"Harvard battles lawsuit over admission practices"/ "End affirmative action discrimination in Canada"/ Bridging the Gap (BTG) at YMCA

Jun. 15, 2018 "Harvard battles lawsuit over admission practices": Today I found this article by Patricia Hurtado and Janelle Lawrence in the Edmonton Journal:

Harvard University engages in "racial balancing" that brazenly discriminates against Asian-Americans seeking admittance in the same way the university once set quotas on Jewish students, a group of applicants said Friday in asking for a ruling before a trial.

The Ivy League school is defending a lawsuit over how it chooses its students by a group representing more than a dozen Asian-American applicants who were rejected. The group, which sued in 2014, told a federal judge in Boston on Friday that they've obtained "incontrovertible" evidence the university has "engineered the admissions process to achieve" illegal goals.

Lawyers for Harvard asked the court to throw out the case. In a motion filed Friday, Harvard said its admissions data and testimony taken during depositions don't support claims by the group, called Students for Fair Admissions.

"SFFA is left to offer only gerrymandered statistics to support its claims, but that evidence is far too flawed to support a finding of discrimination at trial," Harvard's legal team wrote.

Lawyers for the students claimed leaders of Harvard's admission team were evasive during depositions and appeared to suffer memory problems.

"The process is readily subject to manipulation, as history and the data amply demonstrate. The data showed massive discrimination against Asian-Americans -- and Harvard knew it," they said. "Harvard has a desired racial balance and aims for that target."

Harvard said in a statement that it doesn't discriminate against any group and that evidence shows the rate of admissions for Asian-American students has grown 29 percent over the last decade. The school criticized Edward Blum, the leader of the plaintiffs' group.

"Mr. Blum and his organization's incomplete and misleading data analysis paint a dangerously inaccurate picture of Harvard College's whole-person admissions process by omitting critical data and information factors, such as personal essays and teacher recommendations, that directly counter his arguments," the university said in a statement.

Harvard also claims Students for Fair Admissions "is merely a vehicle to litigate the ideological preferences" of Blum and has no standing to sue the university.

The U.S. Justice Department said in April it has a "substantial interest" in the case and urged the judge to make the admissions data public. Harvard noted in response that it has already provided the information to the government for its investigation into the school's admissions practices -- a probe, it added, that wasn't opened until Jeff Sessions became attorney general.

Harvard announced in April that it admitted 4.59 percent of the applicants to its class of 2022. Women represented 50.1 percent of those accepted; African-Americans 15.5 percent; Latinos 12.2 percent; and Native Americans 2 percent, according to the Harvard Crimson. Asian-Americans made up a record 22.7 percent of the class.

https://www.mysanantonio.com/news/article/Harvard-biased-against-Asian-Americans-

12997663.php

Jul. 6, 2023 "End affirmative action discrimination in Canada": Today I found this article by Matthew Lau on the Financial Post:

Last month, in a six to three decision, the United States Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in university and college admissions, ruling it unconstitutional to use racial preferences in deciding which students to admit. 

“The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not 

challenges bested, 

skills built, 

or lessons learned 

but the color of their skin. 

Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

One of the offending universities was Harvard. In 2018 The Economist published a chart that made clear Harvard’s discriminatory approach. Leaving aside legacy students and student-athletes, it showed that students in the top academic decile had a nearly 60 per cent rate of admission if they were Black but less than 40 per cent if Hispanic, less than 20 per cent if White, and less than 15 per cent if Asian. 

In fact, an Asian applicant in the top decile was less likely to be accepted to Harvard than a Black student in the fourth-from-top decile. 

Clearly Harvard’s approach favoured some people, and was biased against others, on the basis of their skin colour.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision, discrimination against individuals based on skin colour is now illegal in the United States. 

In this country, however, the use of racial preferences carries on unabated. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows such discrimination if the stated intention is “the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups.” 

A recent column by Jamie Sarkonak provided examples of racial preferences or quotas in certain programs at Dalhousie University, the University of Calgary, Queen’s, and even Toronto’s K-12 public schools. 

But whether legal or not, discriminating against people based on their skin colour is illiberal and wrong, and when public money is involved (as in the case of public universities or government-run schools) it should not be allowed.

