Two weeks after Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) revealed mounting evidence of Harvard University’s discrimination against Asian American children, this week Harvard staged a moral campaign by putting ten more students on the witness stands. As expected, they will label SFFA’s lawsuit as “assault on diversity,” and possibly “assault on people of color.”  If cannot win the lawsuit by the law, why not try it by morality?

To Harvard and many colleges who adopt its admissions model, however, there are NO moral justifications to discriminate against Asian-American children! If you understand the Asian American experience, you will know why.

First major wave of Asian immigrants, mostly Chinese, came to America during the 1850s. Although their sacrifice and hard work were essential to the completion of the Continental Railways, their contribution was not recognized. Instead, their hard-working attitude was perceived as threat to the white establishment. Consequently, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first race-based policy in America, was enacted in 1882.  Ever since that, Chinese Americans became one of the most discriminated racial groups in the U.S. alongside with the blacks and native Indians.

Sixty years later, President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order 9066, authorizing the internment of Japanese Americans during the World War II. Another group of Asian Americans were victimized by another race-based policy.

Starting from 1980s, attracted by rapid growing needs for STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Mathematics) talents in the U.S. and sanctioned by Deng Xiaoping’s open door policy, another major wave of Asians, most are highly educated Chinese and Indians, immigrated to America. They rapidly become the backbone of America’s high-tech industries and key contributors to American economic prosperity.

Blessed by their great cultural heritage that values education and hard-work, most
Asian Americans raise their children successfully. When America suffers a decline in K-12 education quality, Asian American children outperform their peers both academically and in many extracurricular measures. When the shortage of STEM talents is undermining our high-tech industry and jeopardizing our national security, Asian American children excel on STEM. Today, they dominate all STEM related high-school competitions and STEM related Olympia teams.      

With such outstanding credentials both in academic and extracurricular measures, anybody with common sense would think Asian Americans applicants are welcomed in our nation’s top universities. However, it does not happen in Harvard University and many other colleges who adopted Harvard’s discriminatory admissions model.

Asian-American children never ask for any favorable policies. They achieved outstanding performance through hardworking and devotion to education. But they are labeled as “over-represented” by liberal politicians and many college administrators and consequently become a target to impose racial quotas on.

The racial quotas imposed by Harvard and many other selective colleges lead to overwhelming study-load, stress and even suicides among Asian-American children. As Unz rightly put it,

“[T]hese leading academic institutions have placed a rather strict upper limit on actual Asian enrollment, forcing these Asian students to compete more and more fiercely for a very restricted number of openings. This has sparked a massive Asian-American arms-race in academic performance at high schools throughout the country, as seen above in the skyrocketing math and science competition results. When a far greater volume of applicants is squeezed into a pipeline of fixed size, the pressure can grow enormously.”

In some worst cases, for example, over the last seven years, ten students have committed suicides in Henry Gunn High School in Palo Alto, California, many of them were Asian children.

Add insult to the injury, as revealed by Daniel Golden in 2007 and confirmed by Students for Fair Admissions during the ongoing lawsuit, Harvard and many other selective universities widely use racial stereotypes to discriminate against Asian American children. In spite of their exceptional credentials on all objective measures both in academic and extracurricular criteria, Asian-American applicants are consistently rated the lowest by Harvard’s personality trait ratings, subjectively labeling them as not likeable or indistinguishable, rating them weak in grit, leadership and risk-taking. Such outrageous discrimination is both baseless and insulting to Asian Americans who are among the best in terms of entrepreneurship, technological innovation, arts and creativities. In Silicon Valley and R&D centers across nation, Asian Americans are the backbone of American ingenuity. On every main street of America, every Chinese or Korean restaurant, every Indian or Pakistani-run gas station is great example of leadership and risk-taking attitude. 

Unfortunately, history repeats itself in an undesirable way. When the Chinese Exclusion Act was introduced, ethnic Chinese were labeled as “yellow hordes,” interior to white Americans. In 1920s, Harvard introduced the holistic-evaluation, reducing Jewish enrollment from 17% to 7% just one year by rating them low in personal ratings. Today, Harvard employs the same dirty tricks to stigmatize Asian American applicants.         

In order to escape from such stigmatization, Asian Americans children are frequently advised by college counselors to hide their racial identities when applying to Harvard and other selective colleges. Just six years ago, the Pew Research Center applauded Asian Americans as “highest-income, best-educated” racial group in America. Without such a horrendous discrimination by Harvard and many elite institutes in America, one cannot image such a successful racial group would have to hide their great cultural heritages.

Coming back to the trial of Harvard, I can image, in this week’s defense, Harvard will glorify the race-based admissions policies but hide an unpleasant truth: It has failed the black and Hispanic community! According to New York Times article of August 24, 2017, “even with Affirmative Action, blacks and Hispanics are more underrepresented at top universities than 35 years ago.”

I can also image, during their defense, Harvard will not to mention the very fact that Asian Americans are also “people of color” and were historically victimized by unspeakable race-based policies such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Japanese Internment.  Harvard will have no courage to admit, its race-based social engineering is re-victimizing Asian Americans, our nation’s most hard-working contributors in the 21^st century.

Note: Mr. YuKong Zhao is the President of Asian American Coalition for Education, who leads Asian-Americans’ fight against Ivy League colleges’ discriminatory admissions practices. This article was first published by Daily Caller on October 31, 2018.