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The secret joke at the heart of the Harvard affirmative-action case

149 points by fortran77 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago
Matches with all my personal experiences with judges - the truth is what I say it is.
JasserInicide 4y ago
On November 30, 2012, amid a friendly back-and-forth about lunch plans, Hibino e-mailed Fitzsimmons an attachment that he described as “really hilarious if I do say so myself!” Hibino explained, “I did it for the amusement of our team, and of course, you guys”—presumably Harvard admissions officers—“are the only others who can appreciate the humor.” The joke memo had been written on Harvard admissions-office stationery, during the earlier investigation. It was purportedly from an associate director of admissions and parodied the admissions officer downplaying an Asian American applicant’s achievements. The memo denigrated “José,” who was “the sole support of his family of 14 since his father, a Filipino farm worker, got run over by a tractor,” saying, “It can’t be that difficult on his part-time job as a senior cancer researcher.” It continued, “While he was California’s Class AAA Player of the Year,” with an offer from the Rams, “we just don’t need a 132 pound defensive lineman,” apparently referring to a slight Asian male physique. “I have to discount the Nobel Peace Prize he received. . . . After all, they gave one to Martin Luther King, too. No doubt just another example of giving preference to minorities.” The memo dismissed the fictional applicant as “just another AA CJer.” That was Harvard admissions shorthand for an Asian American applicant who intends to study biology and become a doctor, according to the trial transcript. It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as you follow the right politics.
- rightbyte 4y ago
  > It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as you follow the right politics. Do you mean the joke? I read it as criticism of the policy to do racial discrimination.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I also thought it was intended as a sort of parody / criticism.
  - btilly 4y ago
    If it was intended as criticism, then one would expect the joke's author, who was the regulator in charge of ensuring no racial discrimination, would have offered the much more direct criticism of taking regulatory action. The joke's author did no such thing. And was careful to make sure it never got to anyone who might be inclined to criticize Harvard's admissions practice. Furthermore the fact that Harvard admissions HAD slang like "Just another AA CJer" is pretty strong evidence of discrimination.
    - emmp 4y ago
      The author of the joke memo is himself Asian American, which is a relevant detail.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - steveBK123 4y ago
        Maybe, maybe not. Could also be read as the very real racism / discrimination of East Asians towards Southeast Asians. Especially a white collar educated East Asian vs a more recently immigrated working class Southeast Asian family. Analogy would be a white guy named Bob Smith working a fancy office job, living in Manhattan making jokes about slack jawwed Cletus the farmer from Alabama.
  - vsskanth 4y ago
    I think the parent comment meant that there doesn't seem to be any cost to making jokes at the expense of Asians. A similar parody letter based on stereotypes about black people will pretty much end their career, no matter the intent.
    - 4y ago
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Yes, but SFFA is almost definitely going to eventually breach this wall sooner or later, and I can bear these awfully obvious judicial biases on the margins as we advance our way toward stamping out centuries old pseudoscientific human taxonomy from our society one slow step at a time.
- lumb63 4y ago
  The characterization of this joke as “anti-Asian” seems very incorrect to me. It’s clearly satirizing the stereotype that Asian American typically are more accomplished and discriminated against in admissions because of it. It’s absolutely relevant to the case, but is definitely not anti-Asian. EDIT: changed “fact” to “stereotype”. Guess I’ll let the court decide the facts…
  - kolbe 4y ago
    Yeah, it's anti-Harvard admissions, which is the entire point of the case, and the judge wouldn't allow it into evidence?
- fumeux_fume 4y ago
  And it's pretty hilarious how far over your head a joke can fly when you follow the wrong politics.
- bdowling 4y ago
  The real punchline is that the Harvard dean initially believed the memo was genuine, that an associate director of admissions had written it as a parody of Harvard’s own practices.
  - gnicholas 4y ago
    My reading was that he initially thought the memo was a joke that was written by a real admissions officer (whose name was used on the document). The memo was so over-the-top (Nobel Prize!) that it would have been obvious that no such student had ever applied.
rayiner 4y ago
> She found that “the majority of the disparity” in the personal ratings was “more likely caused by race-affected inputs to the admissions process” (such as high-school recommendation letters) or “underlying differences in the attributes” of Asian American and white applicants (meaning that the scores accurately reflected the groups’ qualities). Her bottom line was that Asian Americans’ low personal ratings were “not the result of intentional discrimination” by Harvard. I suspect this is true, but also shows why subjective evaluation is bad. I have no doubt that, on average, white applicants (socialized into American culture) are better able to persuade some college administrator that they care about something other than getting a job at McKinsey or Goldman than an Asian applicant (who is likely socialized into Asian culture even if born here). I’m reminded of Barbara Walter’s awful speech at my brother’s graduation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llYZ2XqLX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llYZ2XqLX4. In my experience this is both a common way white Americans think and also bizarre to most Asians. We shouldn’t force Asian kids to go along with this silliness just to get into school.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- cyberlurker 4y ago
  Instead of just linking to a 24 min video can you share what part was awful?
  - rayiner 4y ago