One notable thing about public policy debates, including on affirmative action, is the focus on stated intentions instead of actual results. Proponents of affirmative action say 

it helps disadvantaged groups; 

opponents say it unfairly disadvantages individuals based on their skin colour. 

Such claims are welcome, but it is also important to look at results. In 2004, Thomas Sowell, the famed American economist and author, now 93, who spent much of his career studying and writing about race and discrimination, lamented that the “factual question of what actually happens as a result of affirmative action policies receives remarkably little attention.”

His own scholarly work paints a devastating picture of the effects of affirmative action. In an 18,000+ word essay in Commentary in 1989, he identified four patterns of effect worldwide: 

1) even when introduced as temporary they tend to persist and in fact expand over time; 

2) within groups receiving preferential treatment, the benefits go disproportionately to the most fortunate members; 

3) group polarization tends to increase as groups that are actively discriminated against or simply do not receive preferential treatment react negatively; and 

4) there is widespread fraud as people make false claims of belonging to the designated groups receiving preferential treatment.

The second point is particularly important in the current Canadian context where we have government programs that give exclusive funding, preference in government procurement, or other favourable treatment to people from groups (racial or otherwise) said to be disadvantaged. 

The reality is that people who are able to get large sums of public money by demonstrating to government officials or university administrators that they are disadvantaged are unlikely to actually be disadvantaged.

Sowell concluded over three decades ago that “the starting point for rethinking and reform must be a recognition that ‘affirmative action’ has been a failure in the United States and a disaster in other countries that have had such policies longer.” 

His Commentary essay, along with his 2004 book, Affirmative Action Around the World: An Empirical Study, is full of evidence to support that conclusion. 

The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, in which Sowell is quoted extensively, is a good start in reversing the disaster.

But in Canada, where the Charter of Rights and Freedoms tolerates affirmative action, political willpower will be needed to end this harmful and unfair government-sanctioned discrimination.

Matthew Lau, a Toronto writer, is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, and contributed a chapter to its recently published: The 1867 Project: Why Canada Should Be Cherished — Not Cancelled.

https://financialpost.com/opinion/affirmative-action-supreme-court-end-discrimination

My opinion: This part stood out to me the most:

"The reality is that people who are able to get large sums of public money by demonstrating to government officials or university administrators that they are disadvantaged are unlikely to actually be disadvantaged."

Now wait a minute here: In 2015, I attended this interview for this program.  I was 30 yrs old.  The questions on the application and the interview really showed that I don't really need this program. 

The question: Where do you live?

-with family

-with friends

-alone

-foster home

-group home

These are for people who were probably in foster care, didn't graduate out of high school, and not very stable home or life.

Bridging the Gap (BTG) at YMCA:

Bridging the Gap (BTG) is a 20-week employment readiness program that enhances skills through practical training and a twelve-week work placement. Bridging the Gap has been proudly offered in Grande Prairie, Wood Buffalo and Red Deer regions.

Program Participants

Participants can earn certifications such as First Aid, CPR and WHMIS, and topics such as workplace communication, computer literacy, customer relations and personal development are all covered to ensure participants are well prepared for the job market.

Ready to get started?

Participants must:

-be between 15–30 years old

-eligible to work in Canada

-be a Canadian citizen, permanent residence or refugee

https://ymcanab.ca/programs/learning-leadership-employment/youth-young-adults/bridging-the-gap

Jul. 3, 2023: I found this on Wikipeda:

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. ___ (2023), is a landmark decision^[1][2][3][4] of the U.S. Supreme Court in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[5] 

With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978) which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.^[b]

The case involved Harvard University's undergraduate admissions process. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), an organization led by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, represented a group of anonymous Asian Americans rejected from Harvard. 

After a brief pause spurred by the ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas (2016), the District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that Harvard's admissions process does not discriminate against Asian Americans. 

SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court in 2021, and the Supreme Court granted both cases certiorari and consolidated them under Harvard in January 2022.^[7] Following the appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson—a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers at the time—the cases were split with Jackson recusing from the Harvard case while participating in the North Carolina one.^[8]

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a decision that, by a vote of 6–2, reversed the lower court ruling. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts held that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. The Court did not decide whether race-based affirmative action can continue in U.S. military academies,^[9] which the solicitor general urged the Court to continue to allow in the government's amicus brief.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Students_for_Fair_Admissions_v._Harvard