What is meant by "open admissions"? How would socialists like admission into Harvard (or anywhere) to be handled? *WOULD* it be first-come-first-served?

Why not ask yourself instead how it is that an institution like Harvard stands above others, and on what basis does it do so? Would you see a continuity in those factors in a socialist restructuring of society, including education?

Why we should give a damn about the admissions policy of "the world's greatest university", aka the academic nerve center of American imperialism escapes me entirely. The material on the "legacy system" embedded in Harvard's admissions process, though interesting, is widely known. All this ink and media hype about who Harvard chooses to rule over us , Jaysuzzz. And this is at a time when state universities and the public education system as a whole is being starved for funding and privatized. Scratching my head.

The nerve center of US imperialism serves that function with public legitimacy because the Ivy League (+a few other schools like CalTech, UC-Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, UT-Austin, the Research Triangle, etc.) use their accrued capital to buy up the best researchers, rare documents, and scientists from across the world. Many also have influential think tanks or academic publishers on campus and use that to shape the agenda of both universities and politicians. Much of the top scientific research and applications that can change the world (alongside the quackery) are devised in their labs. In other words, the bourgeoisie, through control of the elite universities, have a choke-hold over the means of production for scientific innovation. The same social process that impoverishes public universities also enriches elite universities. The same social process that replaces public university professors with course software (i.e. robots), podcasts from the above Tier 1 institutions, TED talks, or poorly paid non-tenure track lecturers (essentially glorified temps) actually glorify and legitimize the elite universities as the few places of "true learning" to the public university professors and students. It reinforces the low status and acceptance of the class system for us "plebs".

The idea that "if we just fund public universities properly, we can then ignore the unjust policies of Harvard/Yale/Princeton because only the spoiled scions of the rich, who likely aren't very smart to begin with, go there" ignores key realities about those schools; namely that alongside the children of legacies and donors (many of whom are party animals and often can't keep up without outside help), there are also many brilliant youngsters who are allured by meeting the best minds in their field. When the selection process for "worthiness" to such an institution is now based on race, class, and your willingness to be an amoral sellout, the public is objectively being made dumber because the people who would most likely use this knowledge to better society are not included, whereas people who would most likely use this knowledge (or access to power and influence) to better themselves at the public expense are those who get included, because the latter are philistines who do not value knowledge or truth.

Grades and test scores are not the pure metric of "worthiness" and "fairness" that many advocates of "fairness" simplistically argue. Obviously , some kind of reverse discrimination ("affirmative action" ) was desperately called for after hundreds of years of grotesque discrinimation against Blacks, Jews Hispanics Southern European and Irish students. The, one time entirely legal, prohibition against blacks Catholics and Jews made Ivy League ethnic discrimination "socially acceptable" .Jews and Catholics had built many of "their own" prestigious private schools in New York and Chicago for "their own" kind, so it was said and "they" should want to go there and not to "our" schools . I believe that acceptance to university (ANY university) should be done on a first come first serve basis to ALL high school graduates or equivalents. Academic achievement or failure would then be more truly egalitarian. The only reason "Ivy League" schools exist is to perpetuate the class system . Those who are arguing for "fairness" in admissions to Ivy League schools seem to be only demanding more access to ruling class privilege for themselves and the ethnic/nationalist/identity group they belong to.

"More broadly, the trial reveals once again that affirmative action serves as a mechanism of bourgeois class rule."

A kind of Social Justice approach.

"It isn’t a coincidence that most of the academics who address grievance studies neglect class, because it would not only complicate their narrative; it would also implicate them as not oppressed but as the dominant, powerful group." -A discussion with Helen Pluckrose, co-author of “Grievance Studies” hoax article

"Taking place in a media spotlight, the trial underscores the reactionary and antidemocratic character of affirmative action—a policy that seeks to conceal the class division in society while permitting the political right to pose as defenders of equal protection under the law."

The truly deliberate and insidious nature of the petty bourgeoisie captured simply in the quote above and the quote below.

"Education must be a social right, not a scarce “opportunity” for a select and privileged few. There is no shortage of knowledge to go around, and no shortage of teachers and staff to share and enrich it."

Excellent diagnosis of the whole problem by author, as the Real problem is not with admissions to Harvard but the Harvard, Yale and all the BS Ivy League schools themselves that just over a century ago were nothing but intellectually poor preps schools for young oligarchy who were groomed for their inherited postions in Industry and government.

