What Hillsdale Can Teach Harvard
Give up federal dollars, and you can run your admissions the way you want.
355 Comments
By William McGurn
Oct. 15, 2018 7:14 p.m. ET
Demonstrators protest Harvard’s admission process in Boston, Oct. 14.
Demonstrators protest Harvard’s admission process in Boston, Oct. 14. Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg News
On Monday in federal court, Harvard denied charges that it discriminates against Asian-Americans in the same way it once discriminated against Jews. Race, its lawyer insisted, was just one of many factors considered, and it could only help an applicant’s chances of admission, not hurt them.
On the substance, this is a dubious proposition. Students for Fair Admissions, which brought the lawsuit, has produced considerable evidence that Harvard uses various means to exclude Asian-Americans even when they are more qualified academically and have better records of extracurricular activities than other accepted students. These means include suspiciously lower ratings given Asian-Americans for personality traits such as “kindness” and “likability.”
The Harvard pretense is that it is possible to favor one race without discriminating against others. A 2009 Princeton study demonstrates otherwise. It found that an Asian-American applicant to an elite university has to score 450 points higher on the SAT to get in than a black applicant, 270 points higher than a Latino one and 140 points higher than a white one.
For all this, Harvard does have an argument here. In a footnote in its motion for summary judgment, the university says “this case involves a private university, which has a weighty academic-freedom interest, protected by the First Amendment, in choosing its students, and in determining how they are educated (including through the judgment about the educational benefits following from a diverse student body).” Translation: we should be free to decide whom we admit and whom we don’t.
Just one teensy problem. It’s called the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.” Harvard receives millions from the feds each year, directly through grants as well as indirectly via federal financial aid.
All of which puts two fundamental principles in conflict. The first is that people should not be discriminated against because of their race. The second is that private institutions should be left to run their own shops without the feds telling them how to do it.
Can these principles be reconciled? Tiny Hillsdale College suggests they can. Back in the 1970s the federal government demanded the Michigan-based college begin counting its students by race and sex as a condition of the federal loans some of its students received.
For an institution whose founding charter made it the first college in the nation to declare itself open to all students “irrespective of nation, color, or sex,” and which boasted a long and noble history of color-blind admissions, this was insulting. In 1956, for example, its undefeated football team refused an invitation to the Tangerine Bowl rather than comply with official demands that the college not field its black players.
Like Harvard, Hillsdale believes it knows best how to run its school. Unlike Harvard, it made a tough decision to stand on this principle. To avoid the regulatory strings that come with federal dollars, in 1985 Hillsdale decided to forgo all federal dollars—including financial aid for its students.
To put this in perspective, Hillsdale today has about 1,500 students, charges roughly $27,000 tuition for a first-rate liberal-arts education, and has a modest endowment of near $600 million. Harvard’s endowment clocks in at $39 billion. If little Hillsdale can give up taxpayer dollars to remain true to its principles, surely big, wealthy Harvard can.
As NYU law professor Richard Epstein points out, one effect of Title VI today is to make liars out of our most elite institutions of higher learning. In an article for the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas, Mr. Epstein says Harvard would like to argue that its interest in diversity justifies discriminating in favor of some races and against others. But it fears attacking the Civil Rights Act, and is skittish about making its case forthrightly because the opening words of Title VI state that “no person” should be subject to racial discrimination. Mr. Epstein’s solution would be to repeal Title VI and let schools admit or exclude whomever they want.
“If Harvard wants to sacrifice academic merit for diversity, let it,” he says. The Asian-American students excluded would have many other choices. And the whole process would be more honest.
Of course, the likelihood that Title VI will be scrapped in our lifetimes is almost nil. Which leaves the Hillsdale option as the only practical alternative for colleges and universities that wish to stand on their own values and mission statements. If Harvard truly believes diversity trumps merit, it should say so proudly—and be willing to give up the federal dollars that are the only reason it is now forced to defend itself in federal court.
Hillsdale President Larry Arnn says he’s more than ready to help. “Any time anyone from Harvard would like to see how a college can maintain its autonomy and its values,” he says, “our door is open.”
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Appeared in the October 16, 2018, print edition.
[We have been annual donors to Hillsdale. We repost its Imprimis, a free pamphlet which we routinely recommend, however and more importantly, Hillsdale, http://www.hillsdale.edu , has a fair number of free webinars, and free downloadable articles on government in addition to many, in the original meaning of the word, liberal articles.]
