Blum’s strategy not only poses a threat to racial diversity on campus, but also creates a lose-lose situation for Asian-Americans regardless of the verdict. A court ruling in favor of affirmative action will conclude that Harvard has not discriminated against Asian-Americans in admissions, a question that deserves examination on its own — not as a pawn in Blum’s distortive political agenda. On the other hand, a court ruling in favor of SFFA will overturn race-conscious admissions, which Asian-Americans benefit from in a number of ways. First, diversity on campus positively impacts all students. Second, Blum is fighting for an admissions policy that is entirely race-blind, according to the case’s NAACP attorney Jin Hee Lee, and this would prohibit Asian-American applicants from writing about engagements with cultural institutions such as volunteering in Chinatowns — a change that would ultimately harm Asian-American applicants.
Despite Blum’s best attempts, he has mostly failed to pit Asian-Americans against other students of color. “The majority of Asian-Americans support affirmative action,” said Catherine Ho, a Harvard sophomore and one of the students who testified during the SFFA case in support of race-conscious admissions. Indeed, the results from the national AAPI Data Poll reflect such overwhelming support.
In line with this sentiment, huge swaths of Asian-American students rallied against Blum, SFFA, and their assault against racial diversity on campus during the #DefendDiversity Rally on October 14. But is rallying for affirmative action the same as corroborating Harvard’s claims of non-discrimination — both inside and outside of an admissions context? In a legal context, perhaps the answer is yes; Harvard must succeed in showing that they have not discriminated against Asian-American applicants in order to continue its race-conscious admissions policy. But from the perspective of Asian-Americans students, despite standing in solidarity with other students of color in defending race-conscious admissions, the answer may be no.
Pro-Affirmative Action is Not the Same as Pro-Harvard
While there has been overwhelming student support for Harvard’s race-conscious, holistic admissions process, many student testifiers clarified during the SFFA trial that this support does not mean they fully approve of Harvard’s approach toward diversity and inclusion on campus. Ho told the HPR that she testified in order to “defend the continuation of inclusive admissions policies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be critical of Harvard…Affirmative action needs to stay but Harvard needs to improve.”
Other testifying students have also indicated that Harvard should be doing better on racial inclusivity and diversity-related fronts. Now is the time for Harvard to step up and corroborate its numerous claims of valuing multiculturalism and diversity, by addressing the many concerns that have been continuously voiced by student activists.
Asian-Americans at Harvard comprise a multitude of experiences, beliefs, and political stances. Given the remarkable heterogeneity of Harvard’s Asian-American community, it would be incredibly reductive to generalize any experience or belief onto the entirety of the Asian-American and Asian student population on campus. However, Asian-American student activism and voices demonstrate that significant portions of the Asian-American community on campus have concerns about Harvard’s approach to racial inclusivity.
Harvard is demographically diverse, a reality that its policy of race-conscious admissions has helped create. Nonetheless, students have doubts about the extent of racial inclusivity on campus.
No Designated Physical Space for Cultural Organizations
“Diversity is not the same thing as inclusion,” Ho observed. “Even when I came to Harvard, even when I was admitted, I didn’t feel like a Harvard student.” Ho identified the lack of a multicultural center on campus as something that directly contributed to her feeling of alienation as an Asian-American student, adding, “It’s really interesting that the Smith Center was so new and there wasn’t a part of it designated as a multicultural center.” Undoubtedly, a portion of the new and large Smith Center should be designated as a space for people of color and cultural affinity groups to gather.
Despite a long history of student activism calling for some sort of multicultural space, the closest thing to a space for cultural groups on campus are the small cubicles of space in the Student Organization Center at Hilles that Harvard allocates ostensibly to each student organization on campus. Due to the impractical location of the SOCH and the size of its offices, few organizations use them for purposes other than storage. The spaces have by no means served as social venues, and to make matters worse, a number of cultural affinity organizations have been continuously overlooked during their allocation, including the Asian-American Women’s Association.
No Ethnic Studies
Another source of discomfort for many Asian-American students is the atrociously low number of Asian-American Studies courses offered at Harvard and the absence of an ethnic studies track. Given Harvard’s expansive resources and consistent student interest, this failure to implement ethnic studies is puzzling. While Harvard has an excellent African and African American Studies department with a long tradition which offers curriculums critical to the study of race and ethnicity in the United States, other ethnic studies tracks such as Asian-American Studies also offer different and necessary perspectives.
“It’s ridiculous that there’s not an ethnic studies track here — that Harvard is so behind its peer institutions in providing students with resources and professors and structures for studying race and ethnicity in an academic setting,” said student activist Liana Chow, a member of Harvard’s Task Force for Asian and Pacific American Studies. “This is something students have been advocating for, for 40 years and other concentrations that are not ethnic studies have been implemented in just a few years [despite having] much less demand.”
Although Harvard does currently have an ethnic studies option within the History and Literature department and an Ethnicity, Migration, and Rights secondary field, Chow warns that “structurally, right now, the minor and the track field within Hist-Lit are not sufficient — the field is not interdisciplinary enough [to account for the methodological variation within ethnic studies] and neither can it hire tenure track professors — which means there is always a severe and pathetic lack of Asian-American Studies and ethnic studies classes.”
Chow describes her massive disappointment at the low number of Asian-American studies courses offered at Harvard. “My first semester coming into Harvard there were zero Asian-American studies courses — that was depressing. I think it’s really appalling that there is not an ethnic studies department when students have been asking for it for so long.”
