Lessons From Anti-Asian Discrimination in University Admissions

No presidential administration has taken anti-Asian discrimination in university admissions more seriously than Donald Trump’s. In an August memorandum to Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, the president announced that, henceforth, universities receiving federal funding will have to report racial data on applicants, admissions, and enrollees to the National Center on Education Statistics. These data will help determine whether universities are complying with the ban on racial preferences laid out in the Supreme Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision. Lawsuits like the one filed by a coalition of 130 Asian American organizations in 2016—accusing Yale University of discriminating against Asians—may soon enjoy brighter prospects.

Trump is not the first Republican president to consider the issue. Ronald Reagan’s administration took notice when Asian Americans began accusing universities of prejudice decades ago. These activists held a different outlook from those fighting for equal educational opportunity today, but their work provides useful lessons.

In 1983, the East Coast Asian Student Union (ECASU), a consortium of Asian student groups, became one of the first organizations to call attention to admissions discrimination against Asians. The group surveyed 25 institutions and found that Asian American admits had barely increased in the 1970s and early 1980s, even as the number of qualified Asian applicants skyrocketed.

The trend at highly selective schools was striking. At Brown University, the Asian American Students Association (AASA) accused the school of bias when the Asian admit rate fell below the overall rate from 1980 to 1983. After fruitless talks with administrators, the group published a report showing that admissions rates for Asian Americans had dropped, despite rising applications.

At UC Berkeley, professor L. Ling-Chi Wang noted a 21 percent drop in new Asian students in 1983, contrary to demographic projections. Fearing restrictions on ESL students, he formed the Asian American Task Force on University Admissions, which, after two years, concluded that the decline stemmed from “deliberate policy changes.”

At Harvard, undergraduate Jane Bock, researching her senior sociology thesis, found that Asian Americans were “considerably disadvantaged” in admissions. In 1980, while the overall admit rate was 15.5 percent, it was 26.5 percent for blacks, 24.6 percent for Hispanics, 21.6 percent for Native Americans—and just 13.1 percent for Asians.

At Stanford, political science major Jeffrey Au found that, though Asians made up a third of applicants, they were less than one-tenth of enrollees. His letters in 1985 to admissions director Jean Fetter prompted a faculty investigation. After six months, an oversight committee acknowledged evidence of bias, though it offered no explanation.

Across these and other cases, students and faculty attributed discrepancies either to racial “quotas” or to admissions criteria that disadvantaged Asians. At Brown, for instance, officials curtailed admissions whenever Asian numbers approached their historical benchmark. Harvard’s Asian American Association described the school as “capping” Asian admissions at around 12 percent. At Berkeley, the introduction of subjective criteria like “demonstration of leadership” and “character” seemed designed to filter out otherwise qualified Asian applicants. Stanford’s admissions officers admitted to giving low personality ratings due to stereotypes.

The complaints against Yale in 2016 and against Harvard in the Students for Fair Admissions case echoed these same charges. The similarities between activists then and now stop there, however. Today’s Asian American plaintiffs compare their academic qualifications with those of black and Hispanic students. In the 1980s, Asian activists compared them only with whites.

Why? They feared that pointing to the fact that Asian Americans had, on average, far higher grades and test scores than blacks and Hispanics would allow Republicans to blame low Asian admissions rates on affirmative action. They were right. In 1988, William Reynolds, deputy assistant attorney general under Reagan, declared that Asians faced higher hurdles than “academically less qualified” applicants of other races. “There is substantial statistical evidence,” Reynolds said in a speech, “that Asian American candidates face higher hurdles than academically less qualified applicants of other races, whether those candidates be minorities or whites.”

That same year, Reagan, signing a proclamation for Asian and Pacific Islander Heritage Week, warned of discrimination against citizens of Asian and Pacific heritage, “despite their academic qualifications.” In 1989, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher introduced a bill condemning racial quotas and urging universities to review admissions bias against Asians. Though symbolic, the bill signaled the growing Republican interest in the admissions issue.

At the time, many Asian students believed that Republicans cared only because it helped them attack affirmative action. Indeed, before the late 1970s, Asian Americans had benefited from affirmative action, along with blacks and Hispanics. But once they became overrepresented in higher education as a result of increased migration, universities excluded them from preferences.

Asian students initially resisted this shift. They argued that, like blacks, they deserved affirmative action because of discrimination. Their aim was not color-blind admissions but continued racial preference.

The Supreme Court has never upheld racial preferences in higher education as a remedy for discrimination. From Bakke in 1978 until the Court’s 2023 ban, the only accepted justification was the educational benefits of campus diversity. Universities, mistakenly, claimed that because Asians were “overrepresented,” they did not add to that diversity.

Some Asian students today still maintain—contrary to evidence—that their group benefits from preferences; or they argue that, even if harmed, they should remain silent, so as not to fracture the Left’s multiracial coalition. But others, rejecting this view, have gone to court. They recognize that the beneficiary of race-based policy one day can become its victim the next. History shows that the safest bet for every group is equal educational opportunity for all.

Photo: Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images