Karma: Harvard Legacy/Donor Admissions Practices Are Racist According To Civil Rights Complaint Just Filed
The colleges and universities that have been the most aggressive and belligerent in defending illegal race-based affirmative action are finding their most cherished and lucrative admissions practices challenged: Legacy and Donor preferences.
You can’t see my face right now. But I’m smiling.
The Supreme Court recently ruled that Harvard and UNC violated the Equal Protection Clause by engaging in racial preferences in favor of blacks in admissions. Many if not most higher education institutions reacted with fury, promising to find new ways to carrying out the racial preferences. As noted, Harvard has been particularly brazen, SCOTUS “gave universities a narrow opening, and Harvard just announced it’s going to drive an affirmative action truck right through it”.
The colleges and universities that have been the most aggressive and belligerent in defending illegal race-based affirmative action are finding their most cherished and lucrative admissions practices challenged: Legacy and Donor preferences.
I’m down for it, as I wrote yesterday, reiterating my long-held view, By All Means, Eliminate Legacy And Donor Admissions Preferences Because They Are Corrupting, Regardless of Racial Impact
I am against legacy admissions preferences regardless of whether they have a racial impact on admissions, because they contribute to a cronyism that shifts the focus from the individual’s merits to the school’s interest in developing alumni fundraising. I’d like to see all identity-group admissions preferences eliminated to level the playing field and to increase the focus on the intrinsic merit of each applicant without regard to group identity.
Harvard not only was a big perp of racial preferences, it also loves it some legacies, though the practice is waning after the federal court case that resulted in the SCOTUS loss revealed the statistics:
36% of the Harvard Class of 2022 may claim a relative who was a student there in the past. Harvard legacy acceptance rate for the Class of 2025 is fascinating to look at, which is 16%. Similarly, only 12% of the new Crimson students who enrolled for the Class of 2024 identified themselves as legacy students.
Students who have at least one parent who graduated from Harvard or Radcliffe, the university’s old sister institution, are considered “legacy students” by the admissions office at Harvard University. This “tip” has been granted to legacy students for many years.
The rabid virtue signaling that has greeted the SCOTUS decision puts these heavly legacy schools in a bind – and that bind may lead to legal action, as just happened to Harvard, Harvard’s legacy admission targeted in civil rights complaint, in wake of national affirmative action ban:
Harvard University’s admission practices unfairly favor children of alumni and wealthy donors, according to a civil rights complaint filed Monday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
The complaint, filed by Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of Boston-area advocacy groups representing Black and Latino residents, calls for a federal investigation of Harvard’s admissions process and an end to so-called legacy and donor-related admissions, which gives admissions preference to the children and relatives of donors and alumni.
From the Complaint filed with the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education:
Each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds
of mostly white students – not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely
because of who their relatives are. Applicants whose relatives are wealthy donors to Harvard, or
whose parents are Harvard alumni, are flagged at the outset of Harvard’s admissions process and
are granted special solicitude and extra “tips” throughout. The students who receive these special
preferences (“Donor and Legacy Preferences”) are significantly more likely to be accepted than
other applicants, and constitute up to 15% of Harvard’s admitted students.The students who receive this preferential treatment – based solely on familial ties – are
overwhelmingly white. Nearly 70% of donor-related applicants are white, and nearly 70% of
legacy applicants are also white.1 The results of this preferential treatment are substantial. For
example, over the period 2014-2019:• Donor-related applicants were nearly 7 times more likely to be admitted compared to
non-donor-related applicants; and
• Legacy applicants were nearly 6 times more likely to be admitted compared to nonlegacy applicants.2At the same time that Donor and Legacy Preferences disproportionately advantage white
applicants, they systematically disadvantage students of color, including Black, Latinx, and Asian Americans. As the Supreme Court has recently stated: “A benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former group at the expense of the latter.”3 For example, experts have concluded that: (1) removing legacy preferences would increase admissions for applicants of color; and (2) approximately one-quarter of the white students admitted would not have been admitted if the Donor and Legacy Preferences, among others, did not exist.4 Further, these Donor and Legacy Preferences are not justified by any educational necessity because Harvard cannot show that the use of these preferences is necessary to achieve any important educational goal. To the contrary, the preferential treatment is conferred without regard to the applicant’s credentials or merits – the benefit is derived simply from being born into a particular family.This preferential treatment violates federal law….
