Harvard Needs Merit-Based Admissions
A Supreme Court decision could force colleges to move away from affirmative action and create true diversity on campus.
By
Alan M. Dershowitz
June 1, 2022 6:28 pm ET
The Supreme Court, in its next term, will render a decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College, which will determine the legality of Harvard’s race-based affirmative-action program. The plaintiff's claim that, by creating a floor for certain racial and ethnic groups in its admissions, Harvard created a ceiling for Asian-Americans. The result is that Asian-Americans who are academically qualified become victims of discrimination.
If the court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, as many experts believe it will, Harvard and many universities around the country will have to continue their quests for increased racial diversity without violating the specific terms of the decision.
The time has come, however, for universities to abandon their efforts to achieve superficial, artificial diversity based on race. The coming decision would provide American schools with an opportunity to develop admission criteria based on academic achievement and potential—while abolishing such non-merit-based criteria as legacy status, athletics, geography and other nonacademic preferences. There would be resistance to getting rid of these advantages, but it could be done.
I believe the result of a merit-based policy would be more meaningful diversity. The result of such a policy would likely give way to more political, ideological, geographic, religious and other types of diversity that are at least as relevant to the educational mission of the university as race and ethnicity. I certainly am not asking for a return to “the good old days” of WASP dominance—those days were anything but good—but I am asking for an approach rarely attempted by American universities: pure meritocracy.
Meritocracy doesn’t require an exclusive focus on test scores and grades, as there are other ways of measuring merit and potential, such as recommendations and achievements outside of school. Nor should it discourage aggressive recruitment from underrepresented groups that might be unaware of opportunities at elite universities. The adoption of merit as the guiding principle for college admission may not result in the kind of racial and ethnic representation that universities now desire, but its result would be more authentic diversity.
Use of merit-based standards would also end the need for bloated bureaucracies that enforce diversity, inclusion and equity mandates throughout universities—mandates that sacrifice academic goals to social, ideological and political agendas. Real equality does not require massive bureaucracies.
It is doubtful that any university with its current leadership and students would move toward a purely meritocratic system, even if its leaders believed that was the best approach. But it is the right thing to do—for universities and for America.
Meritocracy encourages hard work, diligence and achievement. The current system of university admissions doesn’t cultivate these virtues. Instead it rewards identity politics.
Martin Luther King Jr. admitted that his goal—“that one day my four children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character”—was a dream. It is a dream worth striving for, however, and it will never be achieved as long as we favor nonmeritocratic factors in college admissions.
Mr. Dershowitz is a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School and author of “The Case for Color-Blind Equality in an Age of Identity Politics.”
It's disturbing to see so little response to Dershowitz's argument, especially when there is so much to consider - and so much at risk. I've heard little about bitterness and cynicism race based admissions creates. High school classmates for example, certainly know how they each stack against the other academically and how serious and disciplined they each are, how much each accomplish, and about each other's virtues. It's calamitous for those of disfavored races to see themselves not recognized and rewarded for their discipline, will and accomplishment. It is likely that many will internalize the implication that being asian or "white privileged" they are less worthy. Indeed, this message is aggressively asserted.
The University of California has excised standardized testing scores from admissions consideration and many if not most colleges have followed, because students - categorized by race rather than by pan-racial causal factors - have proven recalcitrant to test improvement. It's then suggested that high scores infer racial and ethnic privilege, not work ethic or potential.
Rather than encouraging values that esteem academics and discipline, those with these virtues are effectively punished. For example, UC can't tolerate any higher percentage of high achieving Asians at their premier institutions Berkeley and UCLA. So once Asian racial quota is met, equally achieving Asians are railroaded to UC's second tier universities (Irvine, San Diego, Davis, etc.). With the elimination of standardized test scores, Asian attendance percentages at some UC second tiers have jumped from 25-30% in 2019 to over 40%, presumably at least in part due to increased routing of high achievers whose high test scores now have zero determinative value. UC's second tiers have become new Asian internment camps. Please, let's instead, or at least concomitantly, intensely aim to develop the virtues that produce academic excellence.
And, please, for the sake of our society, let's encourage our very highest values in those most endowed, and make the greatest opportunities available to them.
The treatment of Asians at Harvard, is no different than the quotas limiting Jews’ admittance to universities not that long ago. A facade for discrimination.
Too many Jews.
Too many Asians.