哈佛大學(xué)是否歧視亞裔學(xué)生？

哈佛大學(xué)是否歧視亞裔學(xué)生?

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — NEARLY a century ago, Harvard had a big problem: Too many Jews. By 1922, Jews accounted for 21.5 percent of freshmen, up from 7 percent in 1900 and vastly more than at Yale or Princeton. In the Ivy League, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania had a greater proportion of Jews.

馬薩諸塞州坎布里奇——在將近一個世紀以前，哈佛大學(xué)(Harvard)有個非常嚴重的問題：猶太人太多。到1922年，猶太人在新生中所占比例為 21.5%，而1900年時僅為7%，遠遠超過了耶魯大學(xué)(Yale)或普林斯頓大學(xué)(Princeton)中猶太人的人數(shù)。在常春藤盟校(Ivy League)當中，只有哥倫比亞大學(xué)(Columbia)和賓夕法尼亞大學(xué)(University of Pennsylvania)中的猶太人較多。

Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, warned that the “Jewish invasion” would “ruin the college.” He wanted a cap: 15 percent. When faculty members balked, he stacked the admissions process to achieve the same result. Bolstered by the nativism of the time, which led to sharp immigration restrictions, Harvard’s admissions committee began using the euphemistic criteria of “character and fitness” to limit Jewish enrollment. As the sociologist Jerome Karabel has documented, these practices worked for the next three decades to suppress the number of Jewish students.

哈佛校長A·勞倫斯·洛厄爾(A. Lawrence Lowell)曾發(fā)出警告，“猶太人的入侵”將“毀滅哈佛”。他想設(shè)定一個上限：15%。當教職工反對這一提議時，他通過操縱錄取過程，達到了同樣的效果。當時，本土主義的勃發(fā)促使有關(guān)方面對移民進行了嚴格限制，哈佛大學(xué)的招生委員會開始利用“個性與適合與否”的含糊標準來限制猶太人入校。正如社會學(xué)家杰羅姆·卡拉貝爾(Jerome Karabel)所述，這些做法在接下來30年里成功限制了猶太學(xué)生的人數(shù)。

A similar injustice is at work today, against Asian-Americans. To get into the top schools, they need SAT scores that are about 140 points higher than those of their white peers. In 2008, over half of all applicants to Harvard with exceptionally high SAT scores were Asian, yet they made up only 17 percent of the entering class (now 20 percent). Asians are the fastest-growing racial group in America, but their proportion of Harvard undergraduates has been flat for two decades.

如今，出現(xiàn)了一種相似的不公正現(xiàn)象，但針對的是亞裔美國人。為了進入頂尖學(xué)校，他們學(xué)術(shù)能力評估測試(Scholastic Assessment Test，簡稱SAT)的成績必須比白人學(xué)生高出大約140分。2008年，在哈佛大學(xué)所有SAT成績非常高的申請者當中，超過一半的人都是亞裔。然而，他們在新生中所占的比例僅為17%(現(xiàn)在為20%)。亞裔是美國增長最迅速的種族，但20年來，他們在哈佛大學(xué)本科生中所占的比例卻一直變化不大。

A new lawsuit filed on behalf of Asian-American applicants offers strong evidence that Harvard engages in racial “balancing.” Admissions numbers for each racial and ethnic group have remained strikingly similar, year to year. Damningly, those rare years in which an unusually high number of Asians were admitted were followed by years in which especially few made the cut.

一個代表亞裔申請者的新訴訟案提供了強有力的證據(jù)，表明哈佛大學(xué)在使用種族“平衡”策略。每一年，每個種族和民族的錄取人數(shù)都保持著驚人的相似性。足以對哈佛大學(xué)“定罪”的是，學(xué)校在極少數(shù)年份錄取的亞裔學(xué)生人數(shù)會超過以往，但在接下來幾年，達到標準的人就會特別少。

The most common defense of the status quo is that many Asian-American applicants do well on tests but lack intangible qualities like originality or leadership. As early as 1988, William R. Fitzsimmons, Harvard’s dean of admissions, said that they were “slightly less strong on extracurricular criteria.”

對于這種現(xiàn)狀，一個最常見的理由就是，許多亞裔美國申請者能夠在考試中取得高分，但是缺乏創(chuàng)造力或領(lǐng)導(dǎo)力等抽象的品質(zhì)。早在1988年，哈佛大學(xué)招生主任威廉·R·菲茨西蒙斯(William R. Fitzsimmons)就表示，他們在“課余標準上的表現(xiàn)稍差”。

Even leaving aside the disturbing parallel with how Jews were characterized, there is little evidence that this is true. A new study of over 100,000 applicants to the University of California, Los Angeles, found no significant correlation between race and extracurricular achievements.