Time and time again, students of color have asserted that ethnic studies should be part of the curriculum offered at Harvard. They feel that ethnic studies courses are important not only for their content, but also because it is integral to a welcoming, inclusive campus to show that the stories of communities who are traditionally marginalized are valued at Harvard.
Ethnic studies, according to Chow, is “of the utmost importance to study.” She recounts her formative experience in one of the few Asian-American Studies courses offered during her time at Harvard, “Race, Indigeneity, and Empire in the Asia-Pacific 1890s-present” with professor Juliet Nebolon. “That was what I felt was the first Asian-American space at Harvard that I was a part of. So many things from that course stuck with me.”
The administration’s failure to establish an ethnic studies program is enormously disheartening for students of color hoping to see course materials that are relevant to their political subjectivities and denies students the opportunity to study one of the most important political and social phenomenon of our world: race. It also sends a devastating signal. “To say that we shouldn’t study [ethnic studies] is to say that it doesn’t matter,” Ho said. “We have stories too that we should be able to learn in a formalized manner.”
Harvard’s lack of an ethnic studies track seems to fit easily within a larger pattern of “very old white institution[s] not valuing the study of race and ethnicity as a legitimate concentration,” according to Chow. San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley, both less resourced financially than Harvard, were the first to implement ethnic studies departments in 1968. Does Harvard want to be 50 years behind its educational peers?
No Trainings for Admissions Officers on Implicit Biases Against Asian-Americans
While admissions officers receive cultural sensitivity and implicit bias trainings for the reading of black and Latinx applicants’ files, there is no corresponding training to mitigate biases against Asian-American applicants, an anonymous student employee at the Harvard admissions office told the HPR.
Given histories of institutionalized orientalism, it is imperative to negate prejudices against Asian and Asian-American applicants that admissions officers may have, as biases can directly impact the admissions office’s final decision to admit or reject an applicant. Implicit bias trainings for the reading of black and Latinx applications demonstrate an effort to improve diversity on campus; it seems logical to offer a similar equalizing training to address possible biases against Asian-American applicants. Asian-Americans, too, are people of color, with a long history of facing negative stereotypes and institutionalized racism.
No Clear Signals from Administration at Important Times on Topics of Race
Yet another source of frustration for students of color on campus is the administration’s tendency to stay silent whenever campus politics become centered on a racial topic and belatedly send a long, vacuous email regarding the issue at stake. For instance, the administration’s response to the unprovoked violence perpetrated by a Cambridge police officer against a black Harvard student consisted of a few lengthy emails. The most recent email arrived in students’ inboxes on November 13, 2018, detailing Harvard’s proposed steps going forward to prevent a reoccurrence of police assault against students of color. This response came seven months after the student was assaulted, and in a different school year; it also calls the assault an “arrest,” mentions race only once in passing, never identifies the race of the student, and presents a series of vague recommendations that have left students unsatisfied.
Harvard’s handling of the SFFA lawsuit was in line with its pattern of taking an elusive position on race-related topics. Very little has been said by the administration, and Harvard has been incredibly reluctant to release any statistics related to Harvard admissions.
Although Harvard has often emphasized the importance of ensuring that its campus does not devolve into a political echo-chamber, the administration can still address racially charged events in a more explicit and concrete way. Particularly on matters with immediate implications for students’ identities and sense of safety and belonging, it seems imperative that the administration sends clearer messages.
No Institutional Initiative on Inclusivity
Due to the lack of an ethnic studies department, Harvard is lacking in institutional inroads to cultural inclusion. Chow’s experience in her “Race, Indigeneity, and Empire” class was “the first Asian-American space at Harvard that [she] was a part of,” not having joined cultural affinity groups. But when Harvard has such a low number of Asian-American Studies courses, Asian-American students often cannot find spaces for their identities in class. Instead, student organizations take up much of the burden of creating inclusive spaces on campus.
In the absence of institutional inclusivity of Asian-American curriculums, student organizations have carved spaces at Harvard for Asian-American community. “It’s interesting that a lot of my support network and where I’ve been able to feel comfortable talking about my Asian-American experience is within [organizations] that are outside of class that I’ve cultivated myself, and obviously that’s something you have to seek out yourself,” Ho told the HPR. “And it’s not necessarily very natural, and you have to put in work for that to happen.”
Asian-Americans have made spaces for themselves against the odds, rather than with administrative support. But when the onus falls on student organizations, many people are inevitably falling through the cracks. Racial “inclusivity” in its truest sense should not be limited to certain student-run groups but should extend to our classrooms as well.
A Significant Moment
As Harvard faces increasing scrutiny due to the SFFA lawsuit, the administration should send a message to the outside world that Harvard values diversity and inclusion by first looking inwards. Students of color have been asking for a multicultural center and ethnic studies for 40 years. It is unacceptable for Harvard, one of the most well-resourced universities in the world, to continuously ignore these requests.
Student activists are hopeful that the administration will be more receptive to requests, given new, sympathetic leadership in the administration as well as a new wave of student activism. “Now could be a significant moment. It could be a turning point,” Chow said. Harvard’s defense in the affirmative action case is contingent upon demonstrating a track record of valuing racially diverse experiences in student and academic life. Now is the time for Harvard to substantiate its claims of striving towards a more inclusive campus.
Image Credit: Facebook/TAPAS