    > When I went to college I went to a very small college called Sarah Lawrence, back in the middle ages. I had a professor who became very well known. His name was Joseph Campbell and he exhorted us all to follow our bliss. Do what you love, follow your bliss and you will truly be successful. It was great advice, except when I graduated from college I hadn't a clue what I really loved. I had no bliss to follow. When I look at all of you today I think many of you do know what your bliss is. Graduate school, or medicine or law or biology, ecology, sociology. How about none of the above? How many of you in this graduating class truly know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Isn't that interesting. Not that great a number. How many of you do not know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Don't be afraid. Most of us don't. I didn't find my bliss until I was in my 30s and then by luck. That's another story. It’s just individualistic dreck.
duxup 4y ago
I’m the kind of person who generally approaches everyone as “What do I really know about this person?”. And the answer is almost always “not much”. I don’t understand how these admissions folks work and it kind of makes me suspicious about someone who really wants to do that.
- itronitron 4y ago
  Back in 2021 I was listening to some NPR podcast about college admissions during the Covid pandemic and they had some college admissions people as guests. One of them, after talking about how thoughtful and seriously they take their process of making decisions, said that he just wanted applicants to stop writing essays about how their lives were impacted by the Covid pandemic. I knew instantly that it was all bullshit, and none of my children have applied to colleges that include essays as part of the application process.
  - duxup 4y ago
    I can’t help but think of those people who REALLY want to be a forum moderator or on those bizzaro world campus justice systems… and often seem to be the worst people to do the job.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    > wanted applicants to stop writing essays about how their lives were impacted by the Covid pandemic. ¶ I knew instantly that it was all bullshit Or maybe, like anyone else would be, after reading 1000 identical essays about how shitty the pandemic was, he was mentally exhausted.
lunaru 4y ago
The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to institutions like Harvard. We as a whole are much more educated now and the idea that legacy institutions should serve as gatekeepers of education or validation thereof based on reputation alone seems outdated. These schools should be judged by the rigor and quality of their curriculum rather than the reputations of their past. And I say this as someone who graduated from one of these top schools.
- golemotron 4y ago
  It remains a Schelling Point. That's what keeps many institutions going.
  - Overtonwindow 4y ago
    In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication.
- uejfiweun 4y ago
  It's not going away, because school choice continues to be a valuable signal of how capable someone is, and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society.
  - dmreedy 4y ago
    I would posit you might be conflating "capability" and "impact" in a manner that elides the many distinctions.
    - uejfiweun 4y ago
      You're right, I definitely could have worded this one better in hindsight. I guess the downvotes are my lesson.
  - giantg2 4y ago
    "and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society." Source? There are many individuals who went to state schools or didn't go to college at all that have turned into billionaires, Nobel prize winners, etc. Not to mention there's no evidence that the people who went to an elite school would have less of an impact if elite schools didn't exist.
londons_explore 4y ago
So much effort seems to go into arguing what should be public and what should not. While I see the benefits of privacy, and the benefits of openness, I don't see the benefits of everyone spending days arguing. I propose a different solution: All content is put in 3 categories. One is fully open info. One will be kept hidden for one year after proceedings finish (basically long enough that nobody can appeal anymore). One will be kept hidden for 80 years. There is no secret information. If you do something dishonest, you might get away with it for a lifetime, but your children will find out.
Overtonwindow 4y ago
Judges should be impartial, nay are required to be impartial, yet we never punish judges who are not. This smells like collusion, at the very least seriously unprofessional. Judges and prosecutors should not have qualified immunity, the temptation to insert personal bias is too great.
skilled 4y ago
https://archive.is/R6Ad7 https://archive.is/R6Ad7
petilon 4y ago
The whole "holistic review" crap should be banned. It was originally invented to reduce the number of Jewish people [1]. It is still being used for illegal or illicit discrimination of one kind or another. This article [2] says "holistic review" is subterfuge... it is how colleges make admission decisions based on factors they would rather not talk about. [1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit-reveals-how-peculiar-harvards-definition-of-merit-is https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-false-promise-of-holistic-college-admissions/282432/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Holistic review can still exist on the basis of impartial factors subject to quantitative analysis. The strength of the SFFA case is that there's no way the numbers the public or perhaps even the plaintiffs have privileged access to can avoid reasonable doubt that quotas exist in the current system. That's why many top colleges have recently announced they will stop requiring SAT scores, because the data on their racial breakdown can be easily obtained.
  - HyperSane 4y ago
    > many top colleges have recently announced they will stop requiring SAT scores What will they use instead? SAT scores do a good job of predicting success in college.
    - scarmig 4y ago
      In theory, other measures of student achievement: grades, extracurricular activities, personal statements, letters of recommendation. GPA by itself isn't terrible for this, though pairing it with test scores is an improvement over both it by itself and test scores by themselves for prediction of academic success in college. In practice: things that satisfy ideological goals and maximize fundraising outlook for the institution.
LudwigNagasena 4y ago
> What was Judge Burroughs trying to hide? I eventually obtained the joke memo and the surrounding e-mails, and what I read didn’t strike me as having been worth the fight to keep them secret. Yet you wrote a whole article about it. Sounds like a nothingburger that downplays and pulls attention away from real problems. A Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Education who is supposed to regulate Harvard is a friend of the dean of admissions at Harvard. And you just gloss over it and focus on the joke...
- dmix 4y ago
