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Kahlenberg in Washington Post: DOJ says Yale medical school discriminated against Asian, White applicants

[…]

It is not clear from the data presented that Yale is in fact discriminating on the basis of race, said Richard Kahlenberg, director of the American Identity Project at the Progressive Policy Institute. He advocates against racial preferences but favors preferences for lower-income students.

“Statistical disparities in academic qualifications between racial groups admitted [to the university] certainly raise red flags, but it is not definitive evidence of discrimination,” said Kahlenberg, who testified against Harvard’s policies in the court case challenging its admissions procedures. “We don’t know which of those two things are going on — economic affirmative action, which is perfectly legal, or racial, which is not,” he said.

[…]

For the Trump administration, a race-neutral strategy like this is also illegal if the true goal is racial diversity. Officials refer to this as using another factor as a “proxy” for race. Still, the Supreme Court has never said that proxies are illegal and has declined opportunities to issue rulings that could have done so, Kahlenberg noted.

“The Supreme Court never said that seeking educational benefits of racial diversity is illegal,” he said. “To the contrary, they said the goal of increasing cross racial understanding is laudable.”

[…]

Read more in The Washington Post

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