At Harvard, Asian-American students urge diversity efforts beyond admissions

On the stand in federal court, on social media, and during rallies, they defended Harvard University in a landmark trial over affirmative action in college admissions last year, helping to shore up the school’s case that it doesn’t discriminate against Asian-American applicants.

But in recent weeks, some Asian-American students and alumni say they have been frustrated by the glacial pace of Harvard’s efforts to improve diversity beyond admissions.

The imminent departures of two Asian-American professors who specialize in ethnic and racial studies has stunned many. The moves have also drawn attention to the meager number of minority faculty on campus and renewed calls for Harvard to create an ethnic studies department.

“I feel let down,” said Sally Chen, 21, a senior who was one of eight current and past students who testified in support of race-conscious admissions during the trial last October. Chen said she shared her family stories, her dreams, and her academic journey with lawyers, the media, and eventually a judge to defend diversity in admissions. But her mentor at Harvard is one of the professors now leaving.

“It struck a personal chord. I had worked with [these professors], it felt crucial to my ability to testify,” she said.

The faculty departures reminded students that just 18 percent of Harvard’s 2,517 professors are minorities, according to 2016 data, and that going back nearly 50 years students have been demanding an ethnic studies department, dedicated to teaching and research about Asian, Hispanic, Arab-American, and Native American communities.

The two professors taught classes on Asian-American history and diversity and equity in higher education. Genevieve Clutario, an assistant professor of history at Harvard has taken a job next fall at Wellesley College’s Asian-American studies program. Natasha Kumar Warikoo, an associate professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, who frequently spoke and wrote about affirmative action in admissions in recent years, was not put up for tenure last fall and said she plans to leave the college.

Harvard officials declined to comment about personnel decisions.

But President Larry Bacow said he is “not unsympathetic” to the demands for an ethnic studies department.

College administrators have been discussing this issue and are recruiting faculty to teach ethnic studies, Bacow said.

“Ultimately, new programs or curriculum are the purview of the faculty,” Bacow said in a statement. “We have been focused on ensuring that any new program would have the faculty and resources essential to deliver it. ... We know there is more work to do, and we will continue to make progress in the months ahead.”

Students and alumni are frustrated because they’ve been asking for ethnic studies for decades, said Albert Maldonado, a 2014 graduate of Harvard’s Divinity School, and a member of the university’s Latino Alumni Alliance.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Maldonado said. “Especially with the lawsuit going on, on the one hand we support Harvard, but on the other hand we’re bringing to their attention they need to do a lot more for us.”

Harvard has formed committees and studied the viability of an ethnic studies department for decades, even as its competitors, including Stanford University and Columbia University, have created the departments and invested in them, advocates said.

‘On the one hand we support Harvard, but on the other hand, we’re bringing to their attention they need to do a lot more for us.’

After the recent admissions trial and Harvard’s emphasis on a diverse campus, current and former students want to see progress, said Jeannie Park, a 1983 graduate of the college and the president of the school’s Asian American Alumni Alliance.

“The university has been talking about diversity non-stop, and the loss of [the professors] feels harsher,” said Park, who helped organize rallies to support race-conscious admissions last year and was often in the crowd during the three-week trial. “There’s a lot of committees, at some point somebody’s got to put a budget down and a head-count down.”

On Friday, organizers who used social media to rally crowds last fall in support of race-conscious admissions activated those same networks to bring together about 60 students outside of the Charles Hotel near Harvard to demand an ethnic studies department.

Bacow spoke briefly with the protesters outside. And as he was meeting with alumni inside the hotel, the students, wearing shirts and pins declaring “Ethnic studies now,” chanted “Out of the courtroom, into the classroom.”

The case, which played out over three weeks in a Boston federal district courtroom, drew international attention and could eventually be appealed to the Supreme Court. Legal scholars believe the case has the potential to overturn decades of race-conscious admissions practices in the United States.

Students for Fair Admissions, which brought the lawsuit, alleged that Harvard’s undergraduate admissions data showed that the college’s use of personal ratings, which measure likability, leadership, and vivaciousness, discriminates against Asian-American applicants. Getting a high personal rating is crucial to gaining entry to Harvard where so many of the applicants are academically strong and active in sports and clubs.

Harvard denied that it discriminated against students and said that its admissions policies were legal and that officials consider more than 200 variables, including race, in evaluating applicants. Harvard accused Students for Fair Admissions of cherry-picking data and trying to turn back the clock on racial diversity on college campuses.

On Wednesday, both sides are scheduled to appear in court again to present their final oral arguments before Judge Allison Burroughs. Burroughs will then decide on the case in the coming months.

At Harvard, the trial has mobilized students who are prepared to keep the pressure on administrators for more diversity, Chen said.

“There’s a level of wanting to see them stay true to their word,” she said.

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The state school system in Britain systematically produces people lacking the most basic skills

The British economy continues to grow slowly, but output per hour worked remains stubbornly flat. This means that economic growth can occur only by the employment of ever more people (usually immigrants) or by extending working hours. Neither makes for a happy outcome.

Why is British productivity so stagnant? Economic journalists puzzle their brains over it. I do not have the definitive answer, but an anecdote recently told me by a man with a small catering business may shed some light on at least one factor.

