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Raw data: Affirmative action at Harvard Law School

This year Harvard Law School admitted only 19 new Black students:

This is a 65% drop from their average Black enrollment rate over the previous 55 years. The impact of the Supreme Court's ban on university affirmative action action last year has obviously been substantial.

104 thoughts on “Raw data: Affirmative action at Harvard Law School

    1. MF

      The Admissions Department at Harvard probably does not have many (or any) right wingers. Doesn't that mean that the problem is racist liberals and left wingers?

      Or perhaps we should be asking why despite the fact that this batch of applicants were admitted to university under the old affirmative action regime there are STILL so few blacks who can get into Harvard Law School without affirmative action.

      Are US universities, currently bastions of liberalism, so racist that black students cannot learn? Are black students funneled into ethnic studies courses and other nonsense that even Harvard cannot pretend properly prepares them for law school? Is the mismatch hypothesis correct? What is the reason?

      Looking at the comments here, it is interesting to see the profound lack of curiosity about why this is the case. It is almost as if people are afraid to ask because they think they already know the answer.

      1. aldoushickman

        "The Admissions Department at Harvard probably does not have many (or any) right wingers."

        Exactly! Why would the oldest of the old money and the stodgiest of the stodgy professional schools employ anything other than wilde-eyed revolutionaries? Why, Harvard is the alma mater of no less flaming liberals than Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, and of a plurality of the clerks of the R-nominated sitting justices! Plainly, HLS is--like all elite schools of money and power are assumed to be--extremely hostile to powerful conservatives and their viewpoints!

        Wheee! It's fun to make assumptions and present them as evidence in support of one's position!

              1. MF

                I suppose it is possible that the faculty, governing boards, and senior administration figures like Claudine Gray are all liberals but the administration is full of Republicans but it seems unlikely.

                Every part of Harvard that I can find statistics on (students, faculty, top administration) is overwhelmingly liberal.

                If you want to claim that other parts are actually full of Republicans I think the onus is on you to provide evidence.

          1. Crissa

            Weird, that's not the admissions or administrative.

            I wonder why the guy who comes here to approve of murderers, bigots, bigotry, discrimination, would be lying to us about their citations?

        1. SnowballsChanceinHell

          Aggregator sites collect acceptance / rejection data and display this data against LSAT score and GPA for individual applicants. The criteria for acceptance and rejection are fairly stark. For example:

          https://www.lsd.law/graphs

          You can also break out the results by all students / underrepresented minorities / international students / non-traditional students. Displaying the data in this manner makes the cutoffs even starker.

      2. tango

        I don't think ethnic studies courses are that big of a factor. It is obviously that in aggregate, Black kids are less prepared for academic success because of higher rates of poverty, worse home and neighborhood environments, cultural factors, and lingering effects of racism.

        And as a society, it seems that there is damn little we can do about it. For example/anecdotally, my wife teaches pre-school and kindergarteners in Baltimore. This past year, she switched from a private school with a predominantly upper middle class white student body to a public school with a predominantly poor and working-class student body. She was utterly floored by how even at this early age the difference is utterly massive, like staggering. She hopes she can help out the kids in her current class, but...

        While there are plenty of Black middle class kids out there who are academically competitive, but in aggregate and proportionately...

        1. MF

          Blacks do worse than whites even when you control for poverty and neighborhood.

          I think cultural factors are more important, which may explain why Nigerian immigrants do so well.

          But when you tell black kids that meeting deadlines and fixating on excellence are white traits you exacerbate the problem.

          1. ScentOfViolets

            I ... don't disagree with the MFer, much to my surprise. All sorts of anthropological literature on the subject and the reason(s) for it. A classic (though flawed) book would be something like Tally's Corner.

      3. caryatis

        +1. Weird how Kevin is fairly reasonable and data-driven, but most of the comments section can't stand even the most thoughtful and polite point that doesn't fit leftwing talking points.

        Of course the problem here is that so few blacks get in under meritocratic rules!

      4. chumpchaser

        Look, if I want your opinion, I'll throw some rotted meat into your mom's basement. No one asked for the Klan perspective, motherfucker. Now go away. Everyone here hates your fucking guts.

