One of the most shopworn and least shocking of discoveries about USA higher education Is that of Ivy League “affirmative action” (aka preferential admissions) for the non-genius children of wealthy donors or powerful alumni (mainly WASPS). This “exposé” (which, to be fair, is also found at many other non-ivy schools) has been around about a century or so, and has since been repeatedly documented by many scholars, novelists, biographers, pretend radicals — and news editors who have not read much or got out enough.

Someone fairly high up on the editorial ladder at The Guardian — normally relatively up to date on such matters— evidently fits into one of these dim categories. At least they thought the scandal of legacy preference needed to be disclosed back in the unenlightened times of fourteen months ago, and then worth repeating, at least online, in January 2023.

As far as I can tell, a century’s worth of exposure has yet to banish this practice. True, the Ivies have opened up some, to Jews, Blacks, and (with difficulty), Asian-Americans. That’s good; but do not let it mislead you into thinking legacy DNA (plus Daddy’s fat checks) is no longer a major door-opener at practically all the expensive schools. As that peerless scholar of such matters, the late bard Leonard Cohen summed it up:

That’s how it goes,

And everybody knows . . . 

Nevertheless, when a school’s endowment reaches, say, eleven figures (Harvard = $40+ Billion), there’s also room for a sizable dollop of guilt offerings — er, “reparations.” And as the second Guardian report below advises, Harvard as of last spring has gotten on that bandwagon. Or at least, it’s made a reservation, and plunked down $100 million for the ticket.

This money, it hopes, will (to mix the metaphor) scrub a lot of corporate bad conscience; and when you’re the oldest college in the country, (13 years shy of its 400th anniversary) there’s doubtless a lot of corporate conscience in need of a good swabbing. The specifics are still taking shape, and we’ll not try to read those tea leaves.  I’ll only say that, carp about Harvard’s wealth all you want, and maybe its sins add up to a much bigger karmic tab, but 100 million bucks is, as some say, not chopped liver.

Anyway, there’s one more base to cover here: namely the experience at Harvard of this writer’s favorite pronoun, namely me.

Yes, it happened in 1968-1970. It came about despite the fact that I lacked most of the stuff The Guardian wanted to (re)expose: I have no relatives (AFAIK) who are alumni. Nor did any of them ever donate a penny to the place. And they were also Catholics, and many Irish; nary a WASP in sight.

For that matter, while I scored high on the SATs, My grades were merely in the Lake Wobegon “above average” quintile in both high school and college.

Oh yes, college: my B.A. is from Colorado State University (aka “Aggies”); a solid school, but definitely not elite. I applied to Harvard for grad school.

Ah, well then, the cognoscenti might say, knowing that it is slots in the undergraduate Harvard College that are the truest, rarest prize. Maybe so, close-up; but I’m here to say that in most of the rest of the world, “Harvard” is just Harvard.

I applied to Harvard Divinity School (HDS); I was interested in religion, but wasn’t sure what vocational path I’d take, and HDS had a Masters that wasn’t preprogrammed. But still, there was competition. So without money or pedigree, what could I offer?

Two things: first, “promise,” that is, an interesting off-beat start: from college to the civil rights movement, then to antiwar activism, and a “radical” outlook. Radical, yet nonviolent (That is, I’d been arrested several times, but was not part of the Weatherman fringe. Too many of those derailed their prospects by convictions for bank robbery or blowing themselves up.)

Besides this “promise,” I was a writer:  the proof was that my first book, White Reflections On Black Power, had come out in 1967. It sold modestly well, and was expected to be followed by others, likely on “relevant” topics.

So, smart (enough); radical (but not too much); and a published author at 25. Would this combo get me through the HDS admissions committee?

Worth a try; and in the spring of 1968, perhaps the apex of the Sixties, the answer was Yes.

At first, I was thrilled: I thought there could be nothing better than to study activist religion at Harvard, with a particular star professor as my advisor/mentor.

Hear me well, Friends: BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR.

For me, Harvard was a dud.  Yes, they were generous with financial aid; and patient with my dropping or postponing courses. I still appreciate that.

But hardly anything else fit. Almost all my classmates in the ostensibly non-preprogrammed track were just kidding: they were really aiming for PhDs, and then teaching slots where the Harvard name would grease the skids toward tenure.

I don’t scorn them for this, but that wasn’t me. I respect scholarship; I’ve done some of it myself. But I soon knew that academia was not where I wanted to spend my “career”; and I haven’t had any regrets.

Next, my hoped-for mentor was a no-show: busy traveling the world, still riding the wave of his career-making best-seller, barely time to say hello.