  Agreed, I actually agree with the judge here (even though I disagree with her rulings and behaviour otherwise): > she added, asserting that asking him about the memo on the stand would be “designed for media consumption and not for any great search for the truth.” It really is press fodder that will get 10x the attention of their buddy-buddy relationship between regulator and admissions office. The fact they were close friends and having lunch together regularily seems like a bigger story and a serious conflict of interest that gets glossed over to focus repeatedly on the joke memo + the judges reaction. The memo may have some minor relevance to the case for credibility attacks but this case is about much more than an individual DOE regulator's personality (especially considering it was the gov official not the Harvard guy who wrote it). But I guess the Streisand Effect cancels this out regardless.
  - eternalban 4y ago
    > fodder Since 'fodder' is food for cattle, I think GP's point stands: The New Yorker is supposed to be food for the somewhat highly literate two legged reader.
- sfink 4y ago
  Yeah, this is a massive nothingburger, seemingly written because the author was pissed at being brushed off by the judge. And whether the judge was right or wrong to try to squash the joke, the comments in this thread show that she was right about people being eager to misinterpret the joke and focus on it, missing any signal for the shiny noise.
- deleted 4y ago
AndrewKemendo 4y ago
Why do we collectively put up with this anti-democratic shit? The entire back and forth between the judge and the reporter was just totally irresponsible and shows the Judge's lack of dedication to the principles of a free and informed society. That alone should be worth disbarment. I think it's because everyone secretly just wants in on the scam, and thinks that they are cunning enough to get their hand stamped if they do the right set of actions.
jcaldas 4y ago
I have always seen Ivy League admission controversies as stemming from the fact that the number of "perfect" (as measured by objective criteria) candidates is so high versus available spots, that there are only two solutions: * Select candidates randomly from a pool of perfect candidates. * Select candidates based on additional, subjective criteria. The first approach seems inherently fairer, but schools went with the second approach. It's hardly surprising that all sorts of biases creep in. I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was deemed "too intense".
- csa 4y ago
  > I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was deemed "too intense". While “too intense” is poor wording (and perhaps shorthand), I’m guessing that the activities had the following traits: 1. Limited to unspecified “participation”, the substance of which was not verified or confirmed in other parts of the application. Typically elite schools are looking for leadership roles as well as moving the needle in some way. 2. Looked like resume/application boosting since no one can reasonably participate in a quality manner in this many activities. In certain communities, especially in the NE corridor, racking up mostly low-engagement ECs is a hobby.
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  >> the number of "perfect" (as measured by objective criteria) candidates is so high versus available spots "Elite overproduction"
999900000999 4y ago
Of my colleagues, the who is most successful didn't attend college at all. With the internet providing near free information we don't *need* college. Sure it's a fun 4 years, sure you might meet someone nice, but it's not needed to live a full life. In fact, I'd argue before attending college you should have to work a real job for a bit. Understand how money works, then blowing 60k a year to get a degree means a different thing. With all of this in mind, get rid of race based admissions.
- hdisllcn 4y ago
  Maybe they would have been even more successful if they went to college? The fact that someone succeeded without going to college says something good about them but it doesn’t necessarily follow that colleges are bad or that they’ve succeeded because they didn’t go to college.
  - 999900000999 4y ago
    My point is you don't need to go to college. I consider myself to be successful and this guy is definitely making much more than I am. If college is worth it for everyone, why is there such a need for student loan forgiveness. If anything the market is self correcting since more and more people are skipping college entirely.
RigelKentaurus 4y ago
Talk to Asian American parents like me about how we feel about this AA nonsense. No matter how you look at it, it penalizes our kids for being hard workers. At the startup I work at, the unwritten hiring rule is that the college major is important, while the college itself is not. A STEM degree from Chico State is worth a lot more than a history or anthropology degree from Harvard/Brown.
- dmix 4y ago
  While I agree with you, the type of people looking to get into Harvard aren't just looking for a STEM job at a startup. They are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc. That sort of thing usually tends to value where you went. Not only for the credibility of the paper but the social networks you gain.
  - bluefirebrand 4y ago
    > They are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc. Yeah, and their degrees don't matter to get those jobs either. I mean of course it matters, but it's still the same degree they could get elsewhere. The network of well connected powerful people they meet at Harvard is what enables them to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc.
  - RigelKentaurus 4y ago
    I wasn't talking about coding jobs. Even jobs in marketing or program management go to STEM students from "lesser" schools. I don't even look at sociology or language degrees anymore.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      Well that seems awfully discriminatory of you. Some of the best programmers I have ever met have sociology and language degrees.
  - jletienne 4y ago
    gonna be a surpise when society finds out about the bamboo ceiling. and people aren't rushing to promote asian american ceos
jancsika 4y ago
Judge Burroughs’s opinion also addressed the striking fact that, when sending recruitment letters to potential applicants in “Sparse Country” (underrepresented states in the Harvard applicant pool), Harvard used an SAT score cutoff of 1310 for white students, 1350 for Asian American females, and 1380 for Asian American males. Constitutional lawyers-- how is this not discrimination? Edit: to be clear-- when I wrote "constitutional lawyers," I meant people who have domain experience in constitutional law. And when I wrote "discrimination," I mean discrimination that would be unconstitutional according to both the U.S. Constitution and relevant U.S. legal precedent. Hopefully this will cause relevant comment to bubble up above the one that begins with "IANAL..."