        1. MF

          So the reason why black students who benefited from affirmative action to get into top universities STILL can't get into top law schools without affirmative action is totally unimportant? And asking the question is the "Klan perspective"?

            1. MF

              Wow. Seems more like the reaction of a religious fanatic to a heretic than a disagreement about a social sciences question.

              Just saying....

        2. tango

          No, not everyone hates his guts. But I do see a vocal bunch of what I suppose are progressives trying to shout down and bully an opposing viewpoint which is general presented in a civil manner using all manner of personal insults and out and out vitriol.

          Not a good look for you guys.

          1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

            MF has a long track record in this forum. When people call him a "white supremacist troll" and "worthless POS" they are not just referring to his most recent comments.

            And just FYI, you might see the same sort of responses to Atticus, for the same reason.

          2. ScentOfViolets

            Most people think the Earth is round. An opposing viewpoint is that the Earth is flat. I do indeed note that progressives deride the person who insists otherwise. IOW, you are deliberately trying, and trying hard to get people buy into your framing that all viewpoints carry equal weight when quite obviously they don't. Fuck off, you despicable, deliberately deceitful dumbass. Words cannot express the contempt for someone so lacking in morals that they have no problem in engaging in this sort of behaviour.

  1. NotCynicalEnough

    Sure, but how much did their legacy admissions go down by? [Edit: I'm going to go way out on a limb and suggest "not at all"]

    1. middleoftheroaddem

      Harvard, in contrast to their undergraduate admissions, does not use legacy as a factor in their graduate schools.

      1. aldoushickman

        Yes yes, it's just a coincidence that legacy applicants are admitted to Harvard Law at something like 5-10 times the rate that non-legacy applicants are.

        Probably there's an entirely natural explanation that has nothing to do with alumni donations or viewing Hah-vahd graduates and their children as being the Right Sort; perhaps HLS-quality legal skills are simply genetically inherited, and there's nothing to be done for it.

            1. MF

              You have to be careful to pick the right population for your mean.

              Regression to the mean will not make the Dutch shorter or Bushmen taller. It does mean that most pro basketball players have children who are shorter than they are.

              1. ScentOfViolets

                The right population for your Dutch and Bushman height examples are -- wait for it -- Dutchman in a Dutch population and a Bushman in a Bushmen population ... you stupid fucking dumbass MF. Don't go talking about matters you know nothing about.

                1. MF

                  My my... repeating my point but with insults. Perhaps you should work on those anger issues.

                  So, if you have a generally smart group that mostly reproduces in group you expect the next generation to have similar intelligence distribution.

                  If the measured intelligence differences between blacks, whites, and Asians are genetic then we should expect them to persist until group intermarriage eliminates them as separate groups.

                  To the extent that smart people marry each other and not less intelligent people you also expect those subgroups to maintain separate intelligence distributions. If the cross-group interbreeding rate is low enough for a long enough time then you can get separate races, sub species, and species. Eloi and Morlocks. (If you remember, the Morlocks were the intelligent ones while the Eloi seems to have room temperate IQs even if they were more attractive.)

      1. Murc

        Because it's wrong?

        Institutes of higher education, who receive massive public subsidies because of that educational mission, should not admit people based on "their parents went here." That's just gross.

              1. ScentOfViolets

                What a bullshitting MFer you are. You expressly said you didn't want your daughter's competing with One Of Them for an athletic scholarship, and if there's are any occupations with unequivocal metrics for measuring merit, it's sports.

                Fuck you and the horse you rode in on, you deceitful little shit.

                1. Atticus

                  Please provide evidence I said whatever it is you claim I said.
                  - I only have one daughter. You've repeatedly said "daughters" (plural) so you obviously are off on the wrong for trying to recall anything about me
                  - Who are you calling "one of them"?
                  - I seem to remember you making more personal attacks on me during discussions regarding trans in sports. I'm guessing maybe that is related to what you're attempting to accuse me of?

                  1. ScentOfViolets

                    Oh, so you do remember those trans in sports conversations. Yep, knew you were lying about that. I'll give you the plurality of daughters as a consolation prize.

