Diversity ‘Essential to Academic Excellence’: Harvard Responds to Supreme Court Ruling

Students walk through Harvard Yard on the campus of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., on March 12, 2020. Maddie Meyer/Getty Images

Following the Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in college and university admissions, Harvard University, one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions and one of the schools named in the case, responded with the argument that using race as a factor in the admission process is “essential to academic excellence.”

In a statement released June 29, Harvard said it would “certainly comply” with the court’s decision, but also said it affirmed the principle that teaching, learning, and research depend on a community that includes people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.

“Because the teaching, learning, research, and creativity that bring progress and change require debate and disagreement, diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence,” the university stated.

“To prepare leaders for a complex world, Harvard must admit and educate a student body whose members reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience,“ the statement said. ”No part of what makes us who we are could ever be irrelevant. Harvard must always be a place of opportunity, a place whose doors remain open to those to whom they had long been closed, a place where many will have the chance to live dreams their parents or grandparents could not have dreamed.”

Harvard said that it will “determine how to preserve” its existing values to make them consistent with the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The statement was signed by prominent members of the Harvard community, including the president of the university, Lawrence S. Bacow, provost Alan M. Garber, and 15 deans of the various schools.

Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court pose for their official photo at the Supreme Court in Washington on Oct. 7, 2022. (Front L–R) Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justices Samuel Alito and Elena Kagan. (Back L–R) Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images

The case is actually two separate appeals that were heard together on Oct. 31, 2022: Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA) v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, court file 20-1199, and SFFA v. University of North Carolina (UNC), court file 21-707.

Harvard College is the undergraduate school at Harvard University.

Roberts wrote the majority opinion in the UNC case, which was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, and Amy Coney Barrett. The court’s three liberal justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. This means the vote was 6–3.

The justices’ votes in the Harvard case were the same except that Jackson didn’t participate in that decision after she recused herself because she has close ties to Harvard. Kagan didn’t recuse herself even though she had been dean of Harvard Law School from 2003 to 2009. The vote in this case was 6–2.

Claudine Gay, president-elect of Harvard University, released a video statement on June 29.

“In the coming weeks, we’ll be working to understand the decision and its implications for our policies,” Gay said.

Why SFFA Filed the Lawsuit

Before the appeal at the Supreme Court, SFFA’s case against Harvard was twice dismissed, first in 2019 by U.S. District Judge Allison Dale Burroughs, a Barack Obama appointee, who said that discrimination against Asian American applicants wasn’t motivated by “racial animus … or intentional discrimination” and was “narrowly tailored to achieve diversity and the academic benefits that flow from diversity.”

In its appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, SFFA argued that the policies employed at Harvard College discriminated against white and Asian students.

“Harvard automatically awards racial preferences to African Americans and Hispanics,” SFFA said in its court filing (pdf).

Under the 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, universities can use race “only as a ‘plus’” in admission decisions, the filing said. “Race cannot be a minus for any applicant.”

However, Harvard has “repeatedly penalized one particular racial group: Asian Americans,” it stated. “Harvard concedes that Asian Americans suffer a penalty on the personal rating—that changing an applicant’s race from White to Asian lowers the personal rating to a statistically significant degree.”

“Harvard also concedes that, when this tainted variable is removed, projected Asian-American admissions increase to a statistically significant degree,” the filing said.

The 1st Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against SFFA in 2020.

The Supreme Court heard arguments for both the Harvard and UNC cases on Oct. 31, 2022.

In a document highlighting what it called the key facts of the case (pdf), Harvard insisted that “for more than 40 years, the Supreme Court has established and repeatedly affirmed that race can be one of many factors considered in college admissions.”

The university blamed SFFA for attempting to “challenge diversity.”

Admission Criteria Scrutinized

Harvard uses a profile rating system in admissions, divided into four categories: academic, extracurricular, athletic, and personal, plus an “overall” rating, SFFA argued.

In the “personal” section, applicants are given one of six rating options: Outstanding, Very strong, Generally positive, Bland or somewhat negative or immature, Questionable personal qualities, and Worrisome personal qualities.

“The personal ratings assigned by Harvard reveal a clear racial hierarchy—with African Americans consistently getting the best personal ratings and Asian Americans consistently getting the worst,” SFFA said in one of its earlier court filings.

Harvard uses race in its criteria for every step of the admission process, including recruiting high school students to apply, SFFA claimed.

“African-American and Hispanic students with PSAT scores of 1100 and up are invited to apply to Harvard, but white and Asian-American students must score at least 1310 to get an invitation,” SFFA said.

The academic index used by the university has significantly different weights depending on the race. For example, an Asian applicant in the top academic decile had a 12.7 percent chance of being admitted, compared to 15.3 percent for white applicants, 31.3 percent for Hispanic applicants, and 56.1 percent for black applicants.

A black applicant in the fourth-lowest decile has a higher chance of being admitted to Harvard (12.8 percent) than an Asian applicant in the top decile, SFFA argued.

“Harvard admits Asian Americans at similar or lower rates than whites, even though Asian Americans receive higher academic scores, higher extracurricular scores, and higher alumni-interview scores,” SFFA said.

Wider Implications

Experts expect the Supreme Court ruling will affect not only the college admission process but will carry wider societal implications for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agendas in corporate executive boards.

DEI policies require companies to address social issues like racial and ethnic inequalities instead of merit. Several corporations have instituted programs to boost the employee count of minority racial and ethnic populations, thereby ending up discriminating against people of other ethnicities and races.

Several organizations are under scrutiny for their explicit promotion of discriminatory hiring practices.

In a recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, progressive investment firm BlackRock states that it is committed to “cultivating diversity, equity, and inclusion in its workforce and leadership team through its hiring, retention, promotion, and development practices,” according to America First Legal.

As part of this, the company has set goals to increase the number of black and Latino employees and the number of women and black and Latino senior employees at the director level and above.

In a June 29 statement, former President Donald Trump lauded the Supreme Court decision.

“People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded,“ he said. ”This is the ruling everyone was waiting and hoping for, and the result was amazing.”

Matthew Vadum contributed to this report.