- twoodfin 4y ago
  It is, or at least likely to be recognized as such within the next month or so by SCOTUS. Chief Justice Roberts, for one, seemed pretty steamed by Harvard's treatment of Asian-ancestry applicants, and he's got 5 justices to his right on this. Honestly, I would not be shocked if Justice Kagan hopped on with the majority: Quantitative practices like this—and the "social scoring" that would be taken as clear evidence of racism in almost any other context—are hard to defend under the "value of diversity" rationale.
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    It will be interesting to see if Gorsuch breaks with the conservative side here. He seems like a "good old boy" from the Harvard social club (he is one of 4 SCOTUS judges who went to Harvard law). Roberts is also a Harvard graduate, but he doesn't seem to be the kind of person to break with his principles on this. I would agree with you on Kagan, but her alma mater is... Harvard Law. The last Harvard SCOTUS judge is Jackson, who has a 0% chance to rule against them here.
    - twoodfin 4y ago
      I think there is 0 chance any of the six conservative justices let stand practices that, again, are either facially discriminatory or have demonstrated disproportionate impact with no plausible explanation other than discriminatory intent. The interesting question to me is whether there's a consensus position on acceptable means to "diversity" ends that pulls in Kagan or the other liberals.
crop_rotation 4y ago
The focus on subjective essay over objective tests baffles me. It is guaranteed that the rich kids will have more opportunities to a.) get a more polished essay written by whatever help needed, b) do all kinds of stuff that looks good on an essay but costs either time or money and is much harder for a poor kid to do. A poor kid can compete on objective tests relatively better by spending a much smaller amount of money. Subjective criteria just seem designed to game. It seems like what the US universities really want is some quota for the % of students representing some demographic ratio they have in mind. But since that is not constitutional, and might also make bad press, they come up with totally opaque and subjective criteria. I feel really bad for students being rejected for being less "likeable" just so the University can meet it's undisclosed quotas. If quotas are what you want then come out and say it.
rShergold 4y ago
Harvard was created to educate the elite not to create it. This is the fundamental issue here. These institutions see their purpose as preserving western civilisation and hopefully shaping its future direction. Part of this joke was about turning Harvard into a trade school for asian doctors. From their point of view this would be the same as becoming a factory churning out plumbers or electricians. The "secret sauce" of the admissions process is simply "If this candidate doesn't attend Harvard are they highly likely to become a member of the elite anyway?". This opens up things about our society we don't want to face. George Bush is related to the late Queen of England. Many of the elite are the same families who have ruled over us for the last thousand years. Even at the local level your chance at becoming an important person in your city is closely related to who your parents are. By accounting for the structure of society and distribution of power at the time of application the admissions process becomes at best conservative and at worst racist.
nichohel 4y ago
Can anyone suggest what "CJer" is short for in "AA CJer"? It apparently is used to refer to Asian American pre-med type students, but I'm curious was the CJer part is.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisbolt 4y ago
  Seems to stand for “Joint Concentration”, where a concentration is what Harvard calls a major. https://undergrad.gov.harvard.edu/joint-concentration https://undergrad.gov.harvard.edu/joint-concentration
  - nichohel 4y ago
    But why CJ and not JC?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nkurz 4y ago
  There's a comment here from someone trying (probably unsuccessfully) to answer this same question: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-federal-official-wrote-parody-of.html?showComment=1679691168089#c7871263851979799082 https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-federal-official-wro... I can't find anything about this term with a web search, and currently suspect it might be a typo.
- aoki 4y ago
  [dead]
xiaolingxiao 4y ago
The same shifting criteria were applied to Jews. In the early 1900s proficiency in Latin was required because only prep school offered Latin, so it was an implied filter that’s nonetheless “impartial”. Then Jews became very good at Latin, so the ivies phased out Latin as a criteria and began admitting talent from the interior, because Jews did not settle there. So this whole game is applies to Asian Americans now, not at all surprising
lbayes 4y ago
https://web.archive.org/web/20230325180654/https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-secret-joke-at-the-heart-of-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case https://web.archive.org/web/20230325180654/https://www.newyo...
MyHypatia 4y ago
I see the appeal of SAT as a standard metric, but rather than SAT why not allow kids to submit AP (or other standardized subject test scores) instead? Studying for the SAT feels like we are wasting hours of kids lives on an ill-defined concept of general aptitude. Whereas for subject tests (like AP or other standardized subject tests) there is a concrete subject that students are demonstrating that they can choose and master (chemistry, English, Spanish, Calculus, etc.) I think this approach has the benefit of standardization and the benefit of not wasting kids time forcing them to study for a test which people claim won't change their scores much and where the notion of what aptitude even is isn't really clear (the SAT has changed substantially over the years). I also really doubt the claim that studying for the SAT won't impact a kid's scores much. I can't think of a single other test where this is the case. It sounds like something people tell poor kids so they don't bother studying for it, while rich kids spend hours in test prep. Then we can say "well it wouldn't have mattered if they got the same resources because aptitude is innate". In contrast, no one can claim that if you just waltz into your chemistry test without studying it won't have an impact. My preference would be to get rid of "aptitude" tests like the SAT, and use standardized subject tests instead.