                    I'll leave with some personal advice: Why do you think so many people besides me engage in 'personal attacks' as you put it. Ever consider the possibility these aren't personal attacks and they are instead a multiplicity of personal observations? I urge you to seriously consider this, as the alternative is that you're right and everybody else is wrong.

                    1. Atticus

                      Yes I remember prior conversations but I’m not sure how they tie into this thread or contradict anything I have said here. I haven’t lied about anything and stand by any prior comments.

                      It’s really mainly you that makes the personal attacks. In fact, many commenters here have defended me and criticized you for your obsessive ad hominem attacks. I come here to debate and engage in conversation. You apparently come here to be a troll and make personal attacks on anyone that doesn’t agree with you. Maybe you should think about why so many commenters here forcefully disagree with me yet tell you you’re in the wrong with your bitchy comments. Just a little personal advice.

  2. painedumonde

    I was told that only racial equality would work, that affirmative action was inherently racist, that DEI was even worse, that the market of ideas would work in everyone's favor against racism and bias, that the meritocracy was blind to anything except merit.

    1. aldoushickman

      You'd think that anybody with even a dim awareness of the familial inheritance of power that dominated all of recorded human history up until the last handful of decades maybe would realize that a meritocracy doesn't happen all by itself.

  3. J. Frank Parnell

    Read a report recently about a Faux commentator who noted when he saw a black pilot board his plane he always had the thought: "I hope he is a competent pilot". Although I try hard to avoid racial stereotypes, my emotional response when encountering any minority professional is more along the lines: "they are probably pretty competent, if they were marginal they would have long since been washed out".

    1. MF

      Same argument should apply to blacks at top universities, right?

      So why can't they get into Harvard Law School without affirmative action?

      Perhaps there is a flaw in this argument?

          1. MF

            You are telling them facts they do not want to know.

            They are standing there with their hands over their ears yelling "I can't hear you, troll!"

            1. jdubs

              Angry bigots have always been troubled by the thought of the lessers being educated. Deeply troubled.
              They have always argued that the majority wants to keep these lesser people in their place and so it must be so. It is the only way that society can function.

              Sadly, they also spend a lot of time insisting, convincing themselves, that not discriminating is ACSHUALLY the real discrimination.

              Nothing new here.

              1. Atticus

                What an ignorant comment. Nobody is worried about “the lesser” being educated. They are worried about someone with a less deserving transcript getting into school instead of them (or their kids) because of their skin color.

                1. m robertson

                  If it makes you feel better, the goal was never to admit “less deserving transcripts” *just* because of the applicant’s skin color.

                  I’m sure you knew that though, however inconvenient it is for your bigotry.

                2. jdubs

                  "Nobody is worried about “the lesser” being educated. "

                  Clearly you are not worried about this, thank you for stating it so clearly. But other people are considering the education of those you deem lesser.

          2. Murc

            Enormous numbers of people approving or disapproving of something does not make it either correct or incorrect. It is in fact an irrelevancy.

      1. iamr4man

        So, just to be clear, you don’t think a black person should get preference based on their race but a person who had a relative go to the school getting preference is ok with you?

          1. MF

            I actually think schools should do away with legacy admissions. However, this is not odious discrimination like racial discrimination and does not appear to violate any laws.

                1. ScentOfViolets

                  Notice he didn't say why it's 'definitely not' comparable to affirmative action, just flatly stated it wasn't as if it were an objective fact. He really is a piece of work.

                  Weird thing is, if the world were as he claimed he wanted it to be, he'd be my moral, intellectual, etc. inferior, that is to say, I'd be his better. But that's not really the world he wants, is it?

                2. MF

                  Of course. For example I am fine with university admissions offices discriminating based on academic achievement.

                  I do not think they should discriminate based on athletic ability, musical accomplishments, legacy, etc - I think the vast majority of admissions should be determined by test scores, high school courses, and GPAs - but I see a big difference between that kind of discrimination and racial discrimination which is illegal and odious.

          2. iamr4man

            So a black person with higher qualifications getting passed over for a person with much lower qualifications because the lower qualified person’s parents went there is ok by you. I would have thought that you would have gone with “merit” but I see I was wrong.

