I wrote this article a couple of years ago, back when I had no Substack subscribers, so most of you would not have read it. In honour of SCOTUS repealing affirmative action today, I am republishing it.
I did not edit or update this article since it was first published — it is interesting to see how my writing has grown over the past 2 years.
Please consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my jihad against affirmative action:
A hundred years ago, Harvard had what then-President Lawrence Lowell called a “Jewish problem” -- he was convinced that Harvard could only survive if the majority of its students came from non-Hebrew stock. The problem, you see, was that those pesky Jews were scoring too high on the admissions test; the solution was to make the admissions process more subjective/holistic. More weight was given to the interview process so they could best determine the "character" of the applicant. Harvard also mandated that a passport-sized photo become part of the application process… to screen out big noses, course. This worked for the next three decades to suppress the number of Jewish students.
Today the exact same thing is happening with Asians: not only at Harvard but in academia/economics more widely. In 100 years from now, a more enlightened civilization will look back at this time of anti-Asian discrimination as a shameful, antiquated embarrassment. To that end, I find it worthwhile to document this discrimination as it is happening in real-time and to shame ringleaders such as David Card, Janet Yellen, and Sue Dynarsky. It makes my blood boil to see such overt racism and injustice happily being perpetrated by elite gatekeepers of the economics profession in the name of “equity”.
I want to emphasize that we aren’t even talking about foreign applicants in this article — there are at least valid reasons to place quotas/caps on students applying directly from China and India. We are talking about Asian kids that were born in America, to American parents, who lived their whole life here and are now being pissed on and cast aside by the profession they love, simply because they had the bad fortune to be born with the wrong skin pigment. Asians aren’t equal human beings, according to Card and Yellen. Asians deserve to be rated as being unlikable.
Replacing Standardized Testing With Personality Scores
A couple of weeks ago, Harvard eliminated the SAT/ACT:
Of course “until 2026” means “forever” and “optional” really means “optional only if you have the right skin colour”. The same fate awaits the GRE. Of course, the whole point of abolishing standardized testing is to make the process more opaque and subjective so that with squishier admittance criteria, it will be more difficult to quantify and provide evidence of discrimination against Asian-Americans.
I find it depressing that the same people who advocate for abolishing standardized testing always proclaim to be “liberal” or “progressive” or “socialist” or “communist”. These people forget that standardized tests were pioneered by French socialists who espoused upward mobility for the working class, child-centred education, more generous treatment of the handicapped, humane welfare reform, and the creation of a meritocracy.
I miss these socialists of yesteryear who preached meritocracy. The ones today just want nepotism, cushy fake jobs, and social media clout.
If you think the SAT/GRE is bad, wait until you see what replaces it… personal essays and character attestations! Such a stupid idea. Essays have a stronger correlation to household income than SAT scores, so, this trend towards personal essays benefits rich, dumb, well-connected kids at the expense of poor, smart, hardworking kids. Standardized testing is the only way for high IQ poor kids to compete on equal footing with dumb rich kids.
As a black man, affirmative action is retarded. Saying that Asians have a "gift" obscures the fact that they do problem sets in their summers and spend all-nighters prepping for a midterm. Instead of promoting affirmative action, maybe we should promote the Asian work ethic.
— Anonymous Economist
The reason I bring up Harvard specifically — pretty much every top school is running the same AA grift — is because detailed data on Harvard was recently unsealed as part of the SFFA v. Harvard lawsuit. Here is a quick 2-minute summary of that lawsuit.
So let me get this straight:
--Asian: Proficient at passing exams ==> No creativity and just rote memorization.
--Non-Asian: Cannot score high at exams ==> Must have thought things through from "first principles" and "creativity".If that's the case, instead of enrolling the top SAT scorers, enroll everybody at the bottom? Universities surely appreciate these "deep thinkers", no? But oh wait, that would piss off the white high exam scorers (which highly correlate with having rich white parents)?
— Anonymous Economist
One might start to wonder if there is an explicit Asian quota. Harvard denies such a quota exists. Despite being the fastest-growing racial group in America, the Asian proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been SUSPICIOUSLY flat for two decades.
How does Harvard justify this not-technically-a-quota quota? By explicitly saying that Asians have bad “character.” That’s right, Harvard spent millions of dollars on this case, consulted the brightest minds in the world, hired the smartest lawyers in history, only to come up with the exact same line of reasoning that they used to keep out Jews 100 years ago: bad personalities.
![rust on the concept of the "eternal return" | True detective quotes, True detective, I want him](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!AUkA!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7b53c50c-d5d8-4d8f-85a8-38ed9459793d_720x416.jpeg "rust on the concept of the "eternal return" | True detective quotes, True detective, I want him")
Using the current president of the AEA, David Card, as an attack dog is a weird choice because I would’ve thought the AEA would prefer to distance itself from the views that its founders had about Asian people, such as Edward A. Ross, who is shown here ranting about the Aryan race, orientals, and racial purity. The AEA is the same as it always was.
