DOJ probes Harvard
There is suddenly much wailing and gnashing of teeth over the “politicization” of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division over its inquiry into possible discrimination by Harvard University against Asian-American applicants.
Because, well, that certainly never happened when Eric Holder or Loretta Lynch presided over DOJ, right?
The political angst aside, if proven, such actions by Harvard would be both odious and illegal.
And it’s not as if Harvard doesn’t have a history of such conduct. Its attempts to set a quota for Jewish students after 1925, when they made up more than a quarter of the entering class, are now well documented.
A civil suit was filed against Harvard in 2014 by the nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions claiming Harvard imposed a cap on Asian-American student admissions. Harvard officials say Asian-American students make up about 22 percent of this year’s freshman class as they did last year. International students from Asian countries are not counted in that total.
The Justice Department probe mirrors the civil suit — but with a couple big differences, the chief one being the clout of a government agency. In fact, now DOJ is threatening to sue Harvard if it does not comply in a timely fashion with its demands for records.
“Harvard has responded with delays, challenges to our authority to investigate, and a belated, unacceptable proposal to restrict our investigation,” wrote Matthew Donnelly, an attorney for Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
The university has cited student confidentiality, although it has submitted redacted copies of student files in connection with the civil suit.
The other tool DOJ brings to this battle — which no private party could — is the ability to bring a claim of “disparate impact” — in fact, a favorite tool of the Holder-run DOJ on so many fronts. It’s far easier to prove that Harvard’s policies have had a “disparate impact” on AsianAmerican students than that they were intended to discriminate.
But if indeed Asian-American students have to have far higher SAT scores than their white, African-American or Hispanic counterparts even to be considered for admission, then that would be gross discrimination. And good for DOJ for getting under the hood of this one.