EDITORIAL
THE HARVARD CRIMSON
JUNE 30, 2023
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STAFF EDITORIAL
Harvard Must Give Diversity New Life ONLY THE BEGINNING. While we despair at the Court’s striking of race-conscious admissions, Harvard must rise to the occasion and establish a truly praiseworthy model for higher education admissions. BY THE CRIMSON EDITORIAL BOARD
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fter almost a decade of litigation pitting two of the oldest universities in the country against an organization hell-bent on ending race-based affirmative action, the Supreme Court has spoken: Race-conscious admissions in higher education are over. We now find ourselves in a state of utter post-affirmative action loss. A loss for our University, a loss for progress, and a loss for our nation resound in the aftermath of this decision. The Court’s majority opinion in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College holds that the admission processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Thursday’s ruling contrasts with the Court’s precedents allowing universities to consider applicants’ race in admissions decisions — precedents in which justices cited Harvard’s admissions system as an exemplary model. The Court’s total pivot on Harvard’s admissions policies lays bare the issues that have always existed within our University’s implementation of affirmative action. We are forced to confront the question: How preciously does Harvard actually prize diversity? Harvard’s now-unconstitutional consideration of race in admissions involved measuring the study body using six categories. We find ourselves in agreement with the Court’s majority opinion on the single point — a narrow point of alignment within a decision that we otherwise find to be reeking of a repulsive “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” to systemic racism, per Associate Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson ’92 — that this method of consideration is inadequate. No racial group is a monolith; these six labels are insufficient to capture the varied experiences of the individuals classified under them. Given this coarse-toothed categorization, it’s not surprising that Generational African Americans may make up as little as 10 percent of Black students at Harvard — a statistic much grimmer than the topline figure that Black students represent 15.3 percent of students in the Class of 2027. This under-
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We now find ourselves in a state of utter post-affirmative action loss. A loss for our University, a loss for progress, and a loss for our nation resound in the aftermath of this decision.
representation of a historically marginalized subgroup showcases Harvard’s ignorance of the necessary reparative element of affirmative action in a country with enduring systemic racial inequalities in education. And then there’s the socioeconomic diversity problem: If Harvard was truly sincere about cultivating a diverse student body, it would transparently and vocally ensure that students come from varied economic backgrounds.
Instead, published statistics about socioeconomic diversity are virtually nonexistent; we are forced to rely on unofficial counts that suggest the school is epically failing, like economist Raj Chetty’s finding that Harvard had 23 times as many higher-income students as lower-income students at the turn of the millennium. Some of these problems provided fodder for the Court’s majority to critique Harvard’s admission process, and to dismiss affirmative action as a reasonable policy to achieve diversity in higher education. But make no mistake: Harvard’s lackluster policies are not to blame for the recent ruling, and the Court’s decision does not at all undermine the importance of a racially diverse student body. Given the Supreme Court’s conservative posse, race-conscious admissions policies were living on borrowed time. In many regards, the decision was inevitable — almost preordained. To this end, we are grateful for the students and organizers who, despite the odds, rallied in defense of diversity in higher education. As the next application cycle approaches, Harvard must radically reimagine its methods of cultivating diversity in its student body — this time, without the glaring gaps.
Several decades ago, the Supreme Court considered Harvard’s admissions policies exemplary, even though they were far from perfect. While we despair at the Court’s striking of race-conscious admissions, Harvard must rise to the occasion and
THC Read more opinions from The Crimson at THECRIMSON.COM
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As the next application cycle approaches, Harvard must radically reimagine its methods of cultivating diversity in its student body — this time, without the glaring gaps.
establish a truly praiseworthy model for higher education admissions — one that creatively and resourcefully reimagines its historical shortcomings to help diversity in higher education outlive its Supreme Court-issued death-knell.
–This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.
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Harvard can now live up to the exemplary role the Court once said it modeled. One first step is obvious: Our school must finally end legacy admissions.
Administrators can affirm the abstract importance of diversity in stilted statements all they want, but we still need to see concrete changes. Harvard can now live up to the exemplary role the Court once said it modeled. One first step is obvious: Our school must finally end legacy admissions, which have disproportionately benefited wealthy white students for far too long. Harvard and other universities must also begin seriously considering applicants’ socioeconomic status in admissions. Household wealth profoundly affects applicants’ identities and experiences; admitting more low-income applicants contributes to a richer tapestry of backgrounds in the student body. Considering socioeconomic status instead of race won’t achieve the same racially diverse outcomes that affirmative action once helped promote because racial disparities exist beyond class. Yet, household wealth is at least a partial proxy for race, and greater attention to it in admissions decisions could help restore some of the racial diversity eroded by the Court’s latest ruling, while simultaneously cultivating much-needed socioeconomic diversity at America’s oldest and richest university. This decision is undoubtedly a depressing one. In tens of pages, six Supreme Court justices metaphorically ziptied Harvard’s hands behind its back, tightly curtailing its capacity to provide the enriching experience of a College education to those who might benefit from it most. University administrators pledging their commitments to diversity must contend with this inescapable reality. Promoting racial diversity is never easy, and the Court’s handcuffed hold on higher education admissions hasn’t helped. Still, we demand that Harvard — and schools across the country — uphold the commitments to racial diversity they publicly espouse.
