案件
Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College
原告 plaintiff
Students for Fair Admissions(representing more than a dozen Asian-American students rejected by Harvard)。 【该团体不是亚裔团体;机构的金主多为保守派;机构的领导人Edward Blum 不是律师,也不是政客,但喜欢打任何和种族有关的案子 】
被告 defendant
the President and Fellows of Harvard College 【所以针对的主要是哈佛的本科招生】
2014年上诉:
原告告哈佛在录取过程中存在非法的按种族分配名额的行为;亚裔申请者的学术成绩,课外活动,面试表现打分都是比较高的(给予16万份学生申请文档),但哈佛在主观参数比如“个性”这块给亚裔申请者的打分偏低,存在种族歧视行为, 以此降低录取亚裔的比重。 ...
They say that Harvard’s admission process amounts to an illegal quota system. Asians outperformed all other racial groups on every measure of academic achievement: grades, SAT scores and the most AP exams passed. They had more extracurricular activities than their white counterparts. They were rated by interviewers who had met them as virtually on par with their white counterparts in their personal qualities.
Yet Harvard admissions officers, many of whom had never met these applicants, scored them collectively as the worst of all groups in the one area — personality — that was subjective enough to be readily manipulable to serve Harvard’s institutional interests.
哈佛反驳自己的录取行为是为了促进多样性,不仅仅是种族层面的,也有收入,想法,地理和天赋的多样性【想法和天赋就很虚了】 Harvard says its admissions system is finely calibrated to produce a spectrum of diversity, not only of race, but of income, ideas, geographic origin and talents
19年败诉:
18年底的时候开庭,当时能立案有很大的一部分原因是时任Trump 政府的支持 【注意,不是说Trump 政府支持亚裔,只是保守派想推掉affirmative action】
19年的时候法庭判决“哈佛歧视”不成立:
法官Allison Burroughs裁定:虽然哈佛的招生流程不完美,但不构成种族歧视
... federal Judge Allison Burroughs ruled that although Harvard’s admissions system was “not perfect,” it nonetheless met the legal standard needed to ensure that it was not motivated by racial prejudice or stereotyping.
这个结果当然不会丝毫影响Students for Fair Admissions 的安排,因为保守派在乎的不是哈佛有没有歧视,而是想推翻affirmative action,而要实现这个目标是一定要去最高法(Supreme Court)的.
对于亚裔来说,因为本身也是少数族裔,大多无心推翻affirmative action,也支持这些diversity的论调,只是觉得diverse 不应该通过牺牲亚裔来实现。
“Look, I support Harvard’s right to pursue the diversity they want,” said one Asian-American who described herself as a “staunch supporter of affirmative action.” “But of course they discriminate against Asian kids.”
2020年上诉到最高法
2020年2月,在上次判决4个半月以后,Students for Fair Admissions 上诉到最高法。
A group that opposes affirmative action filed an appeal Tuesday of a federal ruling that Harvard had not intentionally discriminated against Asian-American applicants, ratcheting up a challenge to decades of Supreme Court decisions upholding race-conscious selection in college admissions.
按照最高法一般做事的流程,案子会在2022年10月开审,到2023年的春夏出结果
If the Supreme Court follows its usual practices, it will hear arguments in its next term, which starts in October. A decision is not likely until the spring or summer of 2023. 按照常规来说,要打破affirmative action 的先例判决胜率是非常低的,但是目前最高法打大法官保守派占绝大多数,所以结果变得很不确定了。
亚裔内部对于这个案例依然各执一词
有支持的 Jason Xu, the president of the Silicon Valley Chinese Association Foundation, which filed a brief supporting the challengers in the Harvard case, said many Asian Americans believe that their academically high-performing children were passed over because they were of Asian descent.
也有反对的
But another group, Asian Americans Advancing Justice, took the opposite tack, saying in a statement that affirmative action was necessary because “the reality is that race continues to unfairly limit educational opportunities for students of color.”
当然两方谈的其实是这个案子的不同方面。一方支持的是不能歧视亚裔;另一方反对的是推翻affirmative action,其本质上也是不能歧视少数族裔。
到是havard,大大方方的开了个网页,公开了下案子的时间轴
https://www.harvard.edu/admissionscase/lawsuit/
要是录取的具体数据也能透明些就好了。
引用2003年最高法庭审类似案子时候,Justice Sandra Day O’Connor的结案词来收尾 “we expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences” in the university admissions context “will no longer be necessary.”
参考文章
Adam Liptak and Anemona Hartocollis. "Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Affirmative Action at Harvard and U.N.C." New York Times, Jan. 24,2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/24/us/politics/supreme-court-affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html.
Anemona Hartocollis. "The Affirmative Action Battle at Harvard Is Not Over." New York Times, Feb. 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/18/us/affirmative-action-harvard.html.
Jay Caspian Kang. "Where Does Affirmative Action Leave Asian-Americans?." New York Times, July 29, 2021(updated), https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/magazine/where-does-affirmative-action-leave-asian-americans.html.
John McWhorter. "Stop Making Asian Americans Pay the Price for Campus Diversity." New York Times, Sept. 23, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/opinion/race-admissions.html.
Wesley Yang. "Harvard Is Wrong That Asians Have Terrible Personalities." New York Times, June 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/opinion/harvard-asian-american-racism.html.