149 points by fortran77 4y ago

Matches with all my personal experiences with judges - the truth is what I say it is.

On November 30, 2012, amid a friendly back-and-forth about lunch plans, Hibino e-mailed Fitzsimmons an attachment that he described as “really hilarious if I do say so myself!” Hibino explained, “I did it for the amusement of our team, and of course, you guys”—presumably Harvard admissions officers—“are the only others who can appreciate the humor.” The joke memo had been written on Harvard admissions-office stationery, during the earlier investigation. It was purportedly from an associate director of admissions and parodied the admissions officer downplaying an Asian American applicant’s achievements. The memo denigrated “José,” who was “the sole support of his family of 14 since his father, a Filipino farm worker, got run over by a tractor,” saying, “It can’t be that difficult on his part-time job as a senior cancer researcher.” It continued, “While he was California’s Class AAA Player of the Year,” with an offer from the Rams, “we just don’t need a 132 pound defensive lineman,” apparently referring to a slight Asian male physique. “I have to discount the Nobel Peace Prize he received. . . . After all, they gave one to Martin Luther King, too. No doubt just another example of giving preference to minorities.” The memo dismissed the fictional applicant as “just another AA CJer.” That was Harvard admissions shorthand for an Asian American applicant who intends to study biology and become a doctor, according to the trial transcript. It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as you follow the right politics.

rightbyte 4y ago
> It's pretty disgusting what you can get away with as long as you follow the right politics. Do you mean the joke? I read it as criticism of the policy to do racial discrimination.
- duxup 4y ago
  I also thought it was intended as a sort of parody / criticism.
- btilly 4y ago
  If it was intended as criticism, then one would expect the joke's author, who was the regulator in charge of ensuring no racial discrimination, would have offered the much more direct criticism of taking regulatory action. The joke's author did no such thing. And was careful to make sure it never got to anyone who might be inclined to criticize Harvard's admissions practice. Furthermore the fact that Harvard admissions HAD slang like "Just another AA CJer" is pretty strong evidence of discrimination.
  - emmp 4y ago
    The author of the joke memo is himself Asian American, which is a relevant detail.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - steveBK123 4y ago
      Maybe, maybe not. Could also be read as the very real racism / discrimination of East Asians towards Southeast Asians. Especially a white collar educated East Asian vs a more recently immigrated working class Southeast Asian family. Analogy would be a white guy named Bob Smith working a fancy office job, living in Manhattan making jokes about slack jawwed Cletus the farmer from Alabama.
- vsskanth 4y ago
  I think the parent comment meant that there doesn't seem to be any cost to making jokes at the expense of Asians. A similar parody letter based on stereotypes about black people will pretty much end their career, no matter the intent.
  - 4y ago
lr4444lr 4y ago
Yes, but SFFA is almost definitely going to eventually breach this wall sooner or later, and I can bear these awfully obvious judicial biases on the margins as we advance our way toward stamping out centuries old pseudoscientific human taxonomy from our society one slow step at a time.
lumb63 4y ago
The characterization of this joke as “anti-Asian” seems very incorrect to me. It’s clearly satirizing the stereotype that Asian American typically are more accomplished and discriminated against in admissions because of it. It’s absolutely relevant to the case, but is definitely not anti-Asian. EDIT: changed “fact” to “stereotype”. Guess I’ll let the court decide the facts…
- kolbe 4y ago
  Yeah, it's anti-Harvard admissions, which is the entire point of the case, and the judge wouldn't allow it into evidence?
fumeux_fume 4y ago
And it's pretty hilarious how far over your head a joke can fly when you follow the wrong politics.
bdowling 4y ago
The real punchline is that the Harvard dean initially believed the memo was genuine, that an associate director of admissions had written it as a parody of Harvard’s own practices.
- gnicholas 4y ago
  My reading was that he initially thought the memo was a joke that was written by a real admissions officer (whose name was used on the document). The memo was so over-the-top (Nobel Prize!) that it would have been obvious that no such student had ever applied.

rayiner 4y ago

> She found that “the majority of the disparity” in the personal ratings was “more likely caused by race-affected inputs to the admissions process” (such as high-school recommendation letters) or “underlying differences in the attributes” of Asian American and white applicants (meaning that the scores accurately reflected the groups’ qualities). Her bottom line was that Asian Americans’ low personal ratings were “not the result of intentional discrimination” by Harvard. I suspect this is true, but also shows why subjective evaluation is bad. I have no doubt that, on average, white applicants (socialized into American culture) are better able to persuade some college administrator that they care about something other than getting a job at McKinsey or Goldman than an Asian applicant (who is likely socialized into Asian culture even if born here). I’m reminded of Barbara Walter’s awful speech at my brother’s graduation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llYZ2XqLX4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7llYZ2XqLX4. In my experience this is both a common way white Americans think and also bizarre to most Asians. We shouldn’t force Asian kids to go along with this silliness just to get into school.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
cyberlurker 4y ago
Instead of just linking to a 24 min video can you share what part was awful?
- rayiner 4y ago
  > When I went to college I went to a very small college called Sarah Lawrence, back in the middle ages. I had a professor who became very well known. His name was Joseph Campbell and he exhorted us all to follow our bliss. Do what you love, follow your bliss and you will truly be successful. It was great advice, except when I graduated from college I hadn't a clue what I really loved. I had no bliss to follow. When I look at all of you today I think many of you do know what your bliss is. Graduate school, or medicine or law or biology, ecology, sociology. How about none of the above? How many of you in this graduating class truly know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Isn't that interesting. Not that great a number. How many of you do not know what your bliss is? Raise your hands. Don't be afraid. Most of us don't. I didn't find my bliss until I was in my 30s and then by luck. That's another story. It’s just individualistic dreck.