And accordingly admission there was inherited or in the spirit of capitalism and freedoms money can buy, purchased by "nuevo rich" for handsome price of lifetime earning of average American worker, often only to learn anatomy of same and opposite sex and to spend inherited loot.

The suppose prestige of Harvard, Ivy League is a myth, as most of faculty there in last 100 years at least were purchased from Europe including mass exodus of Jews in 1930s and now from Asia funded by expediences of Cold War that required academic merit and ruling class openness to produce rainbow coalition of young ruling class intellectual automatons who would dedicate themselves to defend their privillages and class divisions that support them.

The Ivy leagues and not only, are training ground and cesspools of reactionary class-warmongerers, captains of class war in imperial service leading divided people to exploitation and self destruction, monkey trained to serve the system alone if they want to be successful.

If not, like many Harvard and other graduates they become jobless and homeless or upon understanding what their true role in society supposed to be after Harvard, abandon professional field completely.

What is actually wrong is entire educational system serving war and imperial interests from scientists who build weapons engineers who build guns, to managers who exploited workers to build guns and weapons, accountants that cook the books to pay for death Industry by looting population, to priests of religion who tell us that god is guiding guided weapons and gurus of media who would prove any lie for money, as trained in Harvard and other institutions of imperial brainwashing.

While they are skilled in powerful tools and given power to affect lives of millions, have no moral, ethical intellectual humanistic capacity to make such decisions and are nothing but technocrats slaves of ruling elite vital interests.

I did comment somewhere that Harvard, Yale ,Brown , Ivy League educational institutions do succeed in mass producing professional enemies of the working class and in the case of a Henry Kissinger, for example, enemies of the human race.
Perhaps that is why I have for months now ( for life ? ) been BANNED FROM THE BROWN DAILY HERALD WEB SITE.
Not a few " socialists " would also muzzle me .

That is your badge of honor Sir. Congratulations you did your job, became too influential truthteller BS killer and had to be silenced. It should encourage others to keep up your good work of annoying the hell of those trolls.

I was banned from dozens of sites over last decade, mostly annoying them by quoting their articles vs. Quotes of Mills or Marx, or Tocqueville, recently banned from Alternet that turned nuts, especially for quoting Jefferson, Orwell. Interesting, no cursing rants but Orwell get you out, they are loosing it.

Thank you so much. But what I don't understand is why " liberal " Brown University " thinks it does not owe SOCIALIST - not NATIONAL SOCIALIST - me a civil explanation for being BANNED FOR LIFE ( ? ) from the Brown Daily Herald Web Site. By the way, I do believe -like Providence Journal editor Alan Rosenberg- in " Free Speech for Everybody "-even " National Socialists ". Rosenberg might even approve of publishing one of my letters someday .
You can't form intelligent opinions on anything without access to ALL points of view - even most unpleasant ones. I listen to right wing talk radio and read conservative religious newspapers. Am I seduced ? Well , I do think about the nerve of the human race calling itself " Homo Sapiens " - as if the Cosmos was listening.

Definitely Nazis did not take over Germany because of free speech the exercised.

They won 2% of vote in 1928 elections under complete political free speech.

Even in post 1929 crush elections 1930 and election of 1932 that resulted in Hitler appointment to Reich Kanzler NSDAP won 9% to 11% of vote in the Christian electoral block that all together won about 25% while KPD , communists won 22%-24% .

Free speech did not give Hitler power, German oligarchy and conservative Christian support fearing communists did.

Words were never problem, only deeds to control words created them.

Remedy for bad speech is more good speech and speech with equal access to listeners.

Good article, though I would have put the end to legacy admissions, donor admissions in the headline.

both "reverse discrimination" and "affirmative action" are misleading/dishonest terms, in my opinion. More valid words are available, like "reparations" or (as in India) "reservations".

1. I suppose you are against the German government paying reparations for the holocaust?

2. reservations are not what you think, they are a term used in India for a form of "affirmative action", a type of quota.

ha ! keeping hitting us, rosa ! we read you and need you in the free debates among comrades and friends ! i hope you are both to us !

thank you, lee. I try to function as both, even if that's not always the kind of response I receive.

Good old George Orwell who pointed that the so called " Left " as well as the " Right " were becoming enemies of the FREE SPEECH and FREE THOUGHT tradition in bourgeois democratic countries.
And the " Left " ( really the pseudo Left ) are becoming good TWO MINUTE haters too.
I hear and read that " liberal " Trump haters now routinely UN-FRIEND and UN-LOVE friends and relatives who rejected " Wall St. Hillary " , " Hawk Hillary ", " Corrupt Hillary " and the Democratic Party in general as their personal savior.
A legally blind man said that he had been abandoned by once helpful " liberal " neighbors.

