What To Look for in the Upcoming Release of Harvard’s Diversity Numbers

After ruling last summer that Harvard’s use of racial preferences was unlawful, the U.S. Supreme Court upended a college admissions regime that had been in place for nearly half a century.

Despite uncertainty about how admissions officers have adapted to this landmark decision, the process has remained opaque. Last year, Harvard revealed information about the racial and socioeconomic characteristics of the student body in late March, but this year it plans to delay disclosure of the racial data until the summer. These data will provide important clues as to what traits Harvard’s admissions officers have been prioritizing among applicants.

As an expert witness in the litigation against Harvard, I worked with Duke University economist Peter Arcidiacono to examine ways Harvard could maintain high levels of racial diversity without using racial preferences.

We demonstrated that if Harvard eliminated its unfair admissions preferences for wealthy students and gave a meaningful boost to highly qualified students from disadvantaged and working-class families and communities, it could reduce its economic stratification and maintain high levels of racial diversity and superb academic standards.

Under the prior, and now illegal, system of racial preferences, Harvard created a class that was racially diverse, but economically segregated. A majority of students admitted to Harvard in recent years have been non-white — a welcome development — but at the same time, the student body continued to have nearly 15 times as many rich students as low-income students.

While the Supreme Court ruling proscribed Harvard’s use of racial preferences, the University has been under no legal obligation to adopt alternative paths to diversity. As the data trickle out over the coming weeks and months, I will be looking to see which of three major patterns emerges.

The worst-case scenario: Harvard’s underrepresented minority numbers plummet and socioeconomic diversity remains abysmal. Harvard’s expert witness said that if the College were to stop using race — and adopted no alternative steps to boost diversity — its share of admitted Black students would fall from 14 percent to six percent. By continuing to provide preferences for the rich and failing to provide additional consideration for less-advantaged applicants, the University will have forsaken its longstanding rhetoric that diversity is the “hallmark” of a Harvard education.

Another seemingly better, but still not optimal, scenario: Harvard could report that its racial diversity numbers remained high, but its economic segregation persisted. This would align with trends from previous years, suggesting that Harvard continued to do what it has been doing for decades: employing large racial preferences and preferences for the wealthy.

In response to this accusation, Harvard might claim that it complied with the Supreme Court’s ruling by considering student discussions of race in their personal essays, which the Court permits. But as I have previously explained in the Journal of College and University Law, both the majority and the dissent in the Harvard case made clear that the personal essay “loophole” is exceedingly limited.

To comply with the law, Harvard has to apply the qualities it identifies as valuable in a consistent fashion across racial groups.

Suppose Harvard said that the reason it had admitted Black and Hispanic students in large numbers was that their essays demonstrated they had overcome the adversity of racial discrimination, demonstrating values the university sought like perseverance and resilience — wholly legitimate criteria. Harvard would also have to provide similar extra consideration to students of all races who showed resilience by overcoming other types of adversity, like economic disadvantage.

If Harvard remains racially diverse, but shows no noticeable rise in economic diversity, it would suggest an inconsistent application of the boost for students who had overcome obstacles. In other words, a covert racial preference. If it looks like Harvard is cheating by using the personal essay in a way not legal under the Court’s ruling, it could land back in litigation. The legal proceedings could end up having a chilling effect on other universities who wish to employ a legitimate use of the personal essay, thereby setting back diversity efforts for universities across the country.

There is a third, best case scenario: Harvard’s new data would show that it maintained racial diversity and boosted socioeconomic diversity. This result would suggest that the admissions office employed authentic race-neutral strategies of providing a preference to economically disadvantaged students of all races and to students from economically under-resourced high schools — an approach that the Supreme Court recently signaled it supports.

In subsequent op-eds for The Crimson, I will comment on the racial and economic diversity statistics Harvard reveals, and on possible changes it might consider in the future. For now, one can hope that Harvard has finally committed itself to opening up the University, at long last, to promising young students from all walks of life.

Richard D. Kahlenberg ’85 is the director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. He was an expert witness for Students for Fair Admissions in its lawsuit opposing Harvard’s use of race in admissions.

This piece is the first installment in a series that will provide analysis and commentary on the culmination of Harvard College’s first admissions cycle following the United States Supreme Court’s curtailment of race-conscious admissions.