Combating Elite Universities’ Admissions Lawlessness

In response to an unfavorable Supreme Court ruling in Worcester v. Georgia, President Andrew Jackson is reputed to have said, “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”

This statement finds a contemporary echo in the response of elite universities to the recent Supreme Court decisions that banned affirmative action in college admissions. Almost every one of them has continued to discriminate against white and Asian American applicants.

The implications of the universities’ defiance of the Supreme Court have effects that go far beyond college admissions. Above all, they show that America’s anti-white regime will not just go away because of Court rulings.

If we are going to change the status quo, we will need to ruthlessly enforce the Court’s rulings, including massive fines, loss of jobs, revocation of federal funding, potential revocation of legal status for institutions, and punishment including possible prison terms for individuals who defy the law.

Based on Harvard’s own study conducted a decade ago, a pure academic merit approach would have led to a Harvard class that was approximately 0.7% African American and 2.3% Hispanic. With demographic changes and extracurricular activities that benefit a disproportionate number of African Americans, reasonable assumptions suggest that these numbers could be perhaps as high 2% and 4% respectively given a truly race-blind merit admissions process.

Now let’s compare those percentages to the actual admissions numbers from the Ivy League. MIT dropped from 15% to 5%, and overall the combination of black, Hispanic, and indigenous students dropped from 31% to 17%. Amherst showed a similar decline in black and Hispanic admissions. Clearly, this shows some level of compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling—but there is still substantial discrimination against white and Asian applicants. And the fact that the admissions deans of these universities openly rent their garments about not being able to discriminate more against white and Asian students should be used in court as evidence of their continued intent to discriminate.

“This significant change in class composition comes with no change to the quantifiable academic characteristics of the class that we use to predict success at MIT,” said MIT’s director of admissions. He explained how MIT had historically admitted “fully qualified applicants” and then diversified after that. But this is Orwellian doublespeak that arbitrarily defines “qualified” as minimally able to do the work. In plain speaking, MIT’s efforts are designed to admit substantially lesser qualified students over more qualified ones.

Other universities were even more openly defiant. Princeton had African American and Hispanic acceptances at 9% each, down less than 2% from the previous year. Yale’s class composition was unchanged for African Americans and up 1% for Hispanics. The University of North Carolina, one of two defendants in the Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court case, saw their black student population decrease modestly to 7.8% down from 10.5%, while their Hispanic percentage was down hardly at all—10.1% from 10.8%. While these universities will claim that these smaller changes are simply a result of recruiting, the recruiting itself is invariably done for racially discriminatory reasons. Furthermore, even with aggressive recruiting there is simply no way to arrive at numbers like these without discriminating against whites and Asians.

Some elites claim to be surprised by the scarcely changed admissions numbers. According to the New York Times, “many experts and administrators are baffled.” But their alleged befuddlement is only true to the degree to which these “experts” do not understand that our elite class, epitomized by the Ivy League, will do what it wants regardless of what the peasants decide (including the right-wing “peasants” on the Supreme Court).

One reason I was skeptical from the outset of the practical effects of the Supreme Court’s ruling (though it is a substantial victory) is the case of California, which has twice banned affirmative action in college admissions at the ballot box, only to have those decisions effectively largely ignored by California’s political class. At UCLA, for example, in 2023 the freshman class was 8% African American in a state where less than 5% of students are African American. A merit process with these demographics would have almost certainly entailed an African American student population of less than 1%. And white admits at top UC schools continue to lag behind what would be expected from their grades and scores.

In light of this continuing discrimination at America’s colleges and universities, what is the GOP willing to do? In jurisdictions where they have political control, how large are the fines they can legally levy? How do they withhold federal funding from universities that will not comply with the law? Is it possible to criminally charge administrators or members of boards of overseers? These are the questions that state and national politicians who are serious about winning and restoring the rule of law need to be asking themselves. Unfortunately, as best I can tell, almost nobody on the Right is doing that.

Another option, advocated by AEI’s Charles Murray, is even more provocative: “The lesson to be drawn: If Harvard can ignore SCOTUS, the rest of us can ignore it too. Then we can get to work on ignoring the ukazes issued by EPA, OSHA, and the rest.” While I am somewhat skeptical that the Right can manage to ignore the Court in the same way the Left is doing, we should not unilaterally disarm in the face of an opponent that is willing to do anything to maintain power.

The universities’ defiance of the Supreme Court is so blatant that even advocates of discrimination are worried. Yale Law professor Justin Driver expressed a fear that “a deluge of litigation could soon rain down on some of the nation’s premier universities.” It is our job to make sure that Driver’s fears, and far more fearsome consequences for our lawless universities, become reality.

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