Trump's Department of Justice files suit vs. Yale over admissions

The Justice Department filed suit against Yale University for race and national origin discrimination and once again, Asian Americans are being used as a front to dismantle affirmative action.

The lawsuit filed Thursday (Oct. 7) alleges that Yale discriminated against applicants to Yale College on the grounds of race and national origin, and that Yale’s discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular most Asian and White applicants.

The lawsuit follows a two-year DOJ investigation prompted by a 2016 complaint against Yale from the Asian American Coalition for Education and 132 other organizations, but the real driver behind the complaint is the Students for Fair Admissions headed by affirmative action foe Edward Blum.

“Illegal race discrimination by colleges and universities must end,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division. “This nation’s highest ideals include the notion that we are all equal under the law. For centuries, people from all over the world have learned of this ideal, left their ancestral homes, and come to the United States hoping that this country would live up to its ideals and that they and their families could enjoy equal opportunity and pursue the American dream.

"All persons who apply for admission to colleges and universities should expect and know that they will be judged by their character, talents, and achievements and not the color of their skin. To do otherwise is to permit our institutions to foster stereotypes, bitterness, and division.”   

In an email to the Yale community Thursday evening, University President Peter Salovey reiterated that Yale has communicated with the DOJ over the past few weeks, adding that the University has provided them with statistics showing that the allegations are false.

“I want to be clear: Yale does not discriminate against applicants of any race or ethnicity,” Salovey wrote. “Our admissions practices are completely fair and lawful. Yale’s admissions policies will not change as a result of the filing of this baseless lawsuit. We look forward to defending these policies in court.”

The Justice Department found Yale discriminates based on race and national origin in its undergraduate admissions process, and that race is the determinative factor in hundreds of admissions decisions each year. For the great majority of applicants, Asian Americans and Whites have only one-eighth to one-fourth of the likelihood of admission as African American applicants with comparable academic credentials. Yale rejects scores of Asian American and White applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit.

The Yale case is similar to the suit filed against Harvard and it's admission policies. In that case, Asian American applicants were again used as supposed victims of an alleged biased admission policies. A lower court's decision in Harvard's favor is being appealed. The U.S. 1st District Court of Appeals heard arguments on Sept. 16 in which the three-panel judge aggressively questioned the plaintiff's lawyers. Both sides of the case believe that the Harvard suit will wind up in front of the conservative U.S. Supreme Court.

As in the Harvard case, the Asian students cited in the complaint are from families of new immigrants predominantly from China unfamiliar with the history of affirmative action and the generations of racism that prompted it.

“Yale believes that having a student body and a faculty from around the globe and around the country — including individuals with a wide range of ethnic and racial backgrounds, socioeconomic and family upbringings, gender orientations, talents and skills — enriches Yale’s community in immeasurable ways and prepares our students to lead and succeed in an increasingly diverse global workforce,” said Dean of Undergraduate Admissions and Financial Aid, Jeremiah Quinlan.

Yale's first-year students for this fall is 45% White, 29% Asian, 14% Hispanic or Latino, 13% Black or African American, 2% American Indian or Alaska Native.

Clearly, Asian American students are not being discriminated against. What is really at danger are the slots taken by White students admitted through legacy status, ie. those who have a special skill or admitted because of a relationship with a wealthy donor alumni or celebrity. 

Apparently the Trump and Bill Barr-led Justice Department that can't be bothered with biased police, hasn't acted against blatant voter suppression or speak and act against white supremacists, has prioritized trying to find a case against affirmative action an activist Supreme Court could rule against without revealing the case's racist intentions.

EDITOR'S NOTE: A word of caution, this is news sprinkled with opinion. Readers are encouraged to seek multiple news sources to formulate their own positions. 

Universities question FBI calls to monitor Chinese students and scholars

L. Rafael Reif, MIT  president

ASAM NEWS & VIEWS FROM THE EDGE

The FBI is stepping up their investigations against China's alleged efforts to steal US research and secrets by asking American universities to keep a close eye on Chinese students and scholars.

The public radio network, National Public Radio, reports authorities have visited at least 10 universities to make that request.

“We are being asked what processes are in place to know what labs they are working at or what information they are being exposed to,” Fred Cate, of Indiana University, said. “It’s not a question of just looking for suspicious behavior — it’s actually really targeting specific countries and the people from those countries.”

Amid the Trump Administration's request and warnings about Chinese espionage, the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) last week wrote an open letter to “members of the MIT community,” in support of students and scholars of Chinese descent. 

L. Rafael Reif wrote that he felt compelled to share his “dismay” over the Trump administration’s scrutiny of Chinese and Chinese American researchers and pupils due to heightened concerns about academic espionage.

“Faculty members, post-docs, research staff and students tell me that, in their dealings with government agencies, they now feel unfairly scrutinized, stigmatized and on edge – because of their Chinese ethnicity alone,” he wrote. “Nothing could be further from – or more corrosive to ­– our community’s collaborative strength and open-hearted ideals. To hear such reports from Chinese and Chinese American colleagues is heartbreaking.”