Great exposure of the right-wing character of racial preferences in education, Ed.
One small correction: CalTech is a private university, and is not part of the University of California system. I'm not sure whether they have affirmative action-style policies or not.

Yes, all this policy has done is give the Obamas, Eric Holders, Colin Powells, Condoleeza Rices, and Clarence Thomases their "piece of the pie" as H. Ross Perot would say. Like all aspects of society, higher education is in need of drastic reform in terms of relevant issues of class, affordability (but why not bring in grants as in the pre-Blair UK?), and equal access to all who are qualified and desire it?

Who is "qualified" in racist, classist bourgeois capitalist society? I know how we can find out....test. scores........please.

"For several decades, the school maintained an ethnic composition that was 40-50 percent white, 17-20 percent Asian, 7-10 percent Hispanic, 7-10 percent African American, ten percent RESIDENT ALIEN and less than 10 percent American Indian, mixed or unknown ethnicity."
Among the "resident alien" inhabitants are to be found those being groomed to run America's neo-colonies and prospective invaded lands. It includes also children of existing imperialist Scipios.

Mother Nature discovered the beauty and power of " diversity " millions of years ago. The great cities of the ancient world , in Egypt, Greece, and Rome became truly COSMOPOLITIAN and ethnic Jews thrived in and often prospered and contributed to all of them.

The best of " Western Civilization " is based on selecting all that is good and wise and humanly interesting from many populous places in the world.

"Taking place in a media spotlight, the trial underscores the reactionary and antidemocratic character of affirmative action—a policy that seeks to conceal the class division in society .... "

Of course, an independent thinker could not say this about " affirmative action " even now without being accused of reactionary tendencies.
Not being the capitalist competitive type I never felt hurt by affirmative action. But I did find it offensive to my DEMOCRATIC instincts from the beginning.
I did observe that young black scholars - like Barack Obama, for example- bright and promising, were made to think of themselves as EXTRAORDINARY by elite Ivy League colleges and universities.
And true and sad enough white working class males were nearly categorized as the " New-N- Word ".
In movies and on TV Italo-Americans in particular were stereotyped as ignorant , stupid , mob connected, low lifes. Our plutocracy simply must have some groups branded PARIAH.
And decent pious ordinary Christian Americans were pictured as enemies of all " progressive " causes. Any public display of faith was anathema. But is any sane socialist offended by a prayer on the wall of public high school ( there 50 years ) in Cranston, R.I or a Ten Commandments monument in Roger Williams Park ?
In short " identity politics " and AFFIRMATIVE ACTION made the USA a more cruel, ugly and BIGOTED country.

This article is a real service to understanding the issue of affirmative action, especially for those of us coming from a political milieu where affirmative action was consider unassailable.
Hightower has done a masterful job in providing a historical outline as well.
Well done. I will study the story and share it widely.

The WSWS is really drawing in the line in the sand between real socialism and fake-left "progressives". Between this and the essay by David Walsh about #MeToo, we are sharpening our pens and minds as the class war deepens. This is perfect!

I was such a Chinese high school student a decade ago. Perfect grades, applied for Harvard, got in but only because my mom read enough horror stories to instill in me the need to apply for summer camps and "leadership" and "volunteer" activities in school, in state, and around the city. I can tell you right now that 80%+ of the students who entered Harvard as a non-legacy student with similar activities did not continue such activities once they arrived. In other words, it was a careerist game and everyone knew it! I hated my high school years despite my good grades and general love of my teachers, classmates, and learning because of how fake the application process for elite schools was. I was told that "you aren't good enough because you are Chinese and from a public school and a poor area" so "you need to excel at a state level just to compete with the best prep school student from a rich state". My parents were even falsified my accomplishments on more than one occasion to get me into such summer camps! Once I got in and realized how fake most students there were and also how badly the overall culture (including many teachers who came out of Harvard/Yale/Princeton) promoted both cliquishness and a culture of "cool kids" (top 20%) + "mass fanboy/girl" (next 60-70%) that resembled the worst stereotypes of the very American high schools I just left, it really shattered my illusions as "an esteemed place of learning filled with above-average people". However, the politics made such a place impossible to stay. I found it disturbing that even the idea of volunteer work promoted to the students usually would serve the interests of the upper-middle or upper class, often causing more damage than it would actually help. I found it disgusting that certain professors were so loyal to one of the two bourgeois parties that they would knowingly vote for mob-affiliated candidates just to prevent the other party from taking power. I found it bizarre that criminals like Geitner were considered esteemed alumni or that the most popular course for freshman was indoctrination in free-market capitalism, taught by an ideologue. It was scary for me when professors were trying to make a case that fascism was an intellectual movement in the 1920s but socialism never. Even our research material for that class pointed out that a Harvard alum (Lamont) funded Nazis and donated to Harvard; his name today is now remembered as that of the undergrad research library and hangout spot. Most of the students thought that was a funny coincidence, I thought it was creepy.