I doubt legacy and donor practices violate federal law. Those benefits are available to the Obamas.
But there’s a certain satisfaction in seeing institutions like Harvard which practices and defended racial preferences getting it from all sides. The whole admissions system, like much of the administration of higher education, is a Potemkin Village of virtue signaling that needs to be exposed from every angle.
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Applicants whose relatives are wealthy donors to Harvard, or whose parents are Harvard alumni, are flagged at the outset of Harvard’s admissions process and are granted special solicitude and extra “tips” throughout.
Which only makes sense and is fair. Maybe people think that universities don’t need buildings to hold classes in – “Why can’t they just have class in the field or remotely?? They don’t need classrooms!!”
Donors pay for everyone so it is not even a question that they should get some say in admissions.
This whole thing is devolving into some insane concept that schools should have absolutely no control over who they admit. That is nuts.
Take all federal money out of student tuition and expenses. Schools are allowed to shape their student bodies however they want but they cannot have the rest of us paying for their decisions. They have to deal with the students they accept being able to pay for it, either by the student paying or by the university paying for them. The taxpayer should not be putting one red cent into any student’s tuition or college expenses. NOT ONE CENT.
“Donors pay for everyone so it is not even a question that they should get some say in admissions.”
Really? Are they really “donors” if the purpose of the “donation” is to be able to demand special favors in the admissions process? So, being able to buy your kids’ way into Harvard seems OK to you?
Does this mean that black who are wealthy can’t take advantage of the legacy programs? That would be racist! I doubt that this happens.
A good solution to affirmative action is form everyone who believes in science to identify as African American on the forms. Remember that science has determined that mankind originated in Africa which makes every American an African American.
So you shouldn’t be able to buy your way in AND you can’t race bait through the door? How are you supposed to get into these universities now?
And don’t say study hard or practice productive extra curricular activities, give me a fake answer
+1 just for the last sentence. 😝
Demonstrate excellence in entrepreneurship by providing a boutique experience through personalized customer service to the admissions officers just like Tom Cruise did in Risky Business.
They don’t buy their way in! The average SAT for legacy admissions is 2296. The average SAT for all the rest is 2237.
The only racial groups with higher average SATs are Indians (2312) and East Asians (2304).
Now do donor admissions.
So… Do they really need the legacy bump? Seems like they should be able to get in on their own merit.
They need it to justify the ‘white’ legacy applicant getting in over another ‘white’ applicant who lacks the legacy/donor thumb on the scale.
This is where the myth of ‘white’ privilege shows up. As if all ‘white’ people enjoy these sorts of class based societal and economic advantages; they most assuredly do not. There definitely is privilege but it isn’t based around race but rather our unspoken and unacknowledged economic and social caste system aka elites, establishment.
While I am opposed to legacy admissions, its it not barred by 14A
If you PAY for preference in admissions, that’s considered fraudulent and illegal by most standards. However, if you donate a building there is no such encumbrance. Does washing the money through a construction company really make it that much more acceptable?
Correct. The Hollywood scandal was precisely that the parents there slipped money to admissions ‘coaches’ and go-betweens. That earned them a federal investigation and appearances in Federal District Court. If they had pledged to build a new ‘Studies for the Film Arts’ they would have been just fine; their children would have been remembered by a grateful Chancellor.
A bigger point: if you’ve ever given, as a business owner, the choice of a) a lawsuit by unhappy people b) a visit by a union organizer and c) a notice from a federal agency of an impending investigation, do whatever you can to avoid (c). A lawsuit might ruin your financial portfolio; a union might ruin your business; but a federal probe will absolutely ruin your life.
You can’t pay directly for preference in admissions. BUT, you can pay for help in navigating the application process, writing the essays, taking the tests, extra-curriculars, and of course which school you go to.
The problem with keeping money out of admissions is money is fungible; that’s the point. It’s like water — it’ll find any crack.
The local university’s women’s dorm has had its name changed. It used to be named after its donor, Beaver Hall, but nothing is sacred these days.
That’s about as well-named as this orthodontist named Dr. Payne.