It’s a shame to all economists to elect a racist to be AEA president.
— Anonymous Economist
Card defends the thesis that Asians have worse personalities. He says their lower personal scores are accurate and not a result of discrimination
— Anonymous Economist
The president of the American Economics Association lied in court to argue that Harvard doesn't discriminate against Asian-Americans and instead Asian-Americans just have bad personalities. Seems pretty open-shut to me.
— Anonymous Economist
I'm surprised it took so long for this issue to be brought up, but the problem has been rampant and has only been increasing over the last few years. I know plenty of people with very very good CVs, but get little to no calls because they are not the right kind of diversity. If that wasn't enough, now the AEA has nominated and elected (let's not kid that election of AEA president was democratic in any way) an anti-asian as president. How much evidence does one need more than the fact that this guy accepted money to deny personality rating wasn't biased. Its like having the anti-asian David Duke as AEA president.
— Anonymous Economist
Who can blame Card? Maybe I would do the same thing if someone paid me thousands of dollars per hour to confuse a hapless judge.
Asian-Americans had the highest scores from teacher 1, teacher 2, essays, counsellor recommendations, and alumni interviewers. Yet the final component — personality score — is decided completely at the discretion of the admissions staff. Usually, the admissions office gives Asian-Americans low personal ratings without even meeting them. This is magically where Asians fail.
Card’s analysis is full of lies. Here is an anonymous Economist ripping it to shreds:
At least Card was paid a princely sum to sell out the Asians. Do you know who discriminates for free? These 16 economists who filed an amicus brief supporting Harvard: Professor Susan Dynarsky, Professor Harry Holzer, Professor Hilari Hones, Professor Guido W. Imbens, Professor Alan B. Krueger, Professor Helen F. Ladd, Professor David S. Lee, Professor Trevon D. Logan, Professor Alexandre Mas, Professor Michael McPherson, Professor Jesse Rothstein, Professor Cecilia Rouse, Professor Robert M. Solow, Professor Lowell J. Taylor, Professor Sarah Turner, and Professor Douglas Webber
“Amici include, among others, a Nobel laureate, four former Chief Economists of federal agencies, current and former university administrators, editors of peer-reviewed journals, and multiple professors whose research focuses on higher education.“
It is sickening how they try to pull rank.
Shouldn’t it say:
“Among others, a corrupt journal editor, a has been, a Twitter addicted nutter, some of Card’s co-authors, Card’s attack dog and his list of friends”
— Anonymous Economist
Don't forget Glenn Loury also filed an amicus supporting Peter. When you have discrimination experts such as Loury and Fang on one side, and hacks like Sue D on the other, it should be very clear which side is right and which side is ideological bulls**t.
— Anonymous Economist
I remember feeling disappointed and sad especially upon recognizing the names of Krueger (RIP) and Solow on the list. They were the big names most of us learnt about in our first few years of grad school and I'm sure many others, Asians or not, looked up to them as heavyweights with huge contributions to the profession. It felt like a slap in the face, that these "mentors" whose work we looked up to and learnt from, wholeheartedly believed people like me were never able to succeed in university because of our еthniс ity alone.
There's also quite some J names on that list. It was also disappointing to find that those who were part of a community that suffered widespread discrimination in the past would now turn around and push it onto another similarly marginalised community.
— Anonymous Economist
Each of these 16 names has its own unique failing (e.g., here are 300 pages of discussion on why Hilary Hoynes is a plagiarist and corrupt editor) but let’s just focus on one name: Sue Dynarski.
Not only did she sign this amicus brief, Dynarski also served as an expert witness in the Harvard case. She was a professor at UMich at the time. One year later, Harvard hired her.
You just witnessed one the biggest cases of corruption in the profession with a quid pro quo with the AEA, based on expert testimony that wouldn't pass the litmus test of empirical evidence, with an intuition that is a prejudicial stereotype. You can't fathom the implications of this precedent — this Dynarski corruption should be argued in front of the Supreme Court. Her testimony is less than worthless.
— Anonymous Economist
Connecting the dots here: Sue Dynarsky sold the Asian race down the river so that she could retire in Boston. I only hope that when this case is heard in front of the Supreme Court (it is on the docket for 2022), lawyers will argue that Dynarky’s expert witnesses statement does not stand the test of time. I believe a strong legal argument can be made that being the expert witness for your employer adds suspicion to the claim of impartiality. Harvard bribed her with a job.
Or is it on the docket for 2022 after all? Here is the latest update, from just a couple of weeks ago:
This betrays weakness. The Biden team is terrified that affirmative action is about to be declared illegal.
