Benjamin Chang is president of the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association and a student at Harvard College.
In January, the Supreme Court decided to review a case known as Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, in which the plaintiffs seek to bar colleges from considering race during the admissions process.
Should the court rule in the plaintiffs’ favor, the case could threaten the future of affirmative action in American higher education.
Students for Fair Admissions, led by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum, claims to stand up for Asian Americans, arguing that affirmative action unfairly targets certain minorities. But this organization does not represent us. In fact, the Harvard Asian American community has overwhelmingly supported race-conscious admissions, with 10 Asian student organizations filing an amicus brief for Harvard when the case was heard by the Massachusetts District Court in 2018. We’ve held rallies, made countless statements, spoken our truth in every way we know how, yet SFFA still asserts to represent our community.
The stark reality is that Blum has made a career of suppressing minorities through litigation challenging voting rights and diversity in education. Through this case, he and SFFA are preying on the dreams of Asian immigrants to advance inequity in the education system.
For Blum, this effort dates to Fisher v. University of Texas, an affirmative action case that he lost — after which he bluntly stated that he “needed Asian plaintiffs.” By using Asian clients as a front for his attack on communities of color, he is pitting minority groups against one another, a tactic often used to exacerbate racial inequality.
I understand why this case is so important to the Asian American community. Education has long been a proxy for status in our culture. Immigrant families, including my own, see top universities as the key to the American Dream. To many, race-conscious admissions is viewed as an instrument used to prevent well-deserving Asian students from entering elite colleges.
So why do I support affirmative action?
Harvard’s — and higher education’s — mission is to educate the next generation of leaders for our society. This endeavor requires a diverse student body in every dimension, including gender, ideology and, of course, race.
Over the past three years, Harvard has shown me the kind of learning that is possible only in a diverse student community.
Talking with my roommate about how he faced racism in Mississippi taught me more about the Black experience than I ever could have learned in a classroom. Late-night conversations with classmates about our hometowns transformed my idea of the Middle East. Listening to my friend’s stories of working at his family restaurant gave me a deeper appreciation for the struggles of my own parents, who toiled at multiple jobs during college to support their families. And during the wave of anti-Asian violence last year, I was able to share with friends my perspective of being Asian in a country that sometimes seems to hate us.
These kinds of conversations are necessary for a healthy society. They are interactions that teach us to be more empathetic and that show us how relationships can be fostered when we embrace, rather than hide, our differences. This culture of diversity is the cornerstone of the Harvard education — of any good education — and would be greatly diminished without a racially and ethnically representative community.
Yes, there is still much to be done to make Harvard more equitable. Statistics show that Asian American applicants generally have high academic ratings but are unfairly penalized in the qualitative “personal rating” category. Legacy students still make up a disproportionate percentage of the student body. A survey by the Crimson, Harvard’s student-run daily newspaper, showed that over 30 percent of the Class of 2025 has a relative who attended Harvard. Another study, by the National Bureau of Economic Research, analyzed admissions data from 2009 to 2014 and found that children of faculty members had an admission rate of 46.7 percent, over seven times the admission rate for applicants who were not children of faculty.
Such criteria for admission favor the wealthy and the White, institutionalizing generational elitism. Regardless of the outcome of SFFA v. Harvard, the university has an obligation to correct these inequities.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s decisions on affirmative action will have repercussions far beyond Harvard, influencing educational and societal values for generations to come. By attacking affirmative action, SFFA is attempting to rob our children of valuable opportunities to understand one another and the world. This we students cannot stand for. So please: Stop using people like me as a political tool to attack other communities of color. You do not speak for us.