What's Really at Stake in the Harvard Case

I was an English teacher long before I started working in college counseling. No surprise, then, that my favorite part of college admissions season involves reading students’ essays. Not all of them are gems, but the best reveal details of a student’s life I wouldn’t otherwise know and stay with me years after reading them.

I remember a lyrical essay from a student who had studied traditional Indian dance for years and used the art form as a way to connect with his cultural heritage. There was the student who wrote tenderly of her family’s dinner table and its potent combinations of lasagna and latkes, eggplant parmesan and noodle kugel -- the way her meals reflected the blended backgrounds of her parents. I vividly recall the essay of one student who recounted that in the six months he’d had his driver’s license, he had been pulled over seven times by the police yet never ticketed -- his only offense, “DWB,” as he put it, “driving while black.” Another student wrote of when she began to walk to elementary school alone. She was never afraid of crossing the street or getting lost or the strangers she might meet along the way; instead, she feared ICE and worried that her mother, an undocumented immigrant from Mexico, might not be home when she returned.

The trial in the lawsuit alleging that Harvard University discriminates against Asian-Americans began on Oct. 15. Although the Harvard lawsuit is focused on whether Asian American applicants face discrimination in Harvard’s admissions process, the group bringing the case, Students for Fair Admissions, is headed by conservative activist Edward Blum, who has challenged affirmative action policies more broadly. Like many colleges and universities, Harvard believes that a diverse student body is essential to the educational mission of the school and considers race as one of many factors when evaluating applicants, a practice the Supreme Court has affirmed.

Blum, however, wants to see the end of race-conscious admissions, and while the Supreme Court has upheld the validity of such practices in the past, the Trump administration agrees with Blum. In August, the Department of Justice issued a statement of interest in the Harvard case, siding with Students for Fair Admissions and requesting the university use race-neutral admissions practices. More recently, in September, the Department of Justice and the Department of Education opened an investigation into Yale University and whether its admissions operations discriminate against Asian American applicants. Without question, the Trump administration has affirmative action policies in its crosshairs. Given that most legal scholars believe the Harvard case will make its way to the Supreme Court, we may soon see the end of race-conscious admissions.

When I consider what’s at stake, I think of many things, not least among them those essays mentioned above, essays authored by students for whom race has been a central lens through which they’ve experienced the world. For these students, race and culture have shaped their perspectives, giving them an appreciation for their family and background, an understanding and respect for difference, and insights into the systems of justice and oppression that govern our society.

Those race-neutral alternatives the Trump administration prefers may no longer ask an applicant’s race during the admissions process. What happens, however, to those essays -- those students’ voices, no less -- when colleges and universities can no longer consider race when reading applications? Are those essays removed from an application, lest the admissions staff “consider” the applicant’s race? Are applicants, then, forced to write about only those experiences that do not reveal their race?

Aside from the difficulty of imagining how race and experience aren’t always bound together, I cringe to envision the contortions my students will assume to find suitably anodyne and “colorblind” topics. More important, I am thoroughly saddened to think that students may not be allowed to convey the fullness of their identity, that something so fundamental to who they are may be off-limits.

College admissions, as it is, offers a host of advantages to wealthy white applicants, an inside track that begins well before the student fills out the Common Application. Even those elements of admissions that seem, on the surface, beyond the orbit of affirmative action still have to do with race; it’s just that they benefit white folks and not people of color. Indeed, the term “race-neutral” obscures an entire lexicon of white privilege, from advantages for legacy applicants to the recruitment of athletes, the bulk of whom are white, especially at selective institutions. We don’t associate, say, the growth in early-decision applications with race-conscious practices, but the trend is hardly colorblind. The primary beneficiaries are simply white. To call selective college admissions “race-neutral” ignores how such institutions are responsible for replicating racial inequalities when they ought to be narrowing them.

I have a few student essays left to read before the earliest deadlines, and in the years to come, I’ll have stacks more. I am hopeful that several among them will make me laugh or move me to tears. May the staff of some college’s admissions office be lucky enough to read those essays, too.