As June Cleaver said “Ward, don’t you think you’ve been a little hard on the Beaver…”
If you PAY for preference in admissions, that’s considered fraudulent and illegal by most standards.
There would be nothing wrong with a university having a tiered tuition scheme wherein people with sub-par qualifications could be accepted at a higher tuition rate. Only hypocrites would have a problem with that.
The difference is that one is talking about paying some individual to alter the admissions process, not paying the university, itself – sort of like a bartender giving you a free drink and you tipping half the price of the drink. The drink is not the bartender’s to give away.
But, when someone pays off an individual to get his kids into a school the only person who should be liable for anything is the university person who accepted the money, not the parent giving the money. What the feds did to that actress and the rest of the people who they went after for trying to buy their kids into schools (crappy schools, even!) was a crime, itself.
If someone gives $10,000,000 to a school I think any reasonable person would understand that it is only fair that that person’s family is given preferential treatment. After all, everyone at the school has benefited from the money.
I would also like to see all tax deductions taken away from private universities and colleges. They are regular businesses and need to be treated as such.
“There would be nothing wrong with a university having a tiered tuition scheme wherein people with sub-par qualifications could be accepted at a higher tuition rate.”
Absolutely. As long as everybody has to meet the same performance criteria as far as work product and testing.
What’s racist is US blacks having an average IQ of 86. The fix is doing what everybody with an IQ of 86 does, work around it. There are plenty of whites in that situation.
I loved working around people a lot smarter than I was, and finding a spot I could fill.
It would work for blacks too.
I am sick of this misinformation on the black IQ. It is 83.
It’s not that simple….
Re : Murray……
“The headline-making chart in Charles Murray’s Facing Reality (Encounter, 2021) is the non-euphemistic layout of estimated IQ by race: Asian American 108, white non-Hispanic 103, Latino 94, African American 91.”
What IQ test tests for is the ability to take IQ tests.
Over time US black IQ test averages have gone up – too fast to be 100% genetic. The often cited 85 IQ figure is the bottom figure, taken in the past from the self selected group taking the military enlistment IQ test. (It’s a given that in the past folks taking IQ tests in college would avg higher than those taking them just out of HS.) The self same tests have different results now.
Possible reasons for changes over time include…..
Outlawing of cheap leaded gasoline and lead based paint. (+)
Increase in single parent households (-)
Differences in cultural accommodation to mass culture (+/-)
Differences in cultural accommodation (and access) to US education (+/-)
All the above can change IQ averages.
Remember the majority of folks are between 85 and 115 (it’s a bell curve, duh) and within that range most folks could, with sufficient effort, perform well in an average job. Also remember that even with a “genius” level IQ it’s possible to be an idiot.
Murray was attacked for factually and correctly stating what was known about IQ and IQ averages, the most intelligent genes in the world won’t let you score high on an IQ test if you were feral raised by wolves and never learned language. And maxing out an IQ test is useless if all your underlying beliefs and assumptions are factually wrong.
BobM, Thanks for providing a healthy corrective to the nonsense frequently spewed by “rhhardin” (I have no idea what his problem is) and “E Howard Hunt”.
Your list of “Possible reasons for changes over time” is excellent. This is the proper response to the leftist howling about the demise of affirmative action in college admissions, and deserves further amplification.
The damage caused to the prospects of lower income children due to the teachers’ unions’ adamant opposition to competition in K-12 education should be aggressively labeled as America’s best example of systemic racism. Make the democrats own it. Why isn’t our republican “leadership” doing this?
“Also remember that even with a “genius” level IQ it’s possible to be an idiot.”
Actually, the correct word is “fool”, which is much worse than “idiot” because a highly intelligent fool can do much more damage. Most of our current problems are due to highly intelligent fools.
Thank you for the praise.
Although, in Real World the signifier for how intelligent another person is is usually how much they agree with you 😏😏😏.
Folks should keep in mind high IQ is not the be all and end all. For one thing, there seems to be a high correlation between high IQ and probability of mental illness. For another effort can overcome IQ “handicap”. It’s been argued that the US Asian high IQ numbers is a result of culture, given the average Asian studies twice as many hours as the average non Asian.
