Civil Rights Lawyer At Harvard University Acts Like Humpty Dumpty

Has one race exclusive use of the word race? What is the definition of that word? The profiled lawyer does not say. Working with no definition allows any argument to succeed. 



Is that how lawyers argue out of court? Rahsaan D. Hall "defended Harvard’s consideration of race [undefined] as a factor in its admissions processes. [. . .] Hall maintained that Harvard [is] in compliance with the legal precedent set by the Supreme Court" but provides no citation. Perplexed at appeals to law when it suits the argument, but ignoring law as the White House and the Department of Justice do when that suits them. Curious that Hall argues as if progressive voters have difficulty obtaining voter IDs, but non progressive voters do not. Does that mean ability is based on ideology?



[From article]
defended Harvard’s consideration of race as a factor in its admissions processes,
[. . .]



Hall maintained that Harvard’s holistic admissions processes were in compliance with the legal precedent set by the Supreme Court.
[. . .]
Commenting on voter identification laws, Hall questioned whether statistical evidence supports the prevalence of voter fraud.
[. . .]



“The whole notion of the ‘voter integrity movement’ is a ruse to get to the real issue of denying people, most of whom are inclined to vote progressively, access to the polls.”

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/10/7/civil-rights-lawyer-admissions/

Civil Rights Lawyer Defends Use of Race in Harvard Admissions
By DAPHNE C. THOMPSON,

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITER
October 7, 2015

Equality Advocates Protest Unlawful Misuse of Taxpayer Funds Favoring Black Students

[From article]
The $20 million fund unveiled by a top California university last month to endow scholarships for African-American students and to hire diverse faculty is just the latest attempt to get around a state law barring schools from using racial preferences in admissions, according to critics, who are vowing yet another legal battle.



University of California-Berkeley's "African-American Initiative" would raise funds from private non-profits to fund “a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty and staff at our university, and improve the climate for those who are here now and all who will join our community in the future.” The money would go to scholarships for black students, the hiring of race-specific clinical psychologists and fostering a more diverse faculty and senior management, according to the school.
[. . .]



But critics say the scholarship fund is an end-run around Proposition 209, the 1996 law barring state institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity for public employment, contracting and education. Ward Connerly, a conservative African-American who served on the University of California Board of Regents from 1993-2005 and is considered one of the architects of Prop 209, said the initiative appears to be illegal.
“The University of California, especially Berkeley and UCLA, have long tried to circumvent the law when it comes to this,” Connerly told FoxNews.com. “We are a nation of laws and Berkeley is not above them. The school has no right to avoid the law by developing initiatives such as this.”
Prop 209's backers claim it was modeled after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which barred race as a factor in an effort to protect African-Americans from discrimination. By using similar language more than three decades later, the measure's proponents sought to stop racial preferences. University of California schools have seen higher graduation rates among minority students since Prop 209 took effect, with the Berkeley campus alone seeing a 6.5-percent increase in graduating students. But despite the rise in graduation rates, raw enrollment rates among African-Americans has dropped.
[. . .]



While private scholarships can legally use race as a consideration, Cal-Berkeley's involvement in creating and administering the endowment could be viewed as violating the law's intent, according to [Ward] Connerly.
“I intend to ask the Pacific Legal Foundation to take a look and if there’s any wrongdoing found, we will sue,” he said. “If we allow them to disregard the law, then they will try to do more and more.”
Gail Heriot, University of San Diego law professor and expert on Prop 209, told The College Fix the scheme does appear to violate the law.
“If the initiative is as described in the university’s announcement, it is a straightforward violation of Proposition 209,” Heriot said.