Further, while the faculty was “distinguished,” they were all specialists, mostly shaped by German scholars and their ideas. Meanwhile I was an American Quaker, wanting to learn and write about Quakerism; they all “respected” this small peculiar group, but none knew much about it. I did a lot of reading, largely on my own.

And not least, I was a cub writer/journalist, learning my chops reporting on the activism around me (which had soon passed its peak and was on the long slide into the self-centered Seventies). At HDS, the arcane world of academia went round & round in its  own circles, and I was drawn steadily away from it into insurgent journalism on streets where religion was being acted out as part of the scene, from both right and left.

In 1974, my third book was published. It got a few good reviews and didn’t sell much. I was working my way through a vocational fog, resolved to be a writer, with special interest in Quakers, struggling to figure out how to do that and pay the bills. I was clear that neither HDS nor academia were the way out.  (In the 50 years since, I have not found anyone being paid a living wage for reporting/writing in depth about Quakers; the few who dip into it have day jobs, as I did til ten years ago. I’m not complaining; I worked it out.)

As for HDS, I didn’t really “drop out” of Harvard, just faded away, with no hard feelings on either side. I know this is true for HDS because they tell me every month or so, in letters that also ask for money.

Since then too, I’ve been careful on resumés and CVs only to say I attended HDS, not to imply that I graduated. And now and then, not that often anymore, I get to truthfully say in conversation, “Well, when I was at Harvard, yada yada . . .” And others take that however they might.

Or as Leonard Cohen puts it:

Everybody’s talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
And everybody knows  . . .

Ever wondered what it takes to get into Harvard? Stellar grades, impressive extracurriculars and based on a recently published study, having deep pockets and a parent who either works or went there. Those last two are pretty important for Harvard’s white students because only about 57% of them were admitted to the school based on merit.

In reality, 43% of Harvard’s white students are either recruited athletes, legacy students, on the dean’s interest list (meaning their parents have donated to the school) or children of faculty and staff (students admitted based on these criteria are referred to as ‘ALDCs’, which stands for ‘athletes’, ‘legacies’, ‘dean’s interest list’ and ‘children’ of Harvard employees). The kicker? Roughly three-quarters of these applicants would have been rejected if it weren’t for having rich or Harvard-connected parents or being an athlete.

Here’s the thing– Harvard is insanely competitive. The admittance rate for the class of 2025 was 3.43%, the lowest rate in the school’s history, in a year that saw an unprecedented surge in applications. But as more and more comes to light about Harvard’s admissions process, it’s clear that the school’s competitiveness is not just based on academic strength or great test scores, but also whether or not your parents or grandparents have donated significantly to the school.

This dynamic is inherently racialized, with almost 70% of all legacy applicants at Harvard being white. According to the study, a white person’s chances of being admitted increased seven times if they had family who donated to Harvard. Meanwhile in stark contrast, African American, Asian American and Hispanic students make up less than 16% of ALDC students.

This kind of systemic favoritism of the white, wealthy and connected is not new when it comes to elite academic institutions. It’s always been a bit of a rigged game, one that overwhelmingly favors rich white people.

Take the 2019 college admissions scandal for example. It’s been almost three years since the fiasco in which dozens of wealthy people attempted to pay their children’s way into legacy institutions such as Stanford and Yale. These parents paid thousands of dollars to get people to take tests for their children, bribe test administrators and bribe college coaches to identify their children as great athletes. Fifty people were ultimately charged in the scandal, including celebrities like Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin.

With all this in mind, it’s impossible not to think about the longstanding racist pushback against affirmative action in the US. Racist white people (including the Trump administration) have long scorned the system that was designed to give historically underrepresented communities a better chance at entering institutions they have been systematically excluded from. According to its detractors, the use of affirmative action at universities amounts to reverse racism against white people and has helped Black people in particular enjoy benefits that white people are now supposedly left out of (notions like this, including the idea that Black people in America go to college for free, are entirely false).

Judging by Harvard’s numbers though, it sounds to me like these people don’t actually think affirmative action is bad – they just think it should be reserved for white, rich people. And when it comes to Harvard’s revered status, these revelations about its admissions process poke gaping holes in the idea that anyone who is there has proven themselves “worthy” to be part of this elite institution.

Harvard and other schools like it have long been venerated as hallowed spaces where only the best and brightest minds are granted access – and many young people still see it as such. The reality, though, is very different. These are supposed to be the biggest geniuses on the planet, yet the school halls are filled with the progeny of the privileged who wouldn’t be there if it weren’t for their connections and money. For me, that’s not a whole lot to aspire to.

The Guardian — Reuters — Tuesday, 26 April 2022