Harvard sued for low rating of Asians

WASHINGTON: Harvard College has consistently accorded Asian American applicants the lowest rating among racial groups on a key admission criterion of personality, a lawsuit has claimed.

The suit, filed on Friday, accused the iconic institution of discriminating against immigrants from Asia, including those from India.

“Despite their superiority in the measurables for academic and extracurricular achievement, Asian-American applicants have the lowest score of the four major racial groups on Harvard’s personal rating — the most subjective of all the ratings,” said the lawsuit filed by the non-profit Students for Fair Admissions in a court in Boston, Massachusetts.

Personality traits rated were likability, kindness, courage and being “widely respected,” according to The New York Times. The plea went on to state: “Incontrovertible evidence shows that Harvard’s admissions policy has a disproportionately negative effect on Asian-Americans vis-à-vis similarly situated white applicants that cannot be explained on non-discriminatory grounds.”

The suit did not give an ethnic breakdown of the umbrella term Asian Americans, but Edward Blum, founder of the organisation, told Hindustan Times, “The Asian classification includes students from the Indian subcontinent.” Harvard defines “AsianAmericans” as people of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Hmong or Indian descent.

The lawsuit says there is “undisputed evidence” based on analysis of six years of admissions data and records of nearly 200,000 applicants that Harvard is doing “racial balancing”. It claims Harvard suppressed a 2013 internal investigation that had found discrimination against Asian Americans in admissions.