 

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/10/06/critics-question-legality-cal-berkeley-new-20m-race-based-scholarship-program/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Fmost-popular+%28Internal+-+Most+Popular+Content%29

Critics blast $20M Cal-Berkeley fund for race-based scholarships, hiring
By Perry Chiaramonte
Published October 06, 2015
FoxNews.com

Updated: Asian Groups Sue Harvard University For Discrimination; Case Dismissed

Posted May 16, 2015 5:01 PM ET; Last updated July 8, 2015 8:18 PM




[From article]
The U.S. Department of Education has dismissed a complaint filed against Harvard this spring by 64 Asian-American groups accusing the University of discriminating based on race in its admissions practices.
The complaint, filed in May, accused the University of unfairly denying admission to highly qualified Asian-American students while admitting similar applicants of other races. Complainants called for an in-depth investigation of Harvard’s use of race in its admissions processes.
The complaint was the most recent public challenge to the College’s race-based affirmative action policies, which were repeatedly under fire this past academic year but administrators argue are crucial to supporting campus diversity. The Department of Education decided to dismiss the complaint, according to a statement, because it is similar to an ongoing and separate federal lawsuit filed against Harvard.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/7/8/admissions-complaint-dismissed-education-department/

Education Department Dismisses Admissions Complaint
More than 60 Asian-American groups had accused Harvard of race-based discrimination
By JALIN P. CUNNINGHAM and MELANIE Y. FU

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS

July 8, 2015
UPDATED: July 8, 2015, at 10:25 a.m.

* * *

[From article]

Lawyers representing Harvard filed a motion on Monday to delay a lawsuit that alleges that the University’s admissions processes discriminate based on race until the U.S. Supreme Court reviews Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, another affirmative action case, a second time next term.
University spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in a statement that the case Harvard faces “deals with the same fundamental issues” as the Fisher case, which involves a white woman who argues that the University of Texas’s consideration of race in admissions decisions is in violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Supreme Court first heard the case in 2013 and sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the University of Texas’s admissions process. In June, the Supreme Court decided to hear the case for the second time.
The lawsuit against Harvard, filed in November by an anti-affirmative action group, accuses Harvard of “employing racially and ethnically discriminatory policies” against Asian-American applicants.
Both lawsuits threaten race-based affirmative action policies that many universities, including Harvard, argue are important to supporting campus diversity. They are backed by the same person, Edward Blum, the director of the group Project on Fair Representation, which opposes race-based affirmative action.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/7/8/motion-delay-admissions-lawsuit-fisher/

Ahead of Fisher, Harvard Asks To Delay Admissions Lawuit
Supreme Court's decision in Texas affirmative action case could affect Harvard
By JALIN P. CUNNINGHAM and MELANIE Y. FU

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
July 8, 2015

* * *

[From article]
"We want to eliminate discrimination of Asian Americans, and we want procedural justice for all racial groups," Yukong Zhao, one of the chief organizers and a guest columnist with the Orlando Sentinel, told NBC News. "All racial groups should be treated equal."
The complaint, which Zhao said has the support of a number of Chinese, Korean, Indian and Pakistani-American groups, asks that the United States Department of Justice and the United States Department of Education require that Harvard "immediately cease and desist from using racial quota or racial balancing" to admit students and "ensure that Harvard and other ivy league schools will never again discriminate against Asian-Americans or applicants of any other races."
[. . .]
In a written statement, Harvard University General Counsel Robert Iuliano said that Harvard College has a strong track-record of both recruiting and admitting Asian Americans to its school, with the percentage of admitted Asian Americans increasing from 17.6 percent to 21 percent in the last decade.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/coalition-sues-harvard-over-alleged-admission-racial-quotas-n357701

Coalition Sues Harvard Over Alleged Admission Racial Quotas
BY CHRIS FUCHS
First published May 15th 2015, 1:20 pm
NBC News

* * *

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/5/16/complaint-federal-harvard-admissions/

Groups File Federal Complaint Alleging Discrimination in Harvard Admissions Process
Sixty-four Asian-American groups have called for an investigation into the College's admissions practices
By MEG P. BERNHARD and NOAH J. DELWICHE, 

Harvard CRIMSON STAFF WRITERS
May 15, 2015

Discrimination OK to Create Diversity?

