Skip to content
ADVERTISEMENT
Sign In
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
  • More
  • Sections
    • News
    • Advice
    • The Review
  • Topics
    • Data
    • Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion
    • Finance & Operations
    • International
    • Leadership & Governance
    • Teaching & Learning
    • Scholarship & Research
    • Student Success
    • Technology
    • Transitions
    • The Workplace
  • Magazine
    • Current Issue
    • Special Issues
    • Podcast: College Matters from The Chronicle
  • Newsletters
  • Events
    • Virtual Events
    • Chronicle On-The-Road
    • Professional Development
  • Ask Chron
  • Store
    • Featured Products
    • Reports
    • Data
    • Collections
    • Back Issues
  • Jobs
    • Find a Job
    • Post a Job
    • Professional Development
    • Career Resources
    • Virtual Career Fair
    Upcoming Events:
    An AI-Driven Work Force
    University Transformation
Sign In
Admissions

Harvard’s Star Witness Testified All Day. Here Are 4 Moments That Mattered.

By Eric Hoover October 31, 2018
Boston
A gateway on the Harvard campus. On Wednesday, David Card, a Berkeley economist, continued his defense of the university’s admissions process. Then he got an earful of tough questions from a lawyer who says it discriminates against Asian-American applicants.
A gateway on the Harvard campus. On Wednesday, David Card, a Berkeley economist, continued his defense of the university’s admissions process. Then he got an earful of tough questions from a lawyer who says it discriminates against Asian-American applicants.Elise Amendola, AP Images

A key witness for Harvard University spent five hours testifying here in federal court on Wednesday. For most of that time, David Card appeared calm and composed while discussing numerous data points and explaining various charts. But by mid-afternoon, he seemed uncomfortable, shifting around in his chair. His seat, after all, was getting hotter.

To continue reading for FREE, please sign in.

Sign In

Or subscribe now to read with unlimited access for as low as $10/month.

Don’t have an account? Sign up now.

A free account provides you access to a limited number of free articles each month, plus newsletters, job postings, salary data, and exclusive store discounts.

Sign Up

A gateway on the Harvard campus. On Wednesday, David Card, a Berkeley economist, continued his defense of the university’s admissions process. Then he got an earful of tough questions from a lawyer who says it discriminates against Asian-American applicants.
A gateway on the Harvard campus. On Wednesday, David Card, a Berkeley economist, continued his defense of the university’s admissions process. Then he got an earful of tough questions from a lawyer who says it discriminates against Asian-American applicants.Elise Amendola, AP Images

A key witness for Harvard University spent five hours testifying here in federal court on Wednesday. For most of that time, David Card appeared calm and composed while discussing numerous data points and explaining various charts. But by mid-afternoon, he seemed uncomfortable, shifting around in his chair. His seat, after all, was getting hotter.

In his second day of testimony, Card, an economist at the University of California at Berkeley, described many findings from his statistical analyses of Harvard’s admissions process. Students for Fair Admissions, an organization that opposes affirmative action, has alleged that the university discriminates against Asian-American applicants.

Yet Card found no such thing. “The evidence,” he said, “does not support that claim.”

Seth P. Waxman, a lawyer representing Harvard, asked Card hundreds of questions. In answer after answer, the researcher rejected the findings of another economist whose conclusions underpin the plaintiff’s lawsuit against the university.

Card’s elaborate testimony, accompanied by colorful bar graphs and pie charts, just might represent Harvard’s best chance of winning this high-profile case. That’s why the soft-spoken economist has spent so much time on the witness stand — and why a lawyer for the plaintiff seemed intent on raining doubt upon him.

Here are four key moments from Wednesday’s testimony:

Card said his model better captures the reality of Harvard’s admissions process.

Elaborating on testimony he gave on Tuesday, Card challenged the findings of Peter S. Arcidiacono, an economist at Duke University. Arcidiacono, a key witness for the plaintiff, found evidence of bias against Asian-American applicants in Harvard’s admissions process.

Card’s main objection to Arcidiacono’s model is that it omits recruited athletes, the children of alumni, the children of Harvard faculty and staff members, and students on a special list that includes children of donors. Excluding all those applicants, who are accepted at a relatively high rate, Card suggested, had skewed his counterpart’s results.

