In briefs filed in support of Harvard at the end of July, students and alumni said that they “condemn” the plaintiffs’ “attempt to manufacture conflict between racial and ethnic groups in order to revive an unrelenting agenda to dismantle efforts to create a racially diverse and inclusive student body through college admissions.”
“It’s alarming that Trump is aligning himself with anti-civil rights activist Edward Blum in this subversive attempt to say that civil rights protections cause discrimination,” said Jeannie Park, the head of the Harvard Asian-American Alumni Alliance and co-founder of the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, referring to the founder of Students for Fair Admissions. “Trump does not speak for Asian-Americans, just as Blum does not.”
“Asian-Americans have long benefited from policies to increase equal opportunity and still do,” Ms. Park said. “Our fear is that Harvard’s admissions system is just the latest target in a larger fight to roll back protections for people of color in all fields, including government and business.”
At the heart of the case, is whether Harvard’s admissions staff hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than applicants of other racial or ethnic groups, and whether they use subjective measures, like personal scores, to cap the number of Asian students accepted to the school.
“It turns out that the suspicions of Asian-American alumni, students and applicants were right all along,” Students for Fair Admissions said in a court filing. “Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s.”
Harvard, which admitted less than 5 percent of its applicants this year, said that its own analysis did not find discrimination. The university has also noted that Mr. Blum has lost previous challenges to affirmative action policies.
A trial in the case has been scheduled for October.
If it winds its way to the Supreme Court, it could be heard by Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the vacant seat once held by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The case could have far-reaching implications for the nation’s colleges and universities that consider race in their admissions processes.
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