Civil rights advocates filed a challenge on Monday to Harvard University’s legacy and donor admissions policies, calling them unfair giveaways to “mostly White” students.
Nearly 70% of applications that come from donor families are White, as are nearly 70% of legacy applications, which results in preferential treatment over Asian American, Black and Hispanic applicants.
The civil rights groups argued that doing away with those preferences is one way the school could maintain or boost Black and Hispanic enrollment after the Supreme Court last week struck down the school’s race-based affirmative action program as unconstitutional.
“The fact is that, if the Donor and Legacy Preferences did not exist, more students of color would be admitted to Harvard,” said the complaint, led by the Chica Project, African Community Economic Development of New England and the Greater Boston Latino Network.
The Boston-based Lawyers for Civil Rights filed the complaint with the federal Education Department on behalf of the groups.
The case uses data that came to light in the affirmative action case that showed the heavy advantage donors and legacy applicants have. LCR said donor-based applications are nearly seven times more likely to be admitted than non-donor applicants and legacy applicants have a six-fold advantage.
Harvard is bound by Section VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids racial discrimination by an entity that receives significant amounts of federal funding. Harvard gets money from federal grants as well as federally backed tuition assistance.
The groups asked the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights to investigate and declare the use of legacy and donor preferences illegal.
The groups demanded Harvard not only stop using donor information but also stop asking about legacy relationships altogether.
“Harvard’s practice of giving a leg-up to the children of wealthy donors and alumni — who have done nothing to deserve it — must end,” said Michael Kippins, the lead lawyer in the case. “Particularly in light of last week’s decision from the Supreme Court, it is imperative that the federal government act now to eliminate this unfair barrier that systematically disadvantages students of color.”
The challenge raises an interesting question for the Biden administration, which will have to rule on Harvard’s policies.
Harvard declined to comment on the complaint but referred back to its statement after the Supreme Court ruling last week in which the school “reaffirmed its commitment to the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences.”
In last week’s statement, the school also pointed to a section of the court’s ruling that said while granting a preference based on race alone is unconstitutional, judging an applicant individually including any hardship — or inspiration — derived from race is allowed.
Some observers have speculated that schools could try a workaround of the high court’s ruling by prodding Black or Hispanic students to focus on that in application essays.
But the legacy and donor admissions changes offer a more immediate path — and one that has striking support from across the ideological spectrum.
Indeed, Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the successful challenge to Harvard’s race-based policy, said it wants to see alumni and donor preferences ended.
Edward Blum, president of SFFA, said preferences for athletes and relatives of faculty and staff should also be on the chopping block.
He said the evidence shows those kinds of policies actually hurt student diversity, yet schools have clung to them in the face of that evidence.
“The elimination of these preferences is long overdue and SFFA hopes that these opinions will compel higher education institutions to end these practices,” Mr. Blum said.
In his concurring opinion last week, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, himself a Harvard Law School graduate, wrote that Harvard could “nearly replicate” its current racial composition by eliminating the preference for donors, alumni and faculty, and by providing a slight “tip” to socioeconomically disadvantaged applications.
He said Harvard “resisted this proposal.”
The result, he said, is that donors, alumni and faculty make up 5% of applicants, but 30% of admissions.
Correction: An earlier version of this story inaccurately described the legal action. The civil rights groups filed a Civil Rights Act complaint with the federal Education Department.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.