EMILY N. DIAL—CRIMSON DESIGNER
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Unfinished Business BY HARRY R. LEWIS
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ou will have the privilege of teaching some of the most promising students from the best schools in America,” I used to say at the new faculty orientation when I was dean of the College. “And also some of the most promising students from the worst schools in America.” The outcome of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard leaves a great challenge: How to provide a quality education to students whose preparations differ greatly in quality. Compared with the last time Harvard admissions was before the Supreme Court, the best American high schools are better than ever and the worst have gotten worse — and Harvard is recruiting students from across the whole spectrum. Harvard admissions will adjust to the end of racial affirmative action. It probably has already. The time when you could tell very much about students from their ethnicity has passed, so checkbox diversity has become a poor proxy for educational value added. Indeed, to continue justifying the practice on the basis of the educational merits of a racially diverse student body — which was the basis of the Supreme Court’s 2003 decision upholding race-based preferences — is to put an unconscionable burden on minority students. It tells them, in effect, that they are expected to conform to stereotypes, to represent their group’s perspective on whatever subject is under discussion. But race still plays a role in our lives here at Harvard, because we do not all live the same lives in America. A few years ago, a Black faculty colleague of mine was stopped by Boston police while run-
ning to catch a train — stopped simply for “running while Black.” No such thing has happened to me in eight decades of city living. In the classroom, this colleague was no different from me in any important way (except being smarter). But education
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The outcome of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard leaves a great challenge: How to provide a quality education to students whose preparations differ greatly in quality.
is more than just academic instruction, and to some students, his presence was in important ways more meaningful than mine. Harvard can and should be a place where race does not matter, but our country has a ways to go. So how do we resolve this paradox? How do we maintain a community in which we can learn from others’ diverse experiences, without forcing any individual to be a model for an identity group? I believe that admissions officers will do their job — judging applicants on the basis of what they have done with the opportunities that were available to them, rather than the absolute level they have reached. I am less confident that we, the faculty, understand the challenge set out to us by having that diver-
sity of backgrounds scattered through our classes. That is where the real work needs to be done. Some curricular adjustments are relatively easy, like gateway courses, on-ramps where students from more modest high schools can catch up quickly to the level of their more advantaged peers. These should be priorities, but are often afterthoughts. Too few professors take joy in teaching math, or poetry, to eager but poorly schooled novices — because the system for hiring, promoting, and rewarding faculty does not motivate it. But some problems are more subtle. Consider the plight of the humanities. Relative enrollment in humanities majors has shrunk as the student body has become more diverse. Socioeconomically disadvantaged students are less likely to enroll in the humanities, perhaps reflecting expecta-
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I am less confident that we, the faculty, understand the challenge set out to us by having that diversity of backgrounds scattered through our classes. That is where the real work needs to be done.
tions of what it means to be upwardly mobile. But it’s not that they dislike the humanities — they know less about the field, having in many cases attended under-resourced high schools with only the most utilitarian English curricula.
A Computer Science colleague from another institution recently told me that he had taught a course jointly with an English professor, and the course was dual-numbered between the two departments. At the first meeting the professors asked students to say a few words about what they wanted to get out of the course. One student said that she wanted to read literature — she picked this course because if she signed up for it under the Computer Science number, she could do so without having to answer questions back home about why she was wasting her time studying English. Then two other students acknowledged thinking the same thing. These students feel a different kind of pressure to conform to type. Disadvantaged students have had a different American experience, one that profoundly affects their lives at Harvard. When I encourage students to take time off, either to scratch an entrepreneurial itch or to get their heads together when their motivation and performance flag, they are far more likely to take my advice seriously if they come from middle- or upper-class family backgrounds. No rich student ever told me, “But grandma would kill me if I dropped out of Harvard!” The process of diversifying the student body will continue, perhaps changed as a result of the Supreme Court decision. A great challenge remains: What can Harvard do to free its educationally and socioeconomically disadvantaged students to have the life-changing experiences here that more advantaged students can choose without hesitation or guilt?
–Harry R. Lewis ’68 is the Gordon McKay Research Professor of Computer Science and a former Dean of Harvard College.
