The other officer cut to the important question — the student’s skin color: “Brown?”“Heck no. doesn’t know what race a person of Middle Eastern descent is, should it really be making decisions based on race? Asian Americans scored better than other groups on academic and extracurricular measures, but Harvard’s admissions officers consistently gave Asians lower “personal” ratings than members of other groups. Harvard’s use of such subjective criteria to curb the number of Asian students admitted smacked of its efforts a century ago to keep out Jewish applicants it deemed unworthy of its “character and fitness” standards. In dissent, the three liberal justices argued persuasively that the court’s ruling might significantly reduce enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite colleges.

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Persons: Brown, ”, Heck, “, ’, David Bernstein, persuasively, Richard Arum, Mitchell Stevens Organizations: Harvard, Federal, Court, The Times Locations: Asian, Jordan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, America