duxup 4y ago

I’m the kind of person who generally approaches everyone as “What do I really know about this person?”. And the answer is almost always “not much”. I don’t understand how these admissions folks work and it kind of makes me suspicious about someone who really wants to do that.

itronitron 4y ago
Back in 2021 I was listening to some NPR podcast about college admissions during the Covid pandemic and they had some college admissions people as guests. One of them, after talking about how thoughtful and seriously they take their process of making decisions, said that he just wanted applicants to stop writing essays about how their lives were impacted by the Covid pandemic. I knew instantly that it was all bullshit, and none of my children have applied to colleges that include essays as part of the application process.
- duxup 4y ago
  I can’t help but think of those people who REALLY want to be a forum moderator or on those bizzaro world campus justice systems… and often seem to be the worst people to do the job.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  > wanted applicants to stop writing essays about how their lives were impacted by the Covid pandemic. ¶ I knew instantly that it was all bullshit Or maybe, like anyone else would be, after reading 1000 identical essays about how shitty the pandemic was, he was mentally exhausted.

lunaru 4y ago

The real joke is that we as a society still give weight to institutions like Harvard. We as a whole are much more educated now and the idea that legacy institutions should serve as gatekeepers of education or validation thereof based on reputation alone seems outdated. These schools should be judged by the rigor and quality of their curriculum rather than the reputations of their past. And I say this as someone who graduated from one of these top schools.

golemotron 4y ago
It remains a Schelling Point. That's what keeps many institutions going.
- Overtonwindow 4y ago
  In game theory, a focal point (or Schelling point) is a solution that people tend to choose by default in the absence of communication.
uejfiweun 4y ago
It's not going away, because school choice continues to be a valuable signal of how capable someone is, and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society.
- dmreedy 4y ago
  I would posit you might be conflating "capability" and "impact" in a manner that elides the many distinctions.
  - uejfiweun 4y ago
    You're right, I definitely could have worded this one better in hindsight. I guess the downvotes are my lesson.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "and graduates of "top" schools continue to have disproportionately higher impacts on society." Source? There are many individuals who went to state schools or didn't go to college at all that have turned into billionaires, Nobel prize winners, etc. Not to mention there's no evidence that the people who went to an elite school would have less of an impact if elite schools didn't exist.

londons_explore 4y ago

So much effort seems to go into arguing what should be public and what should not. While I see the benefits of privacy, and the benefits of openness, I don't see the benefits of everyone spending days arguing. I propose a different solution: All content is put in 3 categories. One is fully open info. One will be kept hidden for one year after proceedings finish (basically long enough that nobody can appeal anymore). One will be kept hidden for 80 years. There is no secret information. If you do something dishonest, you might get away with it for a lifetime, but your children will find out.

Overtonwindow 4y ago

Judges should be impartial, nay are required to be impartial, yet we never punish judges who are not. This smells like collusion, at the very least seriously unprofessional. Judges and prosecutors should not have qualified immunity, the temptation to insert personal bias is too great.

skilled 4y ago

https://archive.is/R6Ad7 https://archive.is/R6Ad7

petilon 4y ago

The whole "holistic review" crap should be banned. It was originally invented to reduce the number of Jewish people [1]. It is still being used for illegal or illicit discrimination of one kind or another. This article [2] says "holistic review" is subterfuge... it is how colleges make admission decisions based on factors they would rather not talk about. [1] https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit-reveals-how-peculiar-harvards-definition-of-merit-is https://www.economist.com/united-states/2018/06/23/a-lawsuit... [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-false-promise-of-holistic-college-admissions/282432/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/12/the-fa...

lr4444lr 4y ago
Holistic review can still exist on the basis of impartial factors subject to quantitative analysis. The strength of the SFFA case is that there's no way the numbers the public or perhaps even the plaintiffs have privileged access to can avoid reasonable doubt that quotas exist in the current system. That's why many top colleges have recently announced they will stop requiring SAT scores, because the data on their racial breakdown can be easily obtained.
- HyperSane 4y ago
  > many top colleges have recently announced they will stop requiring SAT scores What will they use instead? SAT scores do a good job of predicting success in college.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    In theory, other measures of student achievement: grades, extracurricular activities, personal statements, letters of recommendation. GPA by itself isn't terrible for this, though pairing it with test scores is an improvement over both it by itself and test scores by themselves for prediction of academic success in college. In practice: things that satisfy ideological goals and maximize fundraising outlook for the institution.

