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A coalition of more than 60 Asian American organizations filed an official federal complaint against Harvard University last month. The coalition requested that Harvard be the subject of a civil rights violation investigation on the basis of what the coalition says are discriminatory admissions practices.
At a press conference held May 15, coalition leaders said that race-based admissions policies discriminate against Asian American students by holding them to higher standards than other racial or ethnic groups. They called on Harvard to eliminate the consideration of race in admissions decisions.
In addition, coalition leaders suggested that Harvard University has an unlawful quota for the number of Asian American students it will admit.
Michael Wang, an Asian American student currently enrolled at Williams College, said at the press conference that he was denied admittance to Harvard and other Ivy League schools due to his race, despite his excellent academic and extracurricular qualifications.
"When our admissions offices set these standards and quotas, we don't feel proud of being Asian anymore, and that's not correct. See, all races should be equal to each other," Wang said, adding that he filed complaints against Princeton, Yale and Stanford but did not get the results he sought.
At the press conference, coalition leaders stated that Asian Americans have suffered the most due to Harvard's holistic admissions policies, followed by White students, while some Blacks and Hispanics have received preferential treatment.
The complaint says that Asian Americans must perform much higher on almost every metric in the college admissions process than other races. To prove this point, the complaint notes that, even though Asian Americans make up only 5.6 percent of the U.S. population, Asian Americans disproportionally participate in prestigious high school programs, such as the National Merit Scholarship, the U.S. Math Olympiads and U.S. Physics Olympiads.
Such disproportionate representation indicates that Asian Americans are substantially outperforming other races academically. Yet, the complaint says, those achievements are not recognized in Harvard's admissions process.
While discrimination against Asian Americans is the primary concern of the coalition, its leaders argued that racebased admissions policies do not benefit low-income, minority students. Coalition leaders said that, instead,...