[jfaucett]

Is this surprising to anyone? There are numerous documented cases (some mentioned in this article), many anecdotal, of blatant discrimination against Asians at universities. [4]

Honestly when you look at the data, its hard to believe there has been no major backlash on a national level until this point, especially when you consider a majority believe there is discrimination against them [3]. One reason could perhaps be the fact that Asians outperform other groups on a variety of positive societal metrics (income, wealth, education). [1,2]

Anyway, whether or not you think we should or should not do anything about it is up to your political tastes, but I for one am at least happy its getting some national attention - given my own personal experience and just knowing what the data says. Admittedly, if the data looked a lot different I would be more inclined to rule this out as bogus.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_the_U...

2. https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

3. https://www.npr.org/assets/news/2017/12/discriminationpoll-a...

4. http://asianamericanforeducation.org/en/issue/discrimination...

[objclxt]

> blatant discrimination against Asians at universities

So you mention "knowing what the data says" -

* Asian Americans represent 5.6% of the US population[1].

* The most recently admitted class at Harvard was 22.7% Asian American.

Is that "blatant discrimination"? If it is, at what percentage would it not be?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Asian_American... [2]: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2018/3/29/harvard-regular-...

[freyir]

If, in a purely merit-based admissions process, they would represent e.g. 30% of the Harvard class, then it suggests discrimination.

But the idea that Harvard admissions is purely merit based is a joke, so this is very hard to pin down.

[skinnymuch]

Have you seen how Cal Tech which doesn’t look at race has double the Asian Americans roughly speaking than many other top schools? Just throwing that stat out there doesn’t prove anything about discrimination.

[tzs]

The number of college aged Asian Americans has been growing much faster than the number of Asian Americans admitted to Ivy League schools, which is quite suggestive of discrimination.

[jdoliner]

Discrimination is an act by one human against another. You can't tell just from looking at ratio of the broader Asian population and Harvard's Asian population whether or not they're discriminating. Human behavior is subtle, and when OP said that blatant discrimination was happening he was pretty obviously not referring to that ratio as the thing that makes it blatant.

[oh_sigh]

Why do you assume that the demographics of college classes should match the demographics of the nation?