LudwigNagasena 4y ago

> What was Judge Burroughs trying to hide? I eventually obtained the joke memo and the surrounding e-mails, and what I read didn’t strike me as having been worth the fight to keep them secret. Yet you wrote a whole article about it. Sounds like a nothingburger that downplays and pulls attention away from real problems. A Regional Director of the U.S. Department of Education who is supposed to regulate Harvard is a friend of the dean of admissions at Harvard. And you just gloss over it and focus on the joke...

dmix 4y ago
Agreed, I actually agree with the judge here (even though I disagree with her rulings and behaviour otherwise): > she added, asserting that asking him about the memo on the stand would be “designed for media consumption and not for any great search for the truth.” It really is press fodder that will get 10x the attention of their buddy-buddy relationship between regulator and admissions office. The fact they were close friends and having lunch together regularily seems like a bigger story and a serious conflict of interest that gets glossed over to focus repeatedly on the joke memo + the judges reaction. The memo may have some minor relevance to the case for credibility attacks but this case is about much more than an individual DOE regulator's personality (especially considering it was the gov official not the Harvard guy who wrote it). But I guess the Streisand Effect cancels this out regardless.
- eternalban 4y ago
  > fodder Since 'fodder' is food for cattle, I think GP's point stands: The New Yorker is supposed to be food for the somewhat highly literate two legged reader.
sfink 4y ago
Yeah, this is a massive nothingburger, seemingly written because the author was pissed at being brushed off by the judge. And whether the judge was right or wrong to try to squash the joke, the comments in this thread show that she was right about people being eager to misinterpret the joke and focus on it, missing any signal for the shiny noise.
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AndrewKemendo 4y ago

Why do we collectively put up with this anti-democratic shit? The entire back and forth between the judge and the reporter was just totally irresponsible and shows the Judge's lack of dedication to the principles of a free and informed society. That alone should be worth disbarment. I think it's because everyone secretly just wants in on the scam, and thinks that they are cunning enough to get their hand stamped if they do the right set of actions.

jcaldas 4y ago

I have always seen Ivy League admission controversies as stemming from the fact that the number of "perfect" (as measured by objective criteria) candidates is so high versus available spots, that there are only two solutions: * Select candidates randomly from a pool of perfect candidates. * Select candidates based on additional, subjective criteria. The first approach seems inherently fairer, but schools went with the second approach. It's hardly surprising that all sorts of biases creep in. I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was deemed "too intense".

csa 4y ago
> I once read that a candidate was rejected because, having an enormous amount of extracurricular activities in his CV, was deemed "too intense". While “too intense” is poor wording (and perhaps shorthand), I’m guessing that the activities had the following traits: 1. Limited to unspecified “participation”, the substance of which was not verified or confirmed in other parts of the application. Typically elite schools are looking for leadership roles as well as moving the needle in some way. 2. Looked like resume/application boosting since no one can reasonably participate in a quality manner in this many activities. In certain communities, especially in the NE corridor, racking up mostly low-engagement ECs is a hobby.
rufus_foreman 4y ago
>> the number of "perfect" (as measured by objective criteria) candidates is so high versus available spots "Elite overproduction"

999900000999 4y ago

Of my colleagues, the who is most successful didn't attend college at all. With the internet providing near free information we don't *need* college. Sure it's a fun 4 years, sure you might meet someone nice, but it's not needed to live a full life. In fact, I'd argue before attending college you should have to work a real job for a bit. Understand how money works, then blowing 60k a year to get a degree means a different thing. With all of this in mind, get rid of race based admissions.

hdisllcn 4y ago
Maybe they would have been even more successful if they went to college? The fact that someone succeeded without going to college says something good about them but it doesn’t necessarily follow that colleges are bad or that they’ve succeeded because they didn’t go to college.
- 999900000999 4y ago
  My point is you don't need to go to college. I consider myself to be successful and this guy is definitely making much more than I am. If college is worth it for everyone, why is there such a need for student loan forgiveness. If anything the market is self correcting since more and more people are skipping college entirely.

RigelKentaurus 4y ago

Talk to Asian American parents like me about how we feel about this AA nonsense. No matter how you look at it, it penalizes our kids for being hard workers. At the startup I work at, the unwritten hiring rule is that the college major is important, while the college itself is not. A STEM degree from Chico State is worth a lot more than a history or anthropology degree from Harvard/Brown.

dmix 4y ago
While I agree with you, the type of people looking to get into Harvard aren't just looking for a STEM job at a startup. They are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc. That sort of thing usually tends to value where you went. Not only for the credibility of the paper but the social networks you gain.
- bluefirebrand 4y ago
  > They are looking to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc. Yeah, and their degrees don't matter to get those jobs either. I mean of course it matters, but it's still the same degree they could get elsewhere. The network of well connected powerful people they meet at Harvard is what enables them to become CEOs, judges, politicians, etc.
- RigelKentaurus 4y ago
  I wasn't talking about coding jobs. Even jobs in marketing or program management go to STEM students from "lesser" schools. I don't even look at sociology or language degrees anymore.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    Well that seems awfully discriminatory of you. Some of the best programmers I have ever met have sociology and language degrees.
- jletienne 4y ago
  gonna be a surpise when society finds out about the bamboo ceiling. and people aren't rushing to promote asian american ceos

jancsika 4y ago

Judge Burroughs’s opinion also addressed the striking fact that, when sending recruitment letters to potential applicants in “Sparse Country” (underrepresented states in the Harvard applicant pool), Harvard used an SAT score cutoff of 1310 for white students, 1350 for Asian American females, and 1380 for Asian American males. Constitutional lawyers-- how is this not discrimination? Edit: to be clear-- when I wrote "constitutional lawyers," I meant people who have domain experience in constitutional law. And when I wrote "discrimination," I mean discrimination that would be unconstitutional according to both the U.S. Constitution and relevant U.S. legal precedent. Hopefully this will cause relevant comment to bubble up above the one that begins with "IANAL..."

