Harvard’s discrimination against Asian Americans must end

The Justice Department confirmed last week that it is examining claims of racial discrimination against Asian Americans in university admissions. It is possible that this will result in investigations and lawsuits targeting our nation’s most competitive schools.

This is a significant and welcome development. If the Justice Department follows through — as it should — what its lawyers will find at Harvard University and other Ivy League schools is an unfair and unconstitutional process that restricts the number of Asians admitted. That should alarm all Americans.

Sadly, Harvard has a long and ugly history of using “holistic” admissions to discriminate against high-achieving minorities. As many historians have detailed, nearly 100 years ago, Harvard’s leadership believed it had too many Jews because almost a quarter of all Harvard freshmen were Jewish.

In 1920, in a letter to a colleague, Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell warned that the increasing number of Jewish students enrolling at Harvard would ultimately “ruin the college.”