The Department of Justice (DOJ) isn’t just allocating its resources to blocking the AT&T-Time Warner merger. It is also investigating Harvard’s affirmative action admissions that discriminate against Asian-American students.
What the lawsuit contends is that Harvard, and other elite schools in the United States, is maintaining an illegal quota system. The representation of Asian-American students at universities has remained static for the last 30 years, even though applications from this demographic has dramatically increased.
Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley said:
“The Department of Justice takes seriously any potential violation of an individual’s civil and constitutional rights.”
This is something that Asian-American students have been complaining about for the last 30 years.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The plaintiffs in the lawsuit are members of Students for Fair Admissions, which advocates for the elimination of affirmative action in college admissions and includes Asian-Americans who were denied admission to Harvard. The group is led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum.
Asian-American groups have been raising concerns about the fairness of Ivy League admissions practices since at least 1989.
Mr. Blum also spearheaded a challenge to affirmative action brought by a white applicant against the University of Texas, which was decided by the Supreme Court last year.
In the 4-3 ruling, Justice Anthony Kennedy left the door open to future legal challenges by saying universities should continue to review their affirmative-action policies to assess their positive and negative effects.
It would be interesting what legendary economist Thomas Sowell would say about this case.
Here is Sowell on affirmative action:
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