twoodfin 4y ago
It is, or at least likely to be recognized as such within the next month or so by SCOTUS. Chief Justice Roberts, for one, seemed pretty steamed by Harvard's treatment of Asian-ancestry applicants, and he's got 5 justices to his right on this. Honestly, I would not be shocked if Justice Kagan hopped on with the majority: Quantitative practices like this—and the "social scoring" that would be taken as clear evidence of racism in almost any other context—are hard to defend under the "value of diversity" rationale.
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  It will be interesting to see if Gorsuch breaks with the conservative side here. He seems like a "good old boy" from the Harvard social club (he is one of 4 SCOTUS judges who went to Harvard law). Roberts is also a Harvard graduate, but he doesn't seem to be the kind of person to break with his principles on this. I would agree with you on Kagan, but her alma mater is... Harvard Law. The last Harvard SCOTUS judge is Jackson, who has a 0% chance to rule against them here.
  - twoodfin 4y ago
    I think there is 0 chance any of the six conservative justices let stand practices that, again, are either facially discriminatory or have demonstrated disproportionate impact with no plausible explanation other than discriminatory intent. The interesting question to me is whether there's a consensus position on acceptable means to "diversity" ends that pulls in Kagan or the other liberals.

crop_rotation 4y ago

The focus on subjective essay over objective tests baffles me. It is guaranteed that the rich kids will have more opportunities to a.) get a more polished essay written by whatever help needed, b) do all kinds of stuff that looks good on an essay but costs either time or money and is much harder for a poor kid to do. A poor kid can compete on objective tests relatively better by spending a much smaller amount of money. Subjective criteria just seem designed to game. It seems like what the US universities really want is some quota for the % of students representing some demographic ratio they have in mind. But since that is not constitutional, and might also make bad press, they come up with totally opaque and subjective criteria. I feel really bad for students being rejected for being less "likeable" just so the University can meet it's undisclosed quotas. If quotas are what you want then come out and say it.

rShergold 4y ago

Harvard was created to educate the elite not to create it. This is the fundamental issue here. These institutions see their purpose as preserving western civilisation and hopefully shaping its future direction. Part of this joke was about turning Harvard into a trade school for asian doctors. From their point of view this would be the same as becoming a factory churning out plumbers or electricians. The "secret sauce" of the admissions process is simply "If this candidate doesn't attend Harvard are they highly likely to become a member of the elite anyway?". This opens up things about our society we don't want to face. George Bush is related to the late Queen of England. Many of the elite are the same families who have ruled over us for the last thousand years. Even at the local level your chance at becoming an important person in your city is closely related to who your parents are. By accounting for the structure of society and distribution of power at the time of application the admissions process becomes at best conservative and at worst racist.

nichohel 4y ago

Can anyone suggest what "CJer" is short for in "AA CJer"? It apparently is used to refer to Asian American pre-med type students, but I'm curious was the CJer part is.

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chrisbolt 4y ago
Seems to stand for “Joint Concentration”, where a concentration is what Harvard calls a major. https://undergrad.gov.harvard.edu/joint-concentration https://undergrad.gov.harvard.edu/joint-concentration
- nichohel 4y ago
  But why CJ and not JC?
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nkurz 4y ago
There's a comment here from someone trying (probably unsuccessfully) to answer this same question: https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-federal-official-wrote-parody-of.html?showComment=1679691168089#c7871263851979799082 https://althouse.blogspot.com/2023/03/a-federal-official-wro... I can't find anything about this term with a web search, and currently suspect it might be a typo.
aoki 4y ago
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xiaolingxiao 4y ago

The same shifting criteria were applied to Jews. In the early 1900s proficiency in Latin was required because only prep school offered Latin, so it was an implied filter that’s nonetheless “impartial”. Then Jews became very good at Latin, so the ivies phased out Latin as a criteria and began admitting talent from the interior, because Jews did not settle there. So this whole game is applies to Asian Americans now, not at all surprising

lbayes 4y ago

https://web.archive.org/web/20230325180654/https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-secret-joke-at-the-heart-of-the-harvard-affirmative-action-case https://web.archive.org/web/20230325180654/https://www.newyo...

MyHypatia 4y ago

I see the appeal of SAT as a standard metric, but rather than SAT why not allow kids to submit AP (or other standardized subject test scores) instead? Studying for the SAT feels like we are wasting hours of kids lives on an ill-defined concept of general aptitude. Whereas for subject tests (like AP or other standardized subject tests) there is a concrete subject that students are demonstrating that they can choose and master (chemistry, English, Spanish, Calculus, etc.) I think this approach has the benefit of standardization and the benefit of not wasting kids time forcing them to study for a test which people claim won't change their scores much and where the notion of what aptitude even is isn't really clear (the SAT has changed substantially over the years). I also really doubt the claim that studying for the SAT won't impact a kid's scores much. I can't think of a single other test where this is the case. It sounds like something people tell poor kids so they don't bother studying for it, while rich kids spend hours in test prep. Then we can say "well it wouldn't have mattered if they got the same resources because aptitude is innate". In contrast, no one can claim that if you just waltz into your chemistry test without studying it won't have an impact. My preference would be to get rid of "aptitude" tests like the SAT, and use standardized subject tests instead.