[From article]
The original lawsuit was filed by Abigail Fisher, a white woman denied admission to the university in 2008. She contended the university had discriminated against her in violation of the 14th Amendment. When the 5th Circuit ruled against her, she appealed to the Supreme Court.
In June 2013, the high court ruled 7 to 1 that the university could use race-based policies if they were truly necessary to achieve diversity. It sent the case back to the 5th Circuit to determine whether the Austin campus still needed to give a preference to some minority applicants. The justices noted that Texas’ “top 10” law, which awards college admission to the top 10% of each high school’s graduates, has already led to an influx of Latino and black students.
Fisher’s lawyer told the Los Angeles Times his client would appeal the latest decision.

http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80814877/

University of Texas can use race as factor in admissions, court rules
BY MAYA SRIKRISHNAN
July 15, 2014, 7:15 p.m.
Los Angeles Times

University Diversity, Affirmative Action, Unlawful Cheating

Book Review

Cheating: An Insider’s Report on the Use of Race in Admissions at UCLA
by Tim Groseclose
Dog Ear Publishing
212 pp.
$24.99

[From Review]
Higher education is in free fall. At college campuses around the nation, protestors veto mainstream commencement speakers, students receive “trigger warnings” when exposed to uncomfortable ideas, and trendy radical dogma regularly displaces classics in the curriculum. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the higher education system has been taken over by left-wing zealots who will resort to extraordinary measures—including violating the law—to achieve their policy objectives, which include multiculturalism, identity politics, and “racial justice.” The latest example of academic politics run amok can be found in political scientist Tim Groseclose’s exposé of racial discrimination in admissions at the University of California at Los Angeles. The UCLA administration, with the active complicity of faculty members, violated the law by considering race. Groseclose blew the whistle on UCLA’s admission practices, which he chronicles in Cheating.
[. . .]
Proposition 209 requires that admission decisions at all public universities be race-neutral. Applicants must be evaluated on criteria such as grade-point averages and SAT scores. This sounds simple enough. Trouble is, the competition among applicants is so great at highly selective University of California campuses, and the qualifications of African-American and Latino applicants are so comparatively poor, that a purely meritocratic admission process would produce a disproportionately white and Asian entering class. The number of black students at UC’s most prestigious campuses declined each year after affirmative action was outlawed.
[. . .]
UCLA administrators were circumventing Proposition 209 to favor black applicants. The mechanism they used to do this was a “second-chance” review built into the “holistic” process. Administrators submitted a disproportionate number of African-American applicants to the second-chance pool and then granted them admission at three times the rate of admission for Asians in the same category. Ironically, the “holistic” process did not result in the admission of more socio-economically disadvantaged students. UCLA’s subterfuge was designed to increase the number of black students, period. This had the perverse effect of reducing the number of more disadvantaged Latinos and Asians.
[. . .]
“racial justice” is even more important than all the other leftwing causes, including things like a clean environment, collective bargaining rights for workers, world peace, or making the rich pay “their fair share” of taxes. To them, racial justice is also more important than old-fashioned virtues, such as politeness and honesty. Consequently, to them, it is sometimes immoral not to lie about things such as race in admissions. That is, if a lie helps to increase racial diversity, then in their minds it is noble.
[. . .]
“[T]he problem is a symptom of . . . a culture of dishonesty that pervades American universities,” and which includes wealthy donors and politicians in addition to academic administrators. The admission scandal unfolding at the University of Texas is one example.

Link to story about investigation of President of University Of Texas
http://enoughroom.blogspot.com/2014/07/university-of-texas-president-charged.html 

http://www.city-journal.org/2014/cjc0707mp.html

MARK PULLIAM
Affirmative Action Antics
“Diversity” trumps honesty and the rule of law at UCLA.
7 July 2014

University of Texas President Charged With Admissions Abuses

[From article]
Earlier this week, as an investigation was being launched into allegations that under-qualified students were being admitted into Texas’ flagship institution based on their political ties and relationships, the director of admissions announced she was leaving her job. This new investigation by Cigarroa comes on the heels of a cursory review by the UT System which found examples of inappropriate swaying the admissions process at the Austin campus.
Those allegations have been at the center of an unprecedented impeachment effort -- with lawmakers trying to silence the regent who first brought the problems to light. UT Regent Wallace Hall, an appointee of Gov. Rick Perry, has been under fire from Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Speaker Straus and other lawmakers friendly with Powers. They are upset that he has been conducting an investigation into legislative clout being used to sway the admissions process and other issues with UT's governance.
According to two sources familiar with the events, a whistleblower from within the university has stepped forward early this week with information that appears to have tipped the scales against Powers.
[. . .]
Up until now most of the public allegations of clout abuse have centered around admissions at the UT Law School (of which Powers was once the dean), yet Cigarroa’s call for a more expansive investigation would indicate a more wide-spread problem.
Reporter Jon Cassidy of the non-profit news site watchdog.org has also done a great deal of original investigative reporting on the law school admissions. Cassidy has found that several children and staff of legislators were admitted to the law school but took three or more times to pass the state bar exam — a highly unusual circumstance.

