law professor at New York University, points out, one of the effects of Title VI today is to make liars part of our more elite institutions of higher education. In a Article For the Definitive Ideas of the Hoover Institution, Epstein says that Harvard I like it Argue that their interest in diversity justifies discriminating in favor of some races and against others. But he fears attacking the Civil Rights Act, and is afraid to present his case frankly because the opening words of Title VI say that "no person" should be subject to racial discrimination. Mr. Epstein's solution would be to revoke Title VI and allow schools to admit or exclude whomever they want.
"If Harvard wants to sacrifice academic merit for diversity, leave it," he says. Excluded Asian-American students would have many other options. And the whole process would be more honest.
Of course, the probability that Title VI is discarded in our lives is almost nil. What leaves the Hillsdale option as the only practical alternative for colleges and universities that want to support their own values and mission statements. If Harvard really believes that diversity triumphs over merit, you should say it with pride, and be willing to give up federal dollars, which is the only reason why you are now forced to defend yourself in federal court.
Hillsdale president Larry Arnn says he's more than ready to help. "Every time someone at Harvard would like to see how a university can maintain its autonomy and its values," he says, "our door is open."
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
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