ADVERTISEMENT

Moreover, Card said, Arcidiacono’s analysis fails to account for several contextual variables that admissions officers consider when evaluating applicants. Those include their parents’ occupations and intended majors.

“Harvard is thinking about trying to get a set of students who will have lots of diversity,” he said. “Having a large fraction of students who all, for example, intended to pursue a career in medicine would not accomplish that goal.”

Then there was the personal rating, one of the four ratings that admissions officers use to assess applicants. That rating, Card explained, is meant to capture evidence of integrity and leadership skills, among other factors. Such factors, he said, can go a long way toward explaining why some qualified applicants get in and others don’t.

Personal ratings, Card said, aren’t “a mechanism” of discrimination.

ADVERTISEMENT

Card rejected what is perhaps Arcidiacono’s most significant claim: that Harvard’s admissions officers, by assigning relatively low personal ratings to Asian-American students, are expressing a bias against them.

Though Asian-American applicants have stronger academic and extracurricular ratings than white students do, Card found that white applicants have stronger ratings in the other two nonacademic measures (personal and athletic qualities) and are more likely to be “multidimensional,” with top ratings in three of the four categories.

Why, Card asked, would admissions officers assign high ratings to Asian-American students in some categories but not others? “I find it extremely hard or impossible to reconcile [his] claim that the personal rating is the mechanism by which discrimination against Asian-Americans is operating,” he said. “Like there’s some kind of schizophrenia going on here.”

Race matters, Card said, but in a more nuanced way than the plaintiff has alleged.

ADVERTISEMENT

Yes, an applicant’s race matters in Harvard’s admissions process, Card said. But race alone won’t punch his or her ticket to Cambridge, Mass. For that variable to come into play, he explained, an applicant must be highly competitive to begin with.

Three-quarters of Harvard’s applicants are, as Card put it, “out of the money,” with no chance of getting in. Those in the top percentiles, who are “on the bubble,” he explained, excel in multiple dimensions of merit that the university considers.

Add race and — boom — the odds will increase for some applicants. But only if they are highly qualified in various ways.

For the most-competitive black students in the top two deciles, Card said, race can increase their chances of acceptance by 50 percentage points. For Hispanic applicants, there’s a similar but smaller effect.

That testimony echoed what admissions officials often say: A given attribute — such as race or geographic location — doesn’t really come into play unless a student already possesses many other desirable qualities.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Race, in isolation, has almost no contribution,” Card said, to an applicant’s chances of admission.

One notable aside: Card said that there is no “tip,” or advantage, for Asian-American applicants in his model.

Later, Card rejected Students for Fair Admissions’ claim that Harvard engages in racial balancing. He discussed one chart showing how the racial breakdown of admitted applicants at Harvard varied from year to year. One year, for instance, the number of Asian-Americans dropped 11 percent. A year later, they rose by 17 percent.

Another chart showed a similar pattern among students who matriculated.

ADVERTISEMENT

If Harvard officials were trying to balance classes by race, Card said, “they’re not doing a very good job.”

Card got an earful of tough questions.

Adam K. Mortara, a lawyer for Students for Fair Admissions, wasted no time in challenging Card’s findings. As soon as the cross-examination began, the mood in the courtroom changed.

Mortara was clipped and assertive. He challenged the economist’s finding that race wasn’t a major factor in admissions decisions. He said that there were “inaccuracies” in his slides. He contended that Card had mislabeled charts.

About 200 students, alumni, and employees of Harvard U. gathered in Harvard Square on October 14, 2018, as a lawsuit challenging the university’s use of race in admissions was about to open in federal court in Boston.
Harvard on Trial
Detailed background on the lawsuit over the university’s race-conscious admissions policy, the case’s implications for selective colleges, and coverage of the trial as it unfolded, in a federal court in Boston.
  • 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?

Some of Mortara’s questions seemed to fluster Card, who paused several times before answering his questions. Once, after the economist gave a somewhat long-winded answer, Mortara asked, “Are you done?”

