As anger flowed from the left following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard/UNC cases prohibiting affirmative action as unconstitutional race-based admissions, the practice of legacy admissions was immediately targeted as the alternative, affirmative action for the white and wealthy.
Putting aside AOC’s confusion about how law and courts work, as if the Supreme Court could sweep anything it wants to into a case where it’s not at issue, it raised two discrete issues. The first is whether legacy admissions are a good or bad idea. As Yale argued in opposition to banning legacy admissions, it’s a matter of academic freedom for universities to choose the basis for admission provided it’s not unlawful.
Just as every Connecticut college or university teaches different classes in different ways in fulfillment of its educational mission, each institution should likewise be allowed to assemble a student body that promotes its educational goals through diversity, community, and tradition.
But that backlash to the Court’s opinion came swiftly, as the second issue, whether or not it is a lawful practice, was challenged.
It’s been called affirmative action for the rich: Harvard’s special admissions treatment for students whose parents are alumni, or whose relatives donated money. And in a complaint filed on Monday, a legal activist group demanded that the federal government put an end to it, arguing that fairness was even more imperative after the Supreme Court last week severely limited race-conscious admissions.
Three Boston-area groups requested that the Education Department review the practice, saying the college’s admissions policies discriminated against Black, Hispanic and Asian applicants, in favor of less qualified white candidates with alumni and donor connections.
“Why are we rewarding children for privileges and advantages accrued by prior generations?” asked Ivan Espinoza-Madrigal, executive director of Lawyers for Civil Rights, which is handling the case. “Your family’s last name and the size of your bank account are not a measure of merit, and should have no bearing on the college admissions process.”
The complaint alleges that legacy admissions disproportionately benefit white applicants are the expense of others. and in so doing violate Title VI. Ilya Somin, using reason rather than recognition that the decision will be placed in the hands of Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights bureaucrat Catherine Lhamon, argues the complaint is lacking.
I am skeptical that LCR’s complaint will prevail, unless they can prove that Harvard’s legacy preferences were adopted or maintained for the purpose of benefiting whites (or keeping out non-whites). Title VI (and other current federal laws) do not ban legacy preferences as such. And courts are unlikely to invalidate them merely because they disproportionately help white applicants relative to those from other groups.
It should also be noted that legacy admissions have the same disproportionate negative impact on white non-legacy students as black non-legacy students. On the other hand, black legacy applications enjoy the benefit that white non-legacy do not, to the benefit of Joy Reid’s progeny. The question here isn’t whether legacy is a good or bad idea. If Harvard wants to admit people who are under six feet tall, it violates no law no matter what Randy Newman has to say about it.
Other than tradition and the hope that connecting a university with generations of a family will bring in big legacy money, a dubious although long-standing proposition, there aren’t many good reasons for legacy admissions. Most colleges, like Harvard, still don’t admit legacy students who tend to drool as they fail to write their name correctly, but most legacy admits are qualified in their own right, even if not so well as to gain admission in the absence of the benefits of legacy.
But if universities choose to keep legacy admissions, is it unlawful discrimination because more white people will enjoy the perks than black people until there are enough black graduates who want their li’l darlin’s to attend mommy and daddy’s alma mater? If legacy admissions have no discriminatory purpose, why shouldn’t it be left to colleges to decide whether to keep them? If legacy admissions are as unfair to white non-legacy applications as black, is it not equitably applied to the vast majority of unfortunates whose parents didn’t come out double Harvard like my buddy Elie? Legacy admissions may be dumb and suck, but that doesn’t make them unlawful. Or does it?
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