The current US factory mass production education system is arguably as bad for productivity as lead exposure – no repeats allowed (lowering the comprehension level), teach at the lowest comprehension level, expect “disadvantaged” students to do poorly – and be OK with that, the whole schmeer.
An 8th grader several generations ago was expected to learn more than todays 12th grader. The higher the ratio of education majors in the teaching profession the worse it’s gotten. As shown by Covid, the teachers unions prioritize worker is over production like any other union, unfortunately the product they are not producing is educated kids.
Most of my nonsense is declining to follow the mistakes on the right that we all battle against when they’re on the left. This winds up being mostly about misguided ideas of virtue, there being a lot of self-announced virtuous groups on the right.
Virtue that goes public turns into the worst sort of evil, is the insight from Hannah Arendt.
There was a rescaling. Everybody moved towards 100. I think what happened is, the definition of IQ requiring that it have mean 100 and standard deviation 15, was that they included all the subpopulations in that average, which means that it’s no longer a bell curve, but three or four bell curves superimposed. The mean didn’t change but the experimental standard deviation increased a great deal, which caused deviations from the new rescaled 100 to be much less. So blacks got smarter from 86 to 93, as I recall.
For decades before that, blacks were 86, which I take as definitive.
As to what IQ means, it’s meant to predict success. If it doesn’t, they change it until it does.
Again, what IQ tests test is the ability to take IQ tests.
No doubt there’s a correlation between IQ and success in life in general, but hard work, good study habits, lack of laziness, and other things NOT race specific also correlate with success.
The whole “blacks are not as smart as whites” meme I leave to The Left – it’s after all their underlying argument to justify endless Affirmative Action world without end, amen stance. As well as the (public) justification for NO voter ID – since they argue stupid voters can’t get (free) ID therefor it’s “discrimination against blacks”.
Jordan Peterson’s comment is that IQ is the most studied and most solid result in all of psychology.
What you’re thinking, I think, is treat individuals as individuals. Indeed it’s nebulous enough so that you have no idea which of your friends are smart and which of them are not, first of all because it doesn’t come up, and in any case IQ overlaps are huge between groups.
But if you’re doing disparate impact, you get the actual averages, and those are that (US) blacks have an average IQ of 86 and whites are 100.
To then use that to prove that whites are holding blacks back is divisive and harmful to blacks, who then waste their time on hoping for better whites, instead of doing what low IQ whites already do, learn where they can fit in helping out.
Which is what everybody does and has to do, to succeed, regardless of IQ.
When you don’t exercise your brain while going through grammar, junior and high school your IQ suffers as you are missing basic knowledge that’s required to to well on IQ tests. It also limits your ability to do well in college and work.
Legacy admissions are based upon favoritism pertaining to family wealth or family connections, nor racial affiliation/classification. I don’t support the concept of legacy admissions, but, I’m not seeing viable legal grounds to challenge them.
The legacies are admitted based upon a donor’s past donations, and, the school’s aspiration that future donations will be continue to be made. I suppose one could argue that this is some form of bribery and quid pro quo, but, from a legal standpoint, I don’t see what a credible cause of action would be. I’m curious what other folks think.
Disparate impact at minimum. It’s also a rigged mechanism for creating and maintaining a self reinforcing academic and professional caste system when the CV from an Ivy has been turned into the ‘golden ticket’ of post university life. Lots of not very personally impressive people with an Ivy CV who coast on the fumes of that admission the rest of their professional lives. The admission to an Ivy sets off a sort of perpetual motion machine for those granted admission with an unearned thumb on the scale.
Then there’s the equal protection issue. It’s one thing to say anyone could gain the preference if they pony up an amount like a cover charge at a nightclub but it isn’t a de minimus amount of money. If two people send in $; person A sends $50 while person B sends $50K those two donors kids won’t be treated to same level of preferences come decision time for admission. It isn’t about the act of making A donation but the SIZE of the donation.
Legacy admittees have, on average, 2296 on the SAT. The rest of the admitted population is 2237.
Maybe, instead of just repeating leftist bullshit talking points created to justify affirmative action because privileged white boys get in, you should learn the actual data.
There is nothing preventing blacks from taking advantage of the legacy syste. It’s not racist.