        1. ScentOfViolets

          From the wiki:

          Certain private universities, most notably Harvard, introduced policies which effectively placed a quota on the number of Jews admitted to the university.[13] Abbott Lawrence Lowell, the president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933,[14] raised the alarm about a ‘Jewish problem’ when the number of Jewish students grew from six percent to twenty-two percent between 1908 and 1922.[15] Lowell argued that a "limit be placed on the number of them who later be admitted to the university."[16] The implementation of a quota on the number of Jews was not unique to Harvard. After Harvard’s 1926 announcement about instating a "new admissions policy [that] would place great emphasis on character and personality, the Yale Daily News praised its decision and put forward its own version of how Yale should select its students in a major editorial, ‘Ellis Island for Yale.’

          And yes, 'legacy admissions' were but one tool of many to keep those damn Jews out. Stick it where the Sun don't shine, you odious excrescence of the rudimentary face.

  4. Austin

    Goddamn, Kevin. This sort of has policy implications, unlike some of your other recent posts about issues tinged with racism. But sweet baby Jesus, anything you touch that touches on race just lights up the troll switchboard. Please stick to more wonky topics... stuff that actually applies to more than 0.01% of the country (most Americans will never set foot on Harvard's campus, so it's unclear why anyone should care much about their admissions). The trolls seem to be less ravenous for your wonkier posts, possibly because it gives them fewer opportunities to gleefully post "see we told you black people suck" in the comments.

    1. roux.benoit

      Stuff that actually applies to more than 0.01% of the country? When the graduates of HLS becomes judges (which they do at a very high rate) their background and vision of the world affects all of the country.

  5. rick_jones

    This is a 65% drop from their average Black enrollment rate over the previous 55 years.

    Perhaps more, if overall enrollment has increased since 1968.

  6. rick_jones

    This is a 65% drop from their average Black enrollment rate over the previous 55 years.

    And additive it would seem, given the broad trend which appears to have started circa 2008.

  7. golack

    I've read some anecdotal reports about minorities no longer applying to highly ranked schools. Avoid the expense when the odds are stacked against you, and the initiatives that were in place to help you afford it have dried up.

    Law and medical school costs lots of money and saddles the students with a lot of loans. Their future income can help pay that off, but at what interest rate? I don't know of any Pell grants for law school.

    People going to graduate or professional schools typically have families some amount of generational wealth, e.g. they own their home. Otherwise they're expected to get a job right out of college to help support their family.

  8. beardmaster

    Let me amend your last sentence:
    The impact of the Supreme Court's ban on university affirmative action action last year has obviously been substantial [at Ivy League institutions].

    That's a very important caveat!

  9. CJColucci

    If this chart is correct, we have 56 years of experience with black students at Harvard Law. If anybody actually cared, we could trace the post-law school careers of these students and compare them to at least two relevant groups: (1) white classmates and (b) black graduates of less-elite law schools, particularly the less-elite law schools that these affirmative action admittees would likely have gotten into strictly by the numbers.

    Two things to remember about elite law schools classes: (1) the entire entering class could be replaced by the next 300-500 students on the list and nobody would notice; (2) whatever principles of selection you use, roughly 50% of the class will be in the bottom half.

    As to the first point, if there were ever an affirmative action case, Clarence Thomas getting into Yale was one. Now Thomas, however much I disagree with him, is not a stupid man. As the world judges these things, he wasn't quite up to snuff for Yale, but he obviously did fine there once he got in and has a serious career to show for it. The pool of people who can thrive at elite law schools and demonstrate that their admission, though not quite regular, was far from a mistake, is much larger than you might think -- or that elite law school graduates might want you to think.

    As to the second point, there is the "mismatch" theory floating around that affirmative action students who get into Harvard Law School and end up in, say, the bottom third of the class, would have been better off to go to, say, Fordham, and end up in the middle third. I have no idea whether that's true or not, but in the absence of real data I would be inclined to leave it to the students whether they think they would be better off, not to the admissions office.

    1. MF

      please provide your evidence that Thomas was an affirmative action admit.

      I hope you are not a racist who thinks that all blacks who get into top schools do so through affirmative action.

        1. MF

          No. He has stated that he could have been admitted due to affirmative action and that many people assumed that all black students were inferior and only there due to affirmative action. He had no way of knowing if he would have gotten in without affirmative action.

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