Battle of Cambridge: Harvard keeps quotas, doesn't follow MIT's compromise

Supreme Court be damned: Harvard announces blacks make up 14% of its new freshmen, same as it announced last year.

Last year, Harvard’s administration announced that its freshman class of 2027, the last let in before the Supreme Court ruling in the summer of 2023 that Harvard’s use of affirmative was unconstitutional, was 14% black, even though Harvard internal documents disclosed in the Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard lawsuit suggested that 1% or 2% would be the non-discriminatory figure.

Today, Harvard announced that it’s freshman class of 2028 is … 14% black.

Below the paywall, I present lots more data, including a discussion of how Harvard is claiming that, in deference to the Supreme Court, its 2023 black share was not the 14% its been telling everybody about since last year, but was always actually 18% (a figure nobody had ever heard before today). So, Harvard’s new narrative is that, in respect to the Supreme Court, Harvard actually cut its black share from 18% to 14%.

Also, I’m posting graphs on the share of the freshman class for Asians and Hispanics. Plus, I indulge in some hopefully amusing rank speculations about what is going on inside the heads of all the players in the Harvard quotas story.