The caterer urgently needed some carrots and went to a nearby small supermarket to buy them. The supermarket was about to close, and only one bag of carrots was left, selling for £1.20. He took it to the checkout, where the checkout girl noticed that the bag was torn. She said that she could not sell it to him, as some carrots might have fallen out. He said that he did not mind—he needed the carrots and was prepared to pay the full price for them.

Nevertheless, she insisted on calling her supervisor, who said that she should sell the carrots but deduct 10 percent from their price. “How do I do that?” she asked.

The supervisor said that he did not know, either; and my informant, the customer, offered them £1.00 in place of £1.20, which they accepted with relief because it absolved them from having to make the difficult calculation, with or without electronic assistance.

The main point to note is that the checkout girl and her supervisor had received between them an education lasting 22 years and costing several hundred thousand pounds, yet neither could work out what 10 percent of 1.2 is.

They were not mentally defective by genetic endowment or by birth accident: theirs was what one might almost call state-programmed mental defectiveness, whether that program was deliberate or an unintended consequence of educational policy. They were far from isolated cases of this defectiveness; employers in Britain are constantly complaining that young people who cannot read properly or perform the simplest of arithmetical calculations offer themselves for work, with credentials from the national educational service. The state-sponsored production of mental defectiveness acts in concert, alas, with a popular culture that promotes, reflects, and almost glorifies it.

A workforce with a large proportion of de facto mental defectives is difficult to train to perform any but the most menial tasks, and even those it will probably perform badly. Their labor will be scarcely worth more than the minimum wage, if that much. Thus, both the economy as a whole and millions of individuals are trapped in low productivity, all the more galling because it has been produced at such great expense. 

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Bettina Arndt on Heather Mac Donald

Bettina's most recent report below. She opposes the feminist demonization of men, particularly in Australia's universities


Heather

"What a lonely job, working the phones at a college rape centre. Day after day, you wait for the casualties to show up from the campus rape epidemic. But hardly any victims ever show up"

Pretty funny, eh?  That’s the provocative idea which introduces Heather Mac Donald’s chapter on the campus rape myth from her new book, "The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine our Culture".

It’s typical punchy stuff from a woman who has had long, impressive career as a writer and commentator. Heather Mac Donald is currently a contributing editor to City Journal and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute. She’s an outspoken commentator, for instance taking on lies in the ‘black lives matter’ narrative when speaking out about criminal justice reform and race relations, immigration and policing.

I was delighted to talk to her recently, particularly about her strong views on gender politics and the universities, an area where we have had remarkably similar experiences and similar concerns. Experiences like facing a howling mob of protesters at a university campus. My regular viewers will know the riot squad was brought in last year at Sydney University to remove protesters denying entry to the venue where I was supposed to be talking about the fake rape crisis. Heather was prevented from giving a talk about racial issues at Clairmont University – she ended up speaking to an empty room while the police protected her from the baying mob.

I’m very alarmed about the grip of the campus rape myth in Australia and thought it was timely to have Heather Mac Donald explain how this manufactured feminist scare campaign was used in her country to bully politicians into setting up tribunals where so many young men were falsely accused and thrown out of their universities – with dire consequences for the higher education sector, particularly when many of these students successfully sued over the failure of the colleges to protect their legal rights. 

This is exactly where we are heading in Australia – which is why I wanted Heather to reveal the dire consequences for male students if we fail to stand up to this orchestrated campaign.

I’m sure you will be impressed by her passionate, articulate presentation of this important issue. Please circulate my video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlVI7CpUmSU)



And read Heather’s book. Her detailed description of the armies of diversity bureaucrats now running American colleges will send shivers down your spine.

Don’t let the wicked witches win!

I’m really concerned that feminist campaigners are winning round after round in this battle. Look at our Deputy Opposition leader Tanya Plibersek’s promise to remove funding from universities which fail to promote the rape crisis, or the Union of Students promise to provide funding for activists opposing my talks on campus. Most recently we have seen our notorious feminist domestic violence organisation, OurWatch, in league with the universities to promote this nonsense.

We need to get active on this issue. Please write to your MP’s, contact people you know in universities, talk to students, write comments on online newspapers, contact editors over articles promoting the rape crisis. I’m going to attach a few documents to help you, outlining recent events in Australia. I’ll include evidence regarding university regulations which have recently been introduced to adjudicate rape cases – without proper legal protections for the accused and using lower standards of proof. Plus a list of articles outlining recent key events.

I’ll soon be announcing the first of my campus tour stops this year. I hope some of you will be able to come along and support me. I have big plans for Sydney University. It’s infuriating that we have heard nothing about the progress of my complaints about the protesters. Clearly, they hope I will just go away – but they have another think coming.

Finally, my YouTube Q&A is happening this Wednesday, February 13.

Yes, I know this was supposed to take place last week. I’m so sorry I didn’t manage to let you all know we’d been forced to postpone it. Here’s the link for the YouTube session

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zapPx8JaHOU 

Subscribers can visit this page now to receive notification when the Q&A goes live.

Via email from Bettina: bettina@bettinaarndt.com.au