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-Texas/2014/07/04/Sources-Whistleblowers-Forcing-Out-UT-President

SOURCES: WHISTLEBLOWER FORCING OUT UT PRESIDENT
by MICHAEL QUINN SULLIVAN

4 Jul 2014

Approaching End of Affirmative Action

[From article]
Recently, a group of liberal Asian-American state lawmakers in California -- a state that is over 60 percent non-white -- successfully blocked a proposed return to racial considerations in college admissions.
Asian-American students are now disproportionately represented in the flagship University of California system at nearly three times their percentages in the state's general population. If race were reintroduced as a consideration for admission, Asian-Americans would have had their numbers radically reduced in the California system at the expense of other ethnic-minority students, regardless of their impressive ethnically blind grades and test scores.
[. . .]
Yet if verifiable hyphenation is to be our touchstone to career or academic identity, how do we certify minority status in an increasingly intermarried and multiracial society where there soon will be, as in California, no majority ethnic group? Are we to wear DNA badges to certify the exact percentages of our racial pedigrees -- to prevent another Elizabeth Warren or Ward Churchill from gaming the system?

http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0514/hanson050114.php3#.U2cLGd0--yM

Jewish World Review

May 1, 2014 / 1 Iyar, 5774
Finally, the end of affirmative action
By Victor Davis Hanson

Admissions Tutor Publishes Novel

[From article]
Once in school, if the child is slow in any subject, parents hire tutors. If the tutors fail, the parents will knock on doors until they find a learning specialist who agrees to identify a trumped-up deficit in a student’s capabilities — in other words, to label the child in some way learning-disabled — after which the parents will force their excellent school to exempt the child from certain obligations, so she no longer has to take four years of math, say, or timed tests.
[. . .]
In fact, often I was asked to create false invoices (substituting, say, “child-care services” for “educational consulting”) when I billed my $7,500, all-in fee. Five days a week, from August to December, I took the 6 train from Midtown to 68th or 77th and walked west to Park or Fifth, where I sat with wealthy students struggling to free themselves from their parents’ dreams so they might have some hopes of their own.


http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/how_got_nyc_rich_kids_in_college_KQQVjQ2t4AFmy3UaFkvTDK

Tutor reveals Ivy-admissions madness of rich penthouse parents
By LACY CRAWFORD
Last Updated: 12:45 PM, August 25, 2013
Posted: 2:04 AM, August 25, 2013

Young lady exposes the intolerance of liberals at universities

Suzy Lee Weiss

Something this young lady hadn't learned is that liberals who run most of the universities have no sense of humor. They take themselves and their propaganda seriously and cannot tolerate anyone who does not agree with them. Sarchasm is defined as the gap between the wrier of wit and those who do not get it. It applies to what she wrote. 


[Link to original WSJ OpEd]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324000704578390340064578654.html

OPINION
March 29, 2013, 6:31 p.m. ET
To (All) the Colleges That Rejected Me
If only I had a tiger mom or started a fake charity.
Wall Street Journal
By SUZY LEE WEISS


* * *
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2304621/Its-crap-shoot-Father-girl-sparked-controversy-scathing-letter-Ivy-League-colleges-hits-college-admissions-insists-doesnt-feel-entitled.html

'It's a crap shoot': Father of girl who wrote scathing letter to Ivy League colleges that rejected her hits out at college admissions and insists she doesn't feel 'entitled' but is a 'little bit bitter'
EXCLUSIVE
Daily Mail (UK)
By DANIEL BATES
PUBLISHED: 12:00 EST, 5 April 2013 | UPDATED: 13:12 EST, 5 April 2013