ADVERTISEMENT

That prompted Waxman, one of the Harvard lawyers, to stand up and object. “It’s one thing for counsel to be asking questions,” he said. “Snide remarks are another.”

Judge Allison D. Burroughs of the Federal District Court told Mortara that Arcidiacono, the plaintiff’s witness, had also given some longer answers to questions.

The tense moment served as a reminder: The stakes in this case are high, with both sides girding for a long legal battle that could end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

The plaintiff’s lawyers will continue to question Card on Thursday. And if the conclusion to Wednesday’s cross-examination is any indication, the gloves are most certainly off.

Eric Hoover writes about admissions trends, enrollment-management challenges, and the meaning of Animal House, among other issues. He’s on Twitter @erichoov, and his email address is eric.hoover@chronicle.com.

Read other items in Harvard on Trial.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.
Tags
Admissions & Enrollment
Share
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Facebook
  • Email
Eric Hoover
About the Author
Eric Hoover
Eric Hoover writes about the challenges of getting to, and through, college. Follow him on Twitter @erichoov, or email him, at eric.hoover@chronicle.com.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT

Related Content

Dueling Economists: Rival Analyses of Harvard’s Admissions Process Emerge at Trial
The Lawsuit Against Harvard Admissions Turns Into a Courtroom Battle of Economists
The Case Against Harvard Relies on This Analysis. But the University Says It’s Deeply Flawed.

More News

Illustration showing the logos of Instragram, X, and TikTok being watch by a large digital eyeball
Race against the clock
Could New Social-Media Screening Create a Student-Visa Bottleneck?
Mangan-Censorship-0610.jpg
Academic Freedom
‘A Banner Year for Censorship’: More States Are Restricting Classroom Discussions on Race and Gender
On the day of his retirement party, Bob Morse poses for a portrait in the Washington, D.C., offices of U.S. News and World Report in June 2025. Morse led the magazine's influential and controversial college rankings efforts since its inception in 1988. Michael Theis, The Chronicle.
List Legacy
‘U.S. News’ Rankings Guru, Soon to Retire, Reflects on the Role He’s Played in Higher Ed
Black and white photo of the Morrill Hall building on the University of Minnesota campus with red covering one side.
Finance & operations
U. of Minnesota Tries to Soften the Blow of Tuition Hikes, Budget Cuts With Faculty Benefits

From The Review

A stack of coins falling over. Motion blur. Falling economy concept. Isolated on white.
The Review | Opinion
Will We Get a More Moderate Endowment Tax?
By Phillip Levine
Photo illustration of a classical column built of paper, with colored wires overtaking it like vines of ivy
The Review | Essay
The Latest Awful Ed-Tech Buzzword: “Learnings”
By Kit Nicholls
William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Review | Interview
William F. Buckley Jr. and the Origins of the Battle Against ‘Woke’
By Evan Goldstein

Upcoming Events

07-16-Advising-InsideTrack - forum assets v1_Plain.png
The Evolving Work of College Advising
Plain_Acuity_DurableSkills_VF.png
Why Employers Value ‘Durable’ Skills
Lead With Insight
  • Explore Content
    • Latest News
    • Newsletters
    • Letters
    • Free Reports and Guides
    • Professional Development
    • Events
    • Chronicle Store
    • Chronicle Intelligence
    • Jobs in Higher Education
    • Post a Job
  • Know The Chronicle
    • About Us
    • Vision, Mission, Values
    • DEI at The Chronicle
    • Write for Us
    • Work at The Chronicle
    • Our Reporting Process
    • Advertise With Us
    • Brand Studio
    • Accessibility Statement
  • Account and Access
    • Manage Your Account
    • Manage Newsletters
    • Individual Subscriptions
    • Group and Institutional Access
    • Subscription & Account FAQ
  • Get Support
    • Contact Us
    • Reprints & Permissions
    • User Agreement
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • California Privacy Policy
    • Do Not Sell My Personal Information
1255 23rd Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20037
© 2025 The Chronicle of Higher Education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is academe’s most trusted resource for independent journalism, career development, and forward-looking intelligence. Our readers lead, teach, learn, and innovate with insights from The Chronicle.
Follow Us
  • twitter
  • instagram
  • youtube
  • facebook
  • linkedin