HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, INSTITUTIONAL-RACISM EDITION: Economists approve statistical model that finds Harvard discriminates against Asians.
Harvard University has the support of the higher education establishment, and Students for Fair Admissions has the support of statistics that the establishment would prefer to ignore.
That’s the narrative told in friend-of-the-court briefs that side with SFFA in its lawsuit against Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy, which claims that Harvard discriminates against Asian-American applicants.
Both parties are seeking summary judgment from the U.S. District Court in Boston ahead of trial this fall. Most of the briefs recently filed by outside parties are siding with Harvard, portraying race as essential to “holistic” admissions policies designed to produce a diverse student body.
They were challenged by a group of “leading economists and econometrics scholars,” who told the court that the statistical model used by the Asian-American plaintiffs’ expert witness is “methodologically sound.”
One of them is Prof. Glenn Loury of Brown University, who hosts a YouTube interview show that often deals with racial controversies in higher education.