43% of Harvard's White Students are ALDC Admits

[sanantone]

Table 10 only tells you the likelihood that current ADLC admits would have been admitted without ADLC preferences, it doesn't simulate what an admissions class would look like without those preferences in place. That is, we know those candidates have a lower chance of admission, but who would take their place without those policies in place. Table 11 gives us the answer: largely other white and Asian students. This is the exact opposite of what you and the journalists covering this story are arguing. Your narrative appears to be: whites are represented because of these "racist" policies. The reality is that without racial preference, this very study shows 66% of black and hispanic students wouldn't be admitted to Harvard. Do better.

If you read the methods section, you would know that the simulated class demographics are based on admissions probability. Admissions probabilities for various characteristics are laid out in multiple tables. If the researchers felt they could accurately calculate how the combined effects would impact the number of admits for each racial/ethic category in the counterfactuals, their expectation was that removing ALDC preferences would result in a drop of White admits that is significantly more than 6%. They focused on legacy, as opposed to child of donors or child of employees, for ease of exposition. As I have stated multiple times, the group that is most negatively impacted by ALDC preferences is Asians. 

It should also be noted that Dr. Arcidiacono, the person who wrote the study, was retained by Students for Fair Admissions. In a court case, you're going to choose an expert who will benefit your argument. I believe the stats Dr. Arcidiacono collected are accurate. However, the decision to only run certain simulations could have possibly been influenced by the fact that he was working for the plaintiffs. For balance, this is the report from Dr. Card, who was retained by Harvard. 

https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/files/di...dacted.pdf

I read the methods section of the report. If you believe the inclusion of donor and child of employee data would lead to "significantly more more than the 6%" reduction, feel free to show how you came to that conclusion. Neither the original paper, nor the one you just posted alleges such. It's just such a reach to make an allegation like that, while simultaneously ignoring the clear conclusion of the paper: that Harvard's admissions preferences are racist against Asians and it's melanin-based preferences are the sole reason 60%+ of black and hispanic students were admitted. Why exactly does all of the coverage of this paper have the same "43% of whites aren't qualified" narrative?

For the record, the original paper wasn't funded by either party to the lawsuit.

If I believe? I am paraphrasing the authors. The authors made that allegation on page 32.  

We suspect that if we were able to run these counterfactuals, the share of white admits would drop by significantly more than 6% and the share of Asian American admits would rise by more than 9%.

It doesn't matter where the funding came from. Two authors of the study were consultants/expert witnesses to SFFA in an earlier court case against Harvard. They are not a non-biased third party.

Again, your narrative is simply incoherent. Arcidiacono was an expert witness in SFFA v. Harvard trying to prove that Harvard racially discriminates against Asians. If a full non-ALDC simulation would show an increase in Asian admits, why wouldn't they run it? Perhaps his desire to protect the white supremacist ALDC scheme is stronger than his desire to assist SFFA?

I'm also rather amused at your unwillingness to address the underlying narrative of the reporting. Why is it a problem that white admits disproportionately benefit from ALDC. Clearly their motivation isn't to bolster the number of white admits. The same adcom expressly disadvantages white admits on the sole basis of their race. Again, why does all the reporting on this study  use the same "43% of white kids are admitted only because they're ALDC" narrative? Why don't any of the stories mention that 60% of African American, and 50% of hispanic, students are admitted only because of their race? At least with ALDC admits, there is some plausible primary benefit. With racial preference, it comes down to "we like how much melanin you have."

SFFA is not an Asian organization. It was started by a White man. He failed with a case using White plaintiffs, so now he's using Asian plaintiffs because they're minorities. Pitting minorities against minorities is a better legal strategy. Whether or not you agree with Harvard's reasoning or methods, they're not practicing Affirmative Action because they like melanin. Many Asians have more melanin than White Latinos. Remember that Latino and Hispanic are not races, and most Latinos in the U.S. are mixed with Spanish and Native American usually being more Spanish than Native American. Harvard's reasoning is that they believe they are correcting for racial and ethnic inequities and historical injustices. Ultimately, it's just good marketing to appear to be a socially-conscious organization. If these Ivy Plus schools truly had a preference for Black and Latino students, they wouldn't be underrepresented at almost all of these schools. 

Your narrative is incoherent. If SFFA truly wanted to win on behalf of Asians regardless of the impact on White applicants, they would have targeted all admissions preferences that negatively impact Asian applicants who are trying to gain admission based on merit. They probably would have won this case in the lower courts years ago if they didn't have a hidden agenda.