The increased emphasis comes against the backdrop of what FBI director Christopher Wray said at a speech in New York back in April.

RELATED: 'Yellow Peril' fears arise in Chinese American community

“China has pioneered a societal approach to stealing innovation in any way it can from a wide array of busi­ness­es, universities and organizations,” he said to the Council on Foreign Relations, according to the South China Morning Post. “Put plainly, China seems determined to steal its way up the economic ladder at our expense.”

As AsAmNews previously reported, Xifeng Wu was recently asked to step down as director of public health for the Center for Public Health and Translational Genomics at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center under suspicion of strong ties to China.

The request by the FBI has left many universities confused and uncertain. Yale University president Peter Salovey is among them.

He said he was “working with my presidential colleagues in the Association of American Universities (AAU) to urge federal agencies to clarify concerns they have about international academic exchanges. The AAU has encouraged agencies to use the tools already in place, such as export controls, while affirming the principle of open academic exchange for basic research.”

The Union of Concerned Scientists fears that scientific partnerships are being criminalized. The organization posted on its blog:

Scientists of Chinese descent are being put into an impossible situation. On the one hand, they have been encouraged for years by their research institutions in the United States to seek out relationships with their international scientific peers in order to work together and solve hard problems. The clearest example of this collaboration comes from cancer research. The NIH’s Cancer wing, the National Cancer Institute (NCI), has stressed the importance of international collaboration in order to improve cancer outcomes in the scientific literature and in the webpage of the NCI’s Cancer Moonshot program (one of the tag lines read “Cancer knows no borders”). There is even a NCI group dedicated specifically to the purpose of international research collaborations.

On the other hand, several of the FBI actions towards Chinese or Chinese-American scientists (i.e. arrests, house visits to ask about “loyalty,” and reading private emails) have been directed at cancer researchers who were carrying out perfectly reasonable scientific partnerships with oncologists in China. And through these actions, the US government may be scaring off brilliant scientists of Chinese descent from conducting research that could help find treatments for cancer.

The increased scrutiny by the government is creating a new landscape for ethnically Chinese researchers in the United States, says Frank Wu, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings, and a member of the Committee of 100, a group of prominent Chinese Americans that works to advance US–China relations. Whether the US government’s focus on foreign influence in academia is right or wrong, he says, researchers need to understand that behaviours that were once considered OK, are now questioned or banned. 

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Lawsuit v. Harvard to go to trial; Yale admissions under scrutiny

Members of the South Asian Law Students Assocication at Yale University.

ASAM NEWS

THE DISCRIMINATION LAWSUIT against Harvard charging anti-Asian bias is set to be heard as scheduled on Oct. 15 while Yale is the target of a new federal investigation following similar allegations.
Reuters reports U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs rejected motions by both sides in the Harvard case to rule in their favor before the trial could even begin.

The lawsuit spearheaded by White anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum accuses Harvard of discriminating against Asian Americans in favor of less qualified applicants from under represented groups.

“The credibility of the expert witnesses in making these critical modeling and analytical choices is best evaluated at the upcoming bench trial,” said Judge Burroughs in her written ruling, reported Bloomberg.

A representative of Harvard told Bloomberg it's looking forward to going to trial.

“Thorough and comprehensive analysis of the evidence makes clear that Harvard College does not discriminate against applicants from any group, including Asian Americans, whose share of the admitted class has grown significantly by 27 percent since 2010.”

Blum declined to comment.

According to Inside Higher Ed, Yale is now also being investigated for anti-Asian bias. The U.S. Department of Education announced the investigation on Wednesday in response to a 2016 complaint accusing Yale, Brown University and Dartmouth College of unfairly denying admission to Asian Americans because of their race.

The cases against Brown and Dartmouth were turned down by the Department of Justice but supported the complainty on Yale because they felt there was a stronger case there. Yale admission of Asian Americans have gone down even though the overall U.S. population of that group has risen.

Yale President Peter Salovey strongly denies the accusatons, saying Yale looks at the complete person when deciding who gets into the Ivy League school.

The American Association for Access, Equity and Diversity says Asian Americans are being used by anti-affirmative action forces.

“They are using the complaints of Asian students as a pretext for their efforts to eliminate the use of race as a factor among many to achieve a diverse student body at selective institutions,” said the group’s executive director, Shirley J. Wilcher. 

“In my view, the issue is not between Asian students and disadvantaged minorities; it is between Asian students and those privileged individuals who have historically benefited by being children of alumni, members of families who make financial contributions, graduates of feeder schools, athletes.”

The anti-affirmative action group, Center for Equal Opportunity, applauded the investigation. Speaking about the opposition, the group’s president said “it shows the openness of the administration to pursuing cases against other schools, which means that all schools using preferences need to review their programs,” he said.

Asian Americans make up six percent of the U.S. population, but almost 22 percent of the freshman class at Harvard. Asian Americans make up 35 percent of undergraduates at UC Berkeley which does not consider race and ethnicity in admissions.

Views From the Edge contributed to ths report.
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