The Trump administration on Thursday sided with Asian-American students suing Harvard University over the Ivy League school’s consideration of race in admissions.
The Justice Department said in a court filing Thursday that the highly-selective school failed to demonstrate that it did not discriminate on the basis of race — the latest step in Team Trump’s effort to eliminate race as a factor in college admissions.
The department’s “statement of interest” was in a case filed in 2014 by Students For Fair Admission, which argues that one of the world’s most prestigious universities uses subjective criteria to discriminate against Asian-American applicants with outstanding credentials.
According to Harvard’s website, 22 percent of the Class of 2021 is Asian-American, while the US Asian-American population as a whole is 5.6 percent.
In a statement to The Post, the university said Justice was “recycling the same misleading and hollow arguments that prove nothing more than the emptiness of the case against Harvard,” and denied that it discriminated in admissions.
“Harvard does not discriminate against applicants from any group, and will continue to vigorously defend the legal right of every college and university to consider race as one factor among many in college admissions, which the Supreme Court has consistently upheld for more than 40 years,” the statement said.
The Supreme Court permits colleges and universities to consider race in admissions decisions, but says it must be done in a narrowly designed way to promote diversity, and should be limited in time.
Universities also have to show why their consideration of race is appropriate.
But in Harvard’s case, Justice Department officials said, the university hadn’t explained how it used race in admissions and had not adopted meaningful criteria to limit the use of race.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “No American should be denied admission to school because of their race.”
Sessions argued the school’s use of a “personal rating,” which includes highly subjective factors such as being a “good person” or “likeability,” may be biased against Asian-Americans.
He said the school admitted that it scores Asian-American applicants lower on personal rating than other students, and argued that Harvard admissions officers manipulate the racial makeup of incoming classes.
“The Supreme Court has called such attempts to ‘racially balance’ the makeup of a student body ‘patently unconstitutional,'” Sessions said in a statement.
Edward Blum, president of SFFA, hailed the administration’s action.
“We look forward to having the gravely troubling evidence that Harvard continues to keep redacted disclosed to the American public in the near future,” he said.
The Justice Department’s court filing opposed Harvard’s request to dismiss the lawsuit before trial.
The filing followed a July decision by the Justice and Education departments to abandon Obama-era guidelines that instructed universities to consider race in their admissions process to make the student body more diverse.
Democrats criticized that decision, saying that the Trump administration was taking away protections for minorities.
According to Harvard’s website, 22 percent of the Class of 2021 is Asian-American, while the US Asian-American population as a whole is 5.6 percent.