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What Hillsdale Can Teach Harvard, by Wm McGurn TWSJ 10/16/18 [c]
What Hillsdale Can Teach Harvard
Give up federal dollars, and you can run your admissions the way you want.
355 Comments
By William McGurn
Oct. 15, 2018 7:14 p.m. ET
Demonstrators protest Harvard’s admission process in Boston, Oct. 14.
Demonstrators protest Harvard’s admission process in Boston, Oct. 14. Photo: Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg News
On Monday in federal court, Harvard denied charges that it discriminates against Asian-Americans in the same way it once discriminated against Jews. Race, its lawyer insisted, was just one of many factors considered, and it could only help an applicant’s chances of admission, not hurt them.
On the substance, this is a dubious proposition. Students for Fair Admissions, which brought the lawsuit, has produced considerable evidence that Harvard uses various means to exclude Asian-Americans even when they are more qualified academically and have better records of extracurricular activities than other accepted students. These means include suspiciously lower ratings given Asian-Americans for personality traits such as “kindness” and “likability.”
The Harvard pretense is that it is possible to favor one race without discriminating against others. A 2009 Princeton study demonstrates otherwise. It found that an Asian-American applicant to an elite university has to score 450 points higher on the SAT to get in than a black applicant, 270 points higher than a Latino one and 140 points higher than a white one.
For all this, Harvard does have an argument here. In a footnote in its motion for summary judgment, the university says “this case involves a private university, which has a weighty academic-freedom interest, protected by the First Amendment, in choosing its students, and in determining how they are educated (including through the judgment about the educational benefits following from a diverse student body).” Translation: we should be free to decide whom we admit and whom we don’t.
Just one teensy problem. It’s called the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and it “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.” Harvard receives millions from the feds each year, directly through grants as well as indirectly via federal financial aid.
All of which puts two fundamental principles in conflict. The first is that people should not be discriminated against because of their race. The second is that private institutions should be left to run their own shops without the feds telling them how to do it.
Can these principles be reconciled? Tiny Hillsdale College suggests they can. Back in the 1970s the federal government demanded the Michigan-based college begin counting its students by race and sex as a condition of the federal loans some of its students received.
For an institution whose founding charter made it the first college in the nation to declare itself open to all students “irrespective of nation, color, or sex,” and which boasted a long and noble history of color-blind admissions, this was insulting. In 1956, for example, its undefeated football team refused an invitation to the Tangerine Bowl rather than comply with official demands that the college not field its black players.
Like Harvard, Hillsdale believes it knows best how to run its school. Unlike Harvard, it made a tough decision to stand on this principle. To avoid the regulatory strings that come with federal dollars, in 1985 Hillsdale decided to forgo all federal dollars—including financial aid for its students.
To put this in perspective, Hillsdale today has about 1,500 students, charges roughly $27,000 tuition for a first-rate liberal-arts education, and has a modest endowment of near $600 million. Harvard’s endowment clocks in at $39 billion. If little Hillsdale can give up taxpayer dollars to remain true to its principles, surely big, wealthy Harvard can.
As NYU law professor Richard Epstein points out, one effect of Title VI today is to make liars out of our most elite institutions of higher learning. In an article for the Hoover Institution’s Defining Ideas, Mr. Epstein says Harvard would like to argue that its interest in diversity justifies discriminating in favor of some races and against others. But it fears attacking the Civil Rights Act, and is skittish about making its case forthrightly because the opening words of Title VI state that “no person” should be subject to racial discrimination. Mr. Epstein’s solution would be to repeal Title VI and let schools admit or exclude whomever they want.
“If Harvard wants to sacrifice academic merit for diversity, let it,” he says. The Asian-American students excluded would have many other choices. And the whole process would be more honest.
Of course, the likelihood that Title VI will be scrapped in our lifetimes is almost nil. Which leaves the Hillsdale option as the only practical alternative for colleges and universities that wish to stand on their own values and mission statements. If Harvard truly believes diversity trumps merit, it should say so proudly—and be willing to give up the federal dollars that are the only reason it is now forced to defend itself in federal court.
Hillsdale President Larry Arnn says he’s more than ready to help. “Any time anyone from Harvard would like to see how a college can maintain its autonomy and its values,” he says, “our door is open.”
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
Appeared in the October 16, 2018, print edition.
[We have been annual donors to Hillsdale. We repost its Imprimis, a free pamphlet which we routinely recommend, however and more importantly, Hillsdale, http://www.hillsdale.edu , has a fair number of free webinars, and free downloadable articles on government in addition to many, in the original meaning of the word, liberal articles.]
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