In the face of rising violence and crime against Asians, the Asian community has once again come together to form a unified national coalition against systemic racial discrimination at Harvard and other top colleges and universities.
On March 31, the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE), in partnership with the Asian American Legal Foundation (AALF), joined 346 Asian associations and other ethnic organizations (including 285 nonprofit associations and educational entities) to file an amicus brief with the federal Supreme Court, clearly expressing their opposition to the plaintiffs “Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), urging the Supreme Court to ban racial discrimination in college admissions.
Since November 2014, SFFA has been on a path to sue Harvard University under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act in order to eliminate admissions patterns that discriminate against Asians at prestigious U.S. schools, led by Harvard University. in November 2020, the case was lost by the Federal Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. on February 25, 2021, SFFA filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court, asking the Supreme Court to issue a review order to reexamine evidence of racial discrimination in Harvard admissions and to end race-based college admissions.
As for the government’s attitude, on August 30, 2018, the Department of Justice under the Trump administration issued a statement of interest formally expressing support for Asian Americans suing Harvard University. In July of that year, the Trump administration reversed an Obama-era “racial affirmative action” policy that encouraged colleges to consider race in admissions in order to achieve “diversity” in their student populations.
In October 2020, the Justice Department under President Trump sued Yale University for allegedly discriminating against Asian and white applicants in the undergraduate admissions process, a lawsuit that further reinforced the Trump administration’s opposition to “affirmative action” in elite college admissions. But after the Biden administration took office, the political winds shifted, and on Feb. 3 of this year, the Justice Department abruptly dropped its lawsuit against Yale University.
The Asian American Education Coalition said the case is significant because Harvard’s admissions process is a benchmark for higher education in the United States, and its discriminatory practices set a bad example for other colleges and universities. The “coalition” also includes organizations of other ethnicities: prominent groups such as the California Association of Scholars and the Connecticut Parents Union have joined in this unprecedented joint effort.
“In a statement, the coalition argued that the use of race in the admissions process at Harvard and other colleges is neither wise nor productive. At best, this admissions model is a cover for the root cause of the current lack of diversity on college campuses – the poor quality of basic education in elementary and secondary schools in too many minority communities. On this failed policy, the New York Times published a commentary on August 24, 2017, saying, “Even with affirmative action, African-Americans and Hispanics are more underrepresented at America’s top universities today than they were 35 years ago.”
Mr. Ukong Cho, President of the Asian American Education Coalition, said, “At a time when Asian communities are suffering from rising violent attacks, hate crimes, and systemic discrimination at many educational institutions on multiple fronts, Asians are still being scapegoated – used by politicians to cover up their failure to This policy failure to improve the quality of elementary and secondary education. The U.S. Supreme Court should act to defend the legal rights afforded to us by our Constitution. 21st century America can no longer condone and tolerate the systemic racial discrimination of our children by Harvard and other educational institutions!”
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