It's funny when they say asians are not being discriminated against. If you are discriminating in favor of blacks to maintain a critical mass, you are conversely discriminating against whites and asians.It is true. But whites feel guilty due to slavery and Asian had nothing to do with slavery and care about getting into top colleges A LOT.
— Anonymous Economist
Its honestly disgraceful. There is a lot of talk in the Econ community concerning discrimination against women and minorities, even when the data and evidence is often not there at times. However, in a case where the data so clearly screams discrimination, you have people like Card sell out and still deny that Asian Americans are being shafted.
— Anonymous Economist
Racism against African Americans does not justify the violence and discrimination against other ethnic groups, such as Asians.
— Anonymous Economist
In my more vindictive moments, part of me thinks Asian-Americans deserve this outcome for voting for Affirmative Action. No sympathy. Reap what you sow.
As an Asian American, I'm surprised that so many Asian Americans are liberal sheep- even though they are the wrong minority and get penalized for offering "bad" diversity
— Anonymous Economist
Asians need to wise up fast and start speaking out against this. We are considered minorities when they wanna talk smack about whites and we are considered white when they want to further their affirmative action narrative. Stop being used by the Ds. Especially Asian males. We absolutely have it the worst.
— Anonymous Economist
The fact that people don't care about your 2% voting base is why you're on the losing end of affirmative action in the first place.
— Anonymous Economist
News flash: nobody but asians cares about AA hurting asians. There's no mystery, because no one has your back.
— Anonymous Economist
When will Asian voters wake up? They are being screwed, yet keep coming back for more abuse from the Democratic party. Sad. I am optimistic that someone who isn’t named Trump can finally bring them back into the fold.
Just imagine being an Asian American parent and knowing that simply because of his race, your child needs to have more than perfect scores to have a shot at an elite school. It's madness.
— Anonymous Economist
Asian success disproves critical race theory (CRT) and that's why it upsets the left so much. Asians make it obvious anyone can be successful in America if you're intelligent and work hard or have some special skill. They started with nothing and caught up to whites in 50 years with zero social engineering or special rules. Whatever Blacks had 50 years ago — Vietnamese, Filipino, Punjabi, Hmong, and Indonesians had less of it.
Card won the Nobel because the Nobel committee wants to help him keep Azns out of Harvard, by making his analysis look better because it came from a "Nobel prize winner". The entire elite establishment is aligned on discriminating against Asians.
— Anonymous Economist
The average SAT of black Harvard students is 1325. According to this ranking, this is roughly equal to the Colorado School of Mines. Meaning the average Affirmative Action admit at Harvard has roughly the same IQ as someone who got into the Colorado School of Mines based on merit.
Is it any wonder then, as economist Zach Bleemer finds, that AA admits fail out of STEM at higher rates and have been steadily earning degrees in relatively lower-paying majors? They are set up to fail when they are held to a lower standard. Lower standards help nobody. All races should have the same standards.
If you scroll down in his comments, Bleemer suggests that the solution is for oversubscribed majors (from getting rid of GPA requirements) is to simply expand through more faculty to accommodate these numbers. And with no consideration of what twice as many CS/ECON/Engineering/Finance degrees will do to those juicy returns he thinks all students so richly deserve. Great example of the type of "economic thinkers" these partial EQ-reduced form types really are.
— Anonymous Economist
If you are an Asian male student.. You are screwed...you will be grossly underplaced in your first job, if any. So work harder than the rest. Sorry about this. Clearly there's racial discrimination against male Asians.
— Anonymous Economist
Economics will become more similar to sociology with the entry of underprepared people. that's what happens when you select based on skin color.
— Anonymous Economist
Chinese immigrants in New York are, on average, poorer than AA's in New York. Yet, their kids are, on average, among the highest achieving in the city. To a large extent, this comes through parental investments in their kids and their education. With affirmative action you start to punish parents for their investments and reward parents who let their kids watch TV the whole day. I find that highly unfair - we should incentivize parental investments, not discourage them.
— Anonymous Economist
Using race, gender, or some other individual characteristics that is not related to productivity as a criteria for employment or admission. It is a pervasive evil, likely to get worse. If you support affirmative action, you are simply a racist.
— Anonymous Economist
My University has switched in the last 3 years to racial quotas in faculty hiring. Now BIPOC faculty are being hired at very high rates. They are significantly less qualified (in terms of every qualitative and quantitative metric you can think of) than other recent hires but everyone has to pretend that they are excellent faculty. Oh, and the quotas are verbally communicated -- never in writing. This is because this is a state where AA is supposed to be illegal.
— Anonymous Economist
Personally, I couldn't care less if Harvard discriminates against asians (although then of course I'd expect all federal funding to be revoked). If Harvard just straight up said we're putting a quota on asians because there are too many of them, I'd respect them more. It's the duplicity and hypocrisy that's disgusting. This case crystallizes everything that is wrong with leftist ideology as currently practiced in the US.
