I won’t.
I will tell you that there are many things that surprise people, but less important are what I believe about the environment, the death penalty, abortion, property rights. It doesn’t matter. I’m not paying attention to what I’m doing, nor should it be. You can call me a conservative Republican, and I’m not going to argue with that, but if I put out all the things that put me in Hubert Humphrey’s camp, you might be surprised, Lulu.
I want to talk about last week’s result. At the center of the case was Harvard. Harvard’s class of 1963 consisted of 18 black students. Now, in the recently admitted class of 2027, more than 15 percent of students are black, 11 percent of students are Latino, and nearly 30 percent are Asian American, a record ratio. of Asian American students in college. Many would argue that affirmative action isn’t perfect, but those numbers also tell a story: Considering race has led to a dramatically more diverse student body, right?
Well, I’ll back up a little bit and talk about the growth in Asian acceptance rates, because that’s something we’ve explained in court.
In 2014, the year we sued Harvard, I think the Asian admissions rate was about 18, 19 percent. Over the past eight years, the admissions rate for Asians at Harvard has increased from about 18 percent to 30 percent. If you look back from 2014 to about 1999, it was flat for 20 years. But when Harvard was sued, the number of Asians suddenly jumped 60 percent. How is that possible? How did that happen? Well, I think the numbers speak for themselves. [Harvard has attributed the growth to a steady increase in applications in recent years across all racial categories.]
But back to your other question. Can the bar be raised for some children based on their race and ethnicity, and lowered for others to create a diverse campus? No part of our public policy is permitted by law. There is no way to increase the percentage of black and Latino students without decreasing the percentage of Asian American and white students.