From the complaint:
“Each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly white students – not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are.”
I am pretty sure this is an unfounded assertion. Most of the legacy admissions match the academic profile of the non-legacy admissions.
The children of parents that scored as National Merit Scholars on the SAT, were highly educated (frequently with multiple degrees), and have family wealth, are much more likely to perform well on the academic measurements that Harvard uses for the merit based admissions.
I suspect that ZERO legacies are admitted that scored 400 points lower on the SAT than the lowest scoring non-legacy Asian admission.
It’s interesting that the complaint is filed by people who were no doubt losing their minds over the affirmative action decision last week.
If this complaint was intended as retaliation or to highlight some hypocrisy, I think it’s fallen short. The argument that predominately white students are given unfair advantage in admission consideration, not because of their academic credentials or merits, but solely because they are descendants of alumni or donors. Generally, part of a particular group, and not justified by any educational necessity.
Aren’t complainants acknowledging, rightly, that simply being born into a group is not a qualification for admission?
Roberts- three men with beaming smiles over a jointly held pie – one quite mustachioed. Good island fun, I suppose.
Totally lost by your allusion. Marx brothers? Pep Boys? Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers?
A Frankie goes to Hollywood reunion tour?
A rising pie lifts all boats.
1
Among twenty snowy mountains
the only moving thing
was the pieman coming.
2
I was of three minds,
like Simple Simon
looking at three pies.
…
Victor Contoski “Simple Simon in American Literature”
Google “John Roberts Martha’s Vineyard Pie.” That photo screams Village People Fans.
Here’s a kicker, Brown Jackson’s husband, Patrick Graves Jackson, also a Harvard grad would fit into that legacy category.
From the linked Town and Country article
Ketanji called Patrick a quintessential “Boston Brahmin,” and discussed their extremely different backgrounds: “He and his twin brother are, in fact, the sixth generation in their family to graduate from Harvard College.
https://www.townandcountrymag.com/society/politics/a39504186/ketanji-brown-jackson-husband-patrick-johnson/
would she recuse herself based on this? how many of the sitting justices would fit into this?
I can understand colleges and universities having SOME desire to know of an applicant’s legacy status, as I take “legacy” into account every day.
When I make purchases, I factor the “legacy” of a given brand. Have I purchased that brand before, and had good luck? Is it well-received in its market? An admissions board, in an effort to determine an applicant’s likelihood of success, might find it of value to know that the applicant’s relatives who had previously attended were themselves successful.
All that being said, legacy status should be one minor factor, rather than a major one, in the decision process. Obviously, the success of an applicant’s parent or sibling does not guarantee the applicant’s success. Further, the success to which I am referring is academic success and scholastic achievement, NOT to be confused with any financial contributions provided by the applicant’s relatives.
I think this lawsuit is fitting and should be welcomed by Harvard. If successful, there will be proportionally more seats available for minorities, aka Blacks, however now chosen.
Logic may not be your strong point. There may be more seats available, but if they are taken on the basis of academic achievement they would probably go to the minority currently losing out to preferential treatment, aka Asians.
If Federal Funds are accepted by a university that in turn adopts a policy that has a disparate impact upon minority applicants seeking admission to the university, it may be that policy constitutes unlawful discrimination. Maybe that is why the SAT’s are no longer required. It will be interesting to see how the Complaint is resolved.
OK. Now tell us what percentage of donors are white legacies.
Then make a prediction on what’s going to happen to net donations if this suit goes through.
See the connection?
It’s a private university with an endowment so huge they don’t need a dime of government funding. They can accept whomever they damned well want as long as they don’t get greedy and take govt money.
Only 70% of legacy and donor admissions are white? What is the percentage of all applicants and all admissions that are white, at Harvard and at all colleges? 58.5% of all Americans are white, but Latinos and Blacks are considerably less likely to finish high school and to apply to college. Harvard scholarship pograms are reputed to be pretty good (or were back around 1970 when I was looking into colleges), but except for a few exceptional performers (who don’t need legacy, donor, or diversity points to get in), they don’t cover the full cost of going to Harvard. Most white families can’t afford to send their kid to Harvard, and Blacks and Latinos tend to be poorer than whites. So IMO, the only way non-privileged enrollments are less than 70% white is if they’re weighting “diversity” (but only of color) much higher than they dare admit in court.