即便不提猶太人當初是如何被定性的，以及當下的情況與那時是如何相似，也也還有一個問題，那就是幾乎沒有證據(jù)能證明上述說法的真實性。針對加州大學(xué)洛杉磯分校(University of California, Los Angeles)逾10萬名申請者的一項新研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，種族和課外成就之間并無顯著的相關(guān)性。

The truth is not that Asians have fewer distinguishing qualities than whites; it’s that — because of a longstanding depiction of Asians as featureless or even interchangeable — they are more likely to be perceived as lacking in individuality. (As one Harvard admissions officer noted on the file of an Asian-American applicant, “He’s quiet and, of course, wants to be a doctor.”)

事實是，不是亞洲人的優(yōu)點比白人少;而是他們更容易被認定為缺乏個性，個中原因則是亞洲人經(jīng)常被描述為缺乏特色，甚至彼此之間沒有區(qū)別。(哈佛大學(xué)的一名招生工作者曾在一名亞裔申請者的文件中寫道，“他很安靜，當然，他想成為一名醫(yī)生。”)

The contribution Jews made to American life in the decades after they were maligned as unoriginal, grasping careerists speaks for itself. There is no reason to believe that today’s Asian-Americans will leave less of a mark.

在被污蔑為缺乏創(chuàng)造力、貪婪、一心追求名利地位之后數(shù)十年，猶太人為美國人的生活做出的貢獻可謂有目共睹。我們沒有理由相信，如今的亞裔美國人會做不出同樣的成績。

For all the historical parallels, there’s one big difference. In the days of Lowell, Harvard was a bastion of white Protestant elites. Anti-Semitism was rampant. Today, Harvard is a patchwork of ethnicities and religions; 15 percent of students are the first in their families to attend college. In seven years as a student and teacher at Harvard, I have never heard anyone demean Asian-Americans.

盡管與過去有眾多相似之處，這里仍然存在一個巨大差異。在洛厄爾時代，哈佛是白人新教徒精英的大本營。當時，反猶主義盛行。如今，哈佛由來自不同民族和持不同宗教信仰的人組成;15%的學(xué)生都是家族中的第一個大學(xué)生。作為學(xué)生和教師在哈佛大學(xué)度過七年之后，我從未聽到任何人對亞裔美國人加以貶損。

So why is the new discrimination tolerated? For one thing, many academics assume that higher rates of admission for Asian-Americans would come at the price of lower rates of admission for African-Americans. Opponents of affirmative action — including the Project on Fair Representation, which helped bring the new suit — like to link the two issues, but they are unrelated.

那么，人們?yōu)楹我萑踢@種新的歧視?首先，許多學(xué)者都認為，如果招收高比例的亞裔學(xué)生，就會造成非洲裔美國人的錄取比例降低。平權(quán)行動的反對者—— 其中包括參與提起新訴訟的“公平代表計劃”(Project on Fair Representation)——喜歡把這兩件事聯(lián)系起來，但它們并不相關(guān)。

As recognized by the Supreme Court, schools have an interest in recruiting a “critical mass” of minority students to obtain “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.” This justifies, in my view, admissions standards that look favorably on underrepresented groups, like African-Americans and Latinos. But it can neither explain nor justify why a student of Chinese, Korean or Indian descent is so much less likely to be admitted than a white one.

最高法院也承認，招收“足夠多”的少數(shù)族裔學(xué)生對學(xué)校有益，能讓它獲得“學(xué)生群體多元化給教育帶來的好處”。在我看來，這種說法肯定了對非洲裔和拉丁裔美國人等人數(shù)偏少的團體有利的錄取標準。但是，它并不能解釋，也沒有肯定中國、韓國或印度裔學(xué)生被錄取的可能性比白人學(xué)生低得多的現(xiàn)象。

Conservatives point to Harvard’s emphasis on enrolling African-Americans (currently 12 percent of freshmen) and Hispanics (13 percent) but overlook preferences for children of alumni (about 12 percent of students) and recruited athletes (around 13 percent). The real problem is that, in a meritocratic system, whites would be a minority — and Harvard just isn’t comfortable with that.

保守派指出，哈佛注重招收非洲裔(目前在新生中占12%)和西語裔美國人(13%)，但卻對圍繞著校友子女(約占學(xué)生人數(shù)的12%)和特招運動員(約13%)的偏好視而不見。真正的問題在于，在一個靠能力說話的體系中，白人將會成為少數(shù)群體，而哈佛只是很難接受這一點罷了。

Admission to elite colleges is a scarce good. Deciding who gets an offer inescapably involves trade-offs among competing values. Do we make excellence the only criterion — and, if so, excellence in what? Should we allocate places to those students who will profit most from them? Or to those who are most likely to give back to the community?

名校的錄取名額是一種稀缺商品。在決定誰應(yīng)該被錄取的過程中，必然會牽涉到不同價值觀的權(quán)衡。我們應(yīng)該把優(yōu)秀作為唯一標準嗎——如果是這樣，那么這種優(yōu)秀體現(xiàn)在什么方面?我們該不該把名額分配給那些將從這些名額中獲益最多的學(xué)生?抑或是錄取那些最有可能回饋社會的人?

There isn’t one right answer. But that does not mean that there aren’t some answers that are unambiguously wrong.

正確答案并非只有一個。但這并不意味著，有些答案不存在明顯錯誤。