Claims of anti-Asian discrimination at Harvard reveal a long, complicated fight over affirmative action

[We Keep Receipts 9,238]

http://news.yahoo.com/claims-of-anti-asian-discrimination-at-harvard-reveal-a-long--complicated-fight-over-affirmative-action-231625860.html

Does one of the nation’s most prestigious universities really have a racially biased admissions process, or are the organizers behind such a claim merely pushing a larger, more controversial agenda?

Those were the questions prompted by a federal complaint filed last week with the Departments of Justice and Education by more than 60 Asian-American organizations who say Harvard University uses racial quotas and other illegal practices to discriminate against Asian-American applicants.

“The discrimination in college admissions is the biggest civil rights issue Asian-Americans suffer from,” read a release inviting all members of the media to the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on Friday, where leaders from the Coalition of Asian-American Associations gathered to call for an investigation of the Ivy League school’s admissions practices.

It’s not the first time Harvard has been accused of capping the number of Asian-American students in its incoming classes. A November 2014 lawsuit by a group called Students for Fair Admissions made the same claim. That suit compared the school’s alleged Asian-American policies to its treatment of Jewish applicants nearly nine decades ago, when Harvard expanded its admissions criteria beyond academic achievement, essentially as a means of cracking down on the growing percentage of Jewish freshmen that then-president A. Lawrence Lowell feared would “ruin the college.”

But critics — many within the Asian-American community — have questioned the real motive behind these cases, charging that both may be using the alleged racial discrimination against Asian-Americans as a wedge issue to promote a much larger agenda: the dismantling of affirmative action.

[Jacque67 7,328]

Wgaf about Harvard?