Harvard’s Race-Conscious Admissions Policy Goes on Trial on Monday. Here’s What to Expect.

A highly anticipated trial over the admissions practices of one of the nation’s most influential universities could have lasting implications for colleges across the country.

The trial, to hear a lawsuit challenging Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions policy, is set to begin on Monday in Boston. The case, brought by a nonprofit group called Students for Fair Admissions Inc., which is led by the conservative activist Edward J. Blum, claims the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants by limiting the number of those students it admits.

The case challenges a common practice among selective institutions that is meant to ensure that they admit diverse groups of students, and it is unusual because it invokes the rights of Asian-American applicants instead of white ones. It is also the first case since the Trump administration took office to challenge affirmative action, a practice that the Obama administration defended. Legal analysts say the issue is likely to make its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Race-Conscious Admissions Returns to the Spotlight

Barely a year after the U.S. Supreme Court appeared to issue its final word on this form of affirmative action, the issue is back, following a Justice Department memo that seemed to promise Trump-administration investigations of colleges. Here’s all of The Chronicle’s coverage.

• Harvard Doesn’t Discriminate Against Asian American Applicants, U.S. Appeals Court Rules
• 3 Takeaways From the Appeal of the Harvard Admissions Lawsuit
• A Judge Advised Harvard to Give Its Admissions Officers Training to Stop Bias. Will That Help?

Blum’s group says Harvard penalizes Asian-American applicants by systematically scoring them lower on metrics used to judge personality. The group says the university should not be allowed to consider race when making decisions about who is admitted as an undergraduate student.

Harvard has said that the race of applicants is just one factor among many that it considers in evaluating candidates. Admitting a diverse class, the university says, benefits all students in that class, a goal that is central to its educational mission and that has been upheld by the Supreme Court.

The case is expected to lay bare details of Harvard’s secretive admissions process as the university’s lawyers seek to prove that it does not use racial quotas or attempt to “balance” its class by race and ethnicity — both illegal practices. Since the lawsuit was filed, in 2014, the private university has fought to keep its admissions practices out of the public eye.

But those attempts have not entirely succeeded. Already, details about how the university selects students have appeared in court filings. For example, admissions officials keep a close eye on a “dean’s interest list” that includes the children of donors who are applying. There’s also a “Z-list” that Students for Fair Admissions claims includes well-connected applicants who “cannot gain admission through the ordinary course” and are instead admitted after deferring admission for a year.

Court filings also show that Harvard uses a numerical system to rate candidates. Each is graded on his or her academic potential, extracurricular work, athletic abilities, and character, and is given an overall score. Admissions officials then discuss the students in committees and subcommittees, and admit about 2,000 of the 40,000 applicants. This year the university’s acceptance rate was 4.7 percent.

The current freshman class is 22.9 percent Asian-American, according to statistics released by the university. In 2016, the most-recent year for which federal data are available, 17 percent of Harvard’s student body was Asian-American, which placed it in the middle among its Ivy League peers. African-American students make up 15.2 percent of the current freshman class, and Hispanic or Latino students 12.3 percent.

Asian-American Enrollment in the Ivy League

The proportion of Asian-American undergraduate students at Harvard University, which is being sued over its admissions practices, is similar to those at other Ivy League institutions, according to federal data.

Beyond Harvard

The case against Harvard is just the latest front in a broader fight over affirmative action in college admissions spearheaded by one man: Edward Blum. He was also behind the lawsuit that claimed the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions policy discriminated against white applicants. The Supreme Court sided with Texas in 2016, upholding its use of affirmative action. But that didn’t stop Blum’s group, which has also accused the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill of racial discrimination against applicants.

Now it has an important ally: the Trump administration’s Department of Justice. In August the department filed a statement of interest in the Harvard case, siding with Students for Fair Admissions. Harvard’s treatment of Asian-American applicants “may be infected with racial bias,” the filing said. It urged the university to consider race-neutral alternatives to its existing process. The department also recently opened an investigation into whether Yale University discriminates against applicants based on their race.

Harvard has said that it has considered race-neutral alternatives, but that they do not allow the university to achieve the level of diversity it wants. In a brief filed in support of Harvard, 16 universities — including Case Western Reserve, Johns Hopkins, Princeton, and Yale — wrote that they must be allowed to consider race when trying to build diverse classes of students.

“Diversity encourages students to question their own assumptions, to test received truths, and to appreciate the complexity of the modern world,” they wrote. “It is artificial to consider an applicant’s experiences and perspectives while turning a blind eye to race.”

A coalition of Harvard student organizations, including the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian-American Association and societies representing other racial and ethnic groups, also filed a brief in support of the university. The groups condemned “the attempt to manufacture conflict between racial and ethnic groups in order to revive an unrelenting agenda to dismantle efforts to create a racially diverse and inclusive student body.”

Who Will Testify?

The trial will take place in Federal District Court in Boston and is expected to last two to three weeks. It is not a jury trial, but will be decided by Judge Allison D. Burroughs, who was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2014. She won’t issue a decision immediately after both sides finish presenting their cases, as a jury would, but possibly weeks or months later.

Some of Harvard’s top officials are expected to testify, including Catherine G. (Drew) Faust, the former president; William R. Fitzsimmons, dean of admissions; and Rakesh Khurana, dean of Harvard College, the university’s undergraduate division. Ruth J. Simmons, president of Prairie View A&M University, is also on the witness list. As president of Brown University in the 2000s, Simmons was the first black leader of an Ivy League institution.

Neither Harvard nor Students for Fair Admissions plans to call any students as witnesses. But a group of Harvard students and alumni asked the judge if they could testify about their experiences as racial and ethnic minorities at the institution. Earlier this month the judge said they could. They say their perspectives do not perfectly align with the interests of either side, but they believe the university must be allowed to consider race when evaluating applicants.

Whatever the outcome, the case is likely to be appealed. There’s plenty of speculation that it will end up before the Supreme Court, just like the case against Texas. But this one is different, not only because of the unusual alliance between conservative activists and some sectors of the Asian-American population. Since the confirmation this month of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court will almost certainly be more conservative than it was the last time it heard a challenge to affirmative action.

Nell Gluckman writes about faculty issues and other topics in higher education. You can follow her on Twitter @nellgluckman, or email her at nell.gluckman@chronicle.com.