Today I am a blue collar worker by choice. I make less money, my parents feel like I failed them, but I am far happier with my life.

I taught at an Ivy for the better part of two decades. The students were overwhelmingly elite: some had had "lifestyle coaches" from the moment they became a teen to guide their creation of the perfect college application. And, of course, the great majority had gone to the best private schools, getting an education no longer obtainable in the public school system. The student body was a melting pot of the children of CEOs and those aspiring to be CEOs. Almost half the students graduating with degrees in scientific fields went, not into science, but to Wall Street banks.
One of my students (in the sciences, mind you), at a graduation reception where he was asked what he planned to do next, unapologetically declared that he was going to start a Japanese version of Youtube and make an enormous amount of money.

There were, of course, also students who did not come from this background or adopt this outlook, and many who were deeply confused, especially given what passed for a broad intellectual culture on campus in the humanities.

The highest academic rank in my department was held by a nonentity whose specialty was sucking up to multimillionaire donors, and whose last significant academic work was in 1978. He convened special meetings with world-leading scientists to entertain these donors, to which the public and even the students were uninvited.

To give you an idea of the tenor and extreme narcissism of this layer, I have to be explicit. The scene: A dozen titans of wealth and their consorts. The entertainer: Kip Thorne, the world's leading gravitational theorist, Nobel laureate, and the cofounder of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory. After a clever, if extremely simplified talk, the floor is opened for questions:

The first question is asked sweetly by Barbara B_____, a rich and bejeweled septuagenarian: "Mr. Thorne, thank you for meeting with us today. I have my own theory of gravity. Would you like to hear about it?"

You can't make stuff like this up.

fascinating ! so unreal it must be real ! how did you survive ? how did you keep your personal culture and intellect alive among such creatures ?

Because humanity is not wholly reducible to these things, nor is it a pure monoculture. And young people have an immense curiosity and capacity to learn, even if class forces usually win out for the majority in the end. For every student who joined a Facebook Group like "I'm cutthroat. Are you cutthroat too?" (an actual example, where students bragged about knifing other students in the back academically so as to rise above them) there were those who would stay up all night consoling a troubled dorm-mate. For every academic who shamelessly abased themselves to money, there were those who dedicated themselves, to organizations they saw (incorrectly in most cases) as ways forward. Their lack of vision wasn't mostly personal failings, it was a fault of the horizon carefully put in place around this layer.

History shows that this petty-bourgeois layer, while "incapable of an independent policy", can, under certain conditions, "link up its fate with that of the proletariat." Those are not the current conditions, and the putrefaction of this layer at present is remarkable. Academics too, for all their confusion, are under broad attack. It takes significantly different forms in the elite institutions than in the mass ones: Ivys do not employ significant numbers of adjuncts, for instance, whereas among higher education in general, over 70% is now conducted by this piecework layer, paid starvation wages. Most research is now conducted by people hired, not on a permanent basis, but on a limited-term contract basis: these are the largest tier in a top university. At present, this group is broadly but not wholly oriented to its faculty overlords, and they to their security and comfort, but these are forces which can change, and change quickly. Look at the letter from over a dozen historians criticizing Robert Service's biography of Trotsky. Or just this week, the work of three academics to expose postmodernist charlatans within the academy.

Students and youth cannot be dismissed, and that is why the SEP conducts a political fight through its International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) even at major ideological centers of reaction like New York University.

lovely answer : you articulate well the truths of your past, and the petit-bourgeois class of arrogant but deformed intellects, with so few humane instincts of the heart, that you endured, but did not bow to ! thank you --

This was interesting to read, so thank you. I too survived the idiocy of elite college admissions. There was this notion that getting into a good school was the sole meaning of life. Everyone wanted to know what admissions people were looking for. More musicians this year? A piccolo player maybe? A nationally recognized aspiring entomologist? Someone who ran a great lemonade stand and knows Sanskrit? Tell us! Please!