I’m seriously looking forward to lawsuits challenging the EEOC’s affirmative action requirements in hiring/promotions in private corporations.
If AA is Un-Constitutional in college admissions, then it must be Un-Constitutional for a federal bureaucracy to impose race-based quotas on every “large” (50+ employee) company in the country.
From the complaint:
“Each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly white students – not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are.”
…..Each year HarvardCollege grants special preference in its admissions process to thousands of black and brown students- not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of their skin color. ……. And this is more than just fine with the left
Yes, legacy admissions are anti-meritocratic and, in gov’t schools and institutions, should not be permitted. That being said, these are private institutions, and the gov’t should stay out of it.
However, I was surprised to see that only 70% of legacies are white. Is that all? Given that whites make up 60% of the population in the U.S., and given the past whiteness of the Ivy League, I’d say that’s a pretty good ratio.
“That being said, these are private institutions, and the gov’t should stay out of it.”
If they accept govt money in any form, they aren’t private by definition.
Two observations:
(1) Harvard is safe from the Biden administration as long as it continues its mission to propagate Democrat racialist policy preferences and stays woke.
(2) Harvard already has only 40% students admitted it is not comfortable to identify by “race/ethnicity” (aka whites) while these make up 60% of the US population; shrinking that pool further by legacy/donor/recruited athlete criteria this likely means that (with the possible exception of “Asians”) the “identity” discriminated against the most is “white males” ― intersectional wokism at its natural terminus, I guess.
Note: “whites” and ” white males” in this context means those not members of the rich elites. Sorry I hit post instead of actually putting that footnote in there.
I’m puzzled by these comments. These are private institutions, aren’t they? Have conservatives just given up on the distinction between gov’t entities and private? I don’t care one way or the other about whether Harvard wants to give preferential treatment to donors. Of course they would. Whether they do or not should be no concern of the government.
Making the woke institutions comply with.their own woke rules? Why not.
Also, I am getting tired of the canard of “private business can do whatever it pleases” as if a murderercould successfully plead “you conservative must not punish me because I acted in my private capacity, so the government has no business to dictate to me”.
I’m not at all troubled by legacty admissions, but. if you want to show there is something called ‘systemic racism’..I guess this is it
All of the children in our family, from my siblings to my own children and nieces/nephews and grands are attended or are attending private schools at the formative primary and secondary levels. When it comes to higher education, public institutions were the choice. My own sons, who went to medical school, chose public institutions because they were the most cost-effective in terms of tuition as well as availability of academic scholarships. I would never recommend an Ivy or “Ivy-equivalent” private school. Definitely not worth the money, and certainly not worth the snobbery and attitude of the faculty and students.
I mean “have attended”!
Nobody on this blog seems willing to address the really unfair way these schools admit students : “Abelism”. There is no dispute that athletes get big boosts in admissions and scholarships. Whether the Yale crew or the Cornell hockey team is successful should have nothing to do with the mission of those schools, which is to churn out the most radical socialists and communists possible. So why do the athletes get recruited like crazy from all over the world? It appears that the Yale crew and the Cornell hockey team have no Americans on them–only recruited foreigners (Canada is still a foreign country, I believe). And they are 100% white!!
Talk about disparate impact. These enterprising lawyers have another case ready-made for them when they get finished with the legacy/donor case.
A lot of this goes away if “education” becomes less a particular-timed, one-shot, pageant. I know folks who had outside problems during their designated undergraduate time; mother died, family finances collapsed, their own debilitating illness. They never recovered from the interruption to the one true shot.
One shot, the one, true time ready or not, works more to keep the number of people who “succeed” down, greatly at the discretion of the people running the show. If they’re not up to it, more shots won’t help much. As it is set up, “success” becomes more of a limited, controlled resource.
Oh, wait.
If white applicants to Harvard were selected purely on academic merit (so legacies who didn’t measure up were excluded), the white share of admits would have dropped from 37.61% to 36.54%.
So about 3% of whites would have been eliminated w/o preferences, versus about 95% of blacks.
Its not “racist”. More precisely legacy/donor admissions would be “classist”.
No pun intended.