by Eric Lendrum
After a lengthy court case, a federal judge has ruled against plaintiffs who claimed that Harvard’s race-based admission quotas disproportionately rejected Asian applicants, Reuters reports.
The group that brought the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions, pointed to how “Harvard’s policies limited Asian-Americans to 20 percent of incoming classes,” which made them “less likely to be admitted than white, black, and Hispanic applicants.”
The judge who ruled against SFA – U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee – rejected this evidence and instead claimed that Harvard’s is “a very fine admission program that passes constitutional muster,” while admitting that “it could do better.”
Harvard’s President Lawrence Bacow, who came under fire earlier this year for supporting Harvard’s acceptance of an illegal alien who was eventually deported, defended the judge’s ruling, claiming that it “reaffirm[ed] the importance of diversity, and everything it represents to the world.”
Edward Blum, head of Students for Fair Admissions, said that the group will challenge the decision in the federal appeals court, with the hope that the decision will be reversed and eventually taken up by the Supreme Court.
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Eric Lendrum graduated from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he was the Secretary of the College Republicans and the founding chairman of the school’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter. He has interned for Young America’s Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, and the White House, and has worked for numerous campaigns including the 2018 re-election of Congressman Devin Nunes (CA-22).
Photo “University of Harvard” by Joseph Williams. CC BY 2.0.