And I agree with your critique of "volunteering." What a filthy sham! In order to graduate from many high schools now you are required to volunteer. So, in order to better yourself, you have to become one of George Bush senior's "thousand points of light." I get the impression that these institutions want to recruit people who are adept at faking concern for others.

The student life you describe at Harvard really shocks one's conscience. It sounds more like a large Skull and Bones group than a university. I think this lawsuit is going to irreparably hurt their reputation, or what remains of it. Thanks again for your comment.

skull and bones ! such neo-fascism lurks everywhere in such universities !

Great and moving story !

very interesting and valuable, thank you for expressing such frankness and political insight.

Do you really think the Trump government is siding with the plaintiffs here because they believe in the same cause you are espousing? There are a lot of qualified students who don't get into Harvard. Most of these Asian students who are rejected end up in equally schools so where is the injustice here? What you are overlooking in your analysis is this false perception that one has to go to an elite school to be successful.

The entire concept of "success" in bourgeois capitalist terms is just not going to find a lot of sympathy here among the editorial staff - and rightly not so....among the comment pool?thats another matter some days.

There is of course a right-wing attack on affirmative action, which is the defense of the status quo, with its legacy admissions, its "traditional" elitism. Affirmative action plays completely into the hands of this reactionary view. The left-wing, socialist critique of affirmative action is exactly the opposite, as this article makes clear: the removal of legacy and all discriminatory provisions, and open admissions and free quality higher education for all. Where are the resources going to come from for that?? To ask the question is to answer it.

" The left-wing, socialist critique of affirmative action is exactly the opposite, as this article makes clear: the removal of legacy and all discriminatory provisions, and open admissions and free quality higher education for all."

YES! including discrimination based on arbitrary concepts of competitive "excellence" . Admissions "for all". First come first serve...etc.,etc..let the TRULY "qualified" excel, or the unqualified truly fail , if they truly "deserve" to .But let it be based on actual merit .Not arbitrary, socially biased bourgeois admissions criteria

Of course Trump is not espousing our views. A plain reading of the article makes that abundantly clear. If the highly qualified Asians go to other good schools, you ask, Where is the injustice? Suppose I said "there are many restaurants that blacks can eat at" in defense of my racially exclusive diner? Or, "there are plenty of apartments that Muslims can rent, just not in this neighborhood where we forbid it."

I would say that there are greater injustices: mass interment of children without their parents, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia or Syria, the lack of treatment for opiate addicts; one can go on, and we certainly do go on. The existence of greater injustices doesn't negate the smaller ones. As Lenin taught us, we agitate among all layers of the population against all capitalist injustices. We defend the democratic rights of unpopular people, even bourgeois reactionaries.

One further point. You say: "there are a lot of qualified students who don't get into Harvard." Sure, and when you examine the admissions process, you see it's not just a blooper, some get in and oops, others don't. There is a discriminatory logic to it, which takes as its starting point the false scarcity of education, a consequence of capitalism. We are neither cheerleaders for the lawsuit (again, it's clear in the article!) nor do we twist ourselves into knots defending affirmative action as the liberals and fake-lefts do. There is a certain nuance here that you must consider more carefully.

Warmest regards,
EH

wonderful, precise reply ! and you are generous and fair to those you teach, EH --

"What you are overlooking in your analysis is this false perception that one has to go to an elite school to be successful."

The absurdity of idealist subjectivism in action. You might as well say:

What you are overlooking in your analysis is this false perception that one will get cancer it they smoke cigarettes.

My 97 year old uncle Matty smoked 2 packs a day for 70 years and still does jumping jacks and...

I agree thus. Prestigious schools not only have an oligopoly on the most learned professors and the bankroll to support their research, but every employer in upper-level fields takes notice of applicants that can list one of the Ivys as their alma mater.

The scarcity in education that the author seems to think is mythical, is very real. It is a product of capitalism, but it still materially exists. The amount of investment that would need to be poured into higher education in order to match the real demand would be enormous. We'd be talking about building something the size of the fictional Academy City <emph>just</emph> to serve the US, let alone everyone else.

On a more essential level, we should consider that there may be people who would simply not benefit from higher education, because of their neural wiring or personal dispositions or whatever, and may be more comfortable in simpler jobs, but are every bit as necessary for the functioning of society as the vaunted titles of doctor, lawyer, banker, and corporate executive. The fact that one must choose and be suited to this selection of academic-heavy work in order to enjoy a decent life, is itself an injustice on top of the capital-labor dichotomy.