The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund issued a firm rebuke of Harvard College’s new admissions guidance banning alumni interviewers from writing about race, calling the change “unlawful and discriminatory” in a December letter to University President Alan M. Garber ’76.
The Dec. 23 letter — which was also addressed to Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow Penny S. Pritzker ’81 and Admissions Dean William R. Fitzsimmons ’67 — slams recent updates to Harvard’s alumni interview handbook, which instruct interviewers not to include any information about an applicant’s race or ethnicity in their written evaluation.
In training sessions, interviewers were also told not to mention an applicant’s religion, languages spoken, or racial organizations they are a part of. Instead, they were instructed to use vague language — such as “affinity groups” or “faith events” — to describe applicants’ backgrounds, or risk having their reports thrown out.
The LDF argued that the policy change was not required by the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, when it found that Harvard’s race-conscious admissions policy was unconstitutional.
Though the 2023 ruling struck down affirmative action, it held that universities may still consider how race has shaped an applicant’s identity.
The LDF wrote that Harvard’s new policies “conflict” with the Supreme Court ruling and may violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by discriminating against students who are more likely to discuss their experiences with race in application materials.
“Because Harvard’s policy mandates the disproportionate censorship and distortion of the stories of students who are Black, people of color, or immigrants of color, Harvard is now likely engaged in racial and national origin discrimination and must immediately rescind this unlawful and discriminatory policy,” wrote Janai S. Nelson, president and director-counsel of the LDF.
A Faculty of Arts and Sciences spokesperson did not respond to several requests for comment for this article.
But in one training session, Harvard Associate Director of Admissions Maeve U. Hoffstot ’17 said the change “will help us continue to prove time and time again, as we are being asked to do these days, that we are absolutely complying by this law and really not considering race, ethnicity, or national origin in admissions.”
The letter — citing a study by Sonja B. Starr, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School — notes that a higher percentage of Black, Latino, and Asian college applicants have written about race in their application essays than white applicants in recent admissions cycles. It also pointed to the study’s finding that Black and Latino applicants were also more likely to have written about experiencing racial discrimination.
“Harvard’s censorship policy thus disproportionately targets these Black and other students of color with the alteration of their applications materials, whereas white, non-immigrant, and other applicants are free to disclose different aspects of their identities without facing the same levels of censorship,” Nelson wrote.
The LDF also criticized Harvard for not sharing the updated guidance with applicants.
“An applicant may spend their entire interview recounting an experience that is incomprehensible absent the context of race without knowing that Harvard’s censorship policy will render their interview incomprehensible,” Nelson wrote.
In the training session, Assistant Director of Admissions Annie Medina said that “we don’t want students to be debriefed on this kind of update and your limitations in writing the report.”
The LDF called for a meeting with Harvard administrators to “discuss this policy and its consequences” in the letter.
But in an interview with The Crimson, LDF senior counsel Michaele T. Young said the group had not heard back from Harvard on its request.
Asked whether the LDF was considering taking legal action against Harvard, Young declined to comment. But she said the LDF would keep striving to ensure that all applicants face a level playing field.
“We certainly wanted to reach out to Harvard’s leadership to have a conversation about the issue,” she said. “We want to see Harvard conduct its admissions process in a way that affords all applicants equal opportunity to compete for admission.”
—Staff writer Celine Muir can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @celinemuir1.
—Staff writer Alexa M. Schmitt can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @alexa_m15_s and Signal at alexaschmitt.15.
