Why is Harvard discriminating against Asian Americans? 'Diversity' is no excuse for racial bias. We've decided that doling out opportunity on the basis of race is wrong. Even when it changes an institution's 'character.' Even when Harvard does it.

Glenn Reynolds | Opinion columnist

I wrote four years ago that it looked as if Asian applicants to Harvard were getting the "Jewish treatment" — that is, being subjected to quotas, and rated down on “soft” qualifications, so as to keep their numbers lower than their objective qualifications would warrant. This is what Ivy League schools did to Jewish applicants for much of the 20th century, because Jewish applicants were seen as boring grinds who studied too hard, and whose parents weren’t rich enough or connected enough to contribute to the schools’ flourishing.

The Ivy League eventually ended its quotas for Jews, suspiciously at about the time that there were enough rich and well-connected Jews to benefit the Ivy League. But now it’s doing the same thing to Asians. At least, that’s the charge made in a lawsuit charging Harvard with racial discrimination against Asian-American applicants. And I for one believe that Harvard is as guilty of anti-Asian discrimination now as it was of anti-Jewish discrimination back around the time I was born.

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One of the things that highly selective schools like Harvard like to say is that their admission policy is “holistic,” based on personal characteristics that go beyond high school grades or SAT scores. This goes back to the early days of discrimination against Jews, when things such as “leadership” or “well-roundedness” were used to favor rich WASP applicants over Jews who just studied hard. And, often, there was a thumb on the scale.

Now that’s happening to Asians, as it has come out that Harvard consistently scored Asian applicants lower on the subjective "personal rating." These traits included “positive personality,” likability, courage, kindness and being “widely respected,” according to an analysis of six years of admission data filed Friday in federal court in Boston by Students for Fair Admissions, a group representing Asian-American students in a lawsuit against the university.

The group said its expert found that Asian-American applicants are "significantly stronger than all other racial groups in academic performance.They also perform very well in non-academic categories and have higher extracurricular scores than any other racial group." Their personal ratings were relatively low, especially among admissions officers who hadn't met them. Alumni interviewers who had met these prospective students gave them top personal ratings.

The memo filed with the court said Harvard's own internal investigation in 2013 concluded that its admissions system was biased against Asian Americans. But instead of addressing the problem, "Harvard killed the investigation and buried the reports."

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There seems little doubt that Harvard is practicing conscious racial discrimination here. But why?

The excuse seems to be “diversity,” in the sense that if admissions were based solely on objective criteria, the school would be majority-Asian, which would change the “character” of Harvard.

Well, yes. Ending racial discrimination usually changes the character of institutions that have been practicing it. The University of Mississippi isn’t the same as it was before it was forced to admit black students, and Harvard isn’t the same as it was when it had quotas for Jews.

I suppose some people might argue that private institutions should be able to choose their own “character” and enforce it via the admissions process, even if that involves racial discrimination. But that’s not how we do things in this country. (And the notion that Harvard is really “private,” given that it receives massive amounts of federal funding, is a bit iffy anyway.)

The admissions officers at Harvard no doubt sincerely want what they see as best for their schools, and maybe even for the students they wind up accepting. But you could surely say the same things about the admissions officers at the University of Mississippi in 1960. As a society, we’ve decided that doling out opportunity on the basis of race is wrong. And it is. Even when Harvard does it.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors. Follow him on Twitter: @instapundit.