— Anonymous Economist
Imagine if Harvard gave low personality scores to Blacks and women.
— Anonymous Economist
The end result of this affirmative action is predictable: see Glenn Loury’s model of affirmative action and the self-perpetuation of negative stereotypes Either you get sinecures, or you get equal respect. Pick one. Affirmative action leads to a pooling equilibrium wherein the outstanding URM will always have “diversity admit” hanging over their heads whether they like it or not. What a sad state of affairs. If someone offered me a job purely just because of my skin or genitalia, I would run, not walk, in the other direction.
After years of policies promoting less competent females over males for the sake of diversity, females are now shocked that mean view women as less competent than men, conditional on being in the same position
— Anonymous Economist
To the extent that “positive” discrimination exists in terms of placement, publication, or tenure decisions, your (Bayesian) colleagues will rightly be skeptical of your accomplishments.
— Anonymous Economist
Your best weapon against this is to make sure you (or anyone else) do not give unfair advantages to female economists solely based upon their gender. Hold everyone to the same high standards and only then can we know accomplishments are equally well earned.
— Anonymous Economist
If you listen to black independent thinkers like Kanye West, Glenn Loury, or Thomas Sowell you may agree that this victimization mentality has not served the African American community well. Excusing lower standards (e.g. SAT/GRE scores) will only keep that victim complex alive, and as long as this victim complex exists, we will never escape the equilibrium where rich white women genuinely view races who receive Affirmative Action as "lesser races" that they can "save" as to stroke their own ego. Rich white women just can’t help themselves from acting this way. It is in their nature. We, as a society, must deny white women their programming.
This get's to my next point: this isn’t just a race war. It is also a gender war. Women — specifically, white women — have always been the biggest recipients of Affirmative Action. But they want to skirt by unnoticed.
The diversity jobs are for blacks but the pipeline is nearly empty so they end up giving preference to white women instead. In fact, this is what happens like 90% of the time. Once you realise this, you then understand why white women, who literally never interact with low income black men, seem so hysterical about what happened to George Floyd. They will weaponize the hysteria against white men in order to get preferential treatment in the job market.
— Anonymous Economist
Imagine your ancestors risking death to immigrate to the land of opportunity, you scoring in the 99th percentile on the SAT/ACT, spending countless hours as a volunteer, doing community service, etc. while your childhood slips away only to be hit with a rejection letter that says you have a bad personality.
— Anonymous Economist
The silent hate held by white women for the underclasses of any kind is something to behold.They're the most hat/e/ful/ group out there especially attractive white women. . I can't believe we've built an entire system of affirmative action, designed for blaks, that has largely benefited the most privileged and insular group of all. White women.
— Anonymous Economist
Let's be real AA isn't about african americans. It's about privileged white women getting a freebie.
— Anonymous Economist
Why is it hard for people to get this?? It's the daughters of the the top 1% that benefit from this and their parents know it. That's why the elites are liberal. They want their precious princesses to access power while understanding that they're not really competitive.
— Anonymous Economist
Fact: a friend from PhD now working at the World Bank told me over the past 2 years they had a VERY strong bias in FAVOR of women in hiring and promotion process. They are not hiding this at all.
— Anonymos Economist
At a university, let's say I knew the head of the hiring committee. Even before looking through the applications it was decided 2 women were going to be hired. They go through the motions have both women and men interviews with flyouts and 2 women were given offers and hired. No paper trail....
— Anonymous Economist
Is it wrong of me to resent female colleagues for receiving affirmative action preferences in the job market? I try not to feel this way, but it's just too obvious to ignore.
— Anonymous Economist
Asian males in the 2020 market They are now openly discriminated, and no one cares.. sorry for them
— Anonymous Economist
I can report the same in my European department. Does not say on our ad, but basically if you're a male applicant, don't bother, unless you are far far far better than the female applicants we'll get.
— Anonymous Economist
When my department went through our external review, there was a section about faculty diversity where they highlighted what the university considers as minorities, only my non-Asian female and Hispanics colleagues were flagged.
The Turks, Koreans, Chinese, etc. Didn’t count for the administration. Don’t you guys love the double standards?— Anonymous Economist
It is time we started treating Asian kids as individuals, not as a group. Individuals have the right to be treated the same as other individuals. Treat individuals like individuals, and remove race from your consideration for hiring and admissions.
Affirmative Action is antithetical to liberty. Affirmative action makes Asian-Americans less free. If you support David Card as the President of the American Economic Association, you are the enemy of freedom.
Today;s decision is a long overdue statement against quotas which have morphed into the far worse DEI in academia
A few years ago I genuinely thought racism was a fading relic of a distant past from a different era. Now it's literally becoming institutionalized under the Orwellian guise of 'anti-racism.' I'm getting too old for this crazy shit.