09.03 美司法部：哈佛招生系统性歧视亚裔美国人

美司法部：哈佛招生系统性歧视亚裔美国人

Asian-American Students Suing Harvard Over Affirmative Action Win Justice Dept. Support

KATIE BENNER

2018年8月31日

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department lent its support Thursday to students who are suing Harvard University over affirmative action policies that they claim discriminate against Asian-American applicants, in a case that could have far-reaching consequences for the use of affirmative action in college admissions.

华盛顿——美国司法部周四向正在起诉哈佛大学的学生提供支持，这些学生称，该大学使用平权行动政策，歧视亚裔美国申请者，这个案例可能会对在大学招生中使用平权行动产生深远影响。

In a statement of interest, the department supported the claims of the plaintiffs, a group of Asian-Americans rejected by Harvard. They contend that Harvard has systematically discriminated against them by artificially capping the number of qualified Asian-Americans from attending the school to advance less-qualified students of other races.

在一份利益声明中，司法部支持原告，即一群被哈佛拒绝的亚裔美国人的主张。他们认为，哈佛通过人为限制合格亚裔美国人的入学人数，促进其他种族的不合格学生入学，从而对他们构成系统性歧视。

“Harvard has failed to carry its demanding burden to show that its use of race does not inflict unlawful racial discrimination on Asian-Americans,” the Justice Department said in its filing.

“哈佛未能承担其备受需要的责任，表明其对种族因素的使用不会对亚裔美国人造成非法种族歧视，”司法部在提交给法院的文件中称。

The filing said that Harvard “uses a vague ‘personal rating’ that harms Asian-American applicants’ chances for admission and may be infected with racial bias; engages in unlawful racial balancing; and has never seriously considered race-neutral alternatives in its more than 45 years of using race to make admissions decisions.”

该文件称，哈佛“使用模糊的‘个人评级’，可能会受到种族偏见的影响，损害亚裔美国申请人的入学机会；实施非法的种族平衡；在超过45年的时间里使用种族因素做出录取决定的过程中，从未认真考虑过种族中立的其他选项。”

The Justice Department has increasingly used such statements of interest to intervene in civil rights cases. Before 2006, such statements appeared only seven times in civil rights-oriented disputes, according to a recent paper by law school student Victor Zapana. From 2006 to 2011, they were drafted in at least 242, almost all by the Obama administration on issues such as videotaping police brutality and ensuring that blind people and their service dogs have access to Uber.

司法部越来越多地利用这种利益声明干预民权案件。根据法学院学生维克多·扎帕纳(Victor Zapana)最近的一篇论文，在2006年之前，这些声明在民权纠纷中只出现了7次。从2006年到2011年，共有至少242个这样的声明，几乎全由奥巴马政府起草，例如给警察的残暴行为拍录像，以及确保盲人及其导盲犬可以使用优步(Uber)。

But the Trump administration is turning the same tool against affirmative action in college admissions, a major — and highly contentious — legacy of the civil rights era, and one that white conservatives have opposed for decades. In the past few years, the anti-affirmative action cause has been joined by Asian-Americans who argue that they are being held to a higher standard, losing out on coveted slots at places like Harvard as African-Americans, Latinos and other groups get a boost.

但特朗普政府正在使用同样的工具，反对大学录取中的平权行动，它是民权时代一个重大且极具争议性的遗产，几十年来一直遭到白人保守派反对。在过去的几年里，亚裔美国人加入了反平权行动的行列，他们认为自己被适用了更高的标准，使得他们在竞争哈佛大学入学资格等令人向往的名额时，败给非裔美国人、拉丁裔和其他团体。

A handful of states ban public universities from relying on affirmative action, pushing several toward a model that takes socioeconomic factors into account instead of race. Public universities in California and Washington have tried to engineer class-based diversity in their student bodies, believing that giving a lift to lower-income students will end up bringing in more minority students as well.

少数几个州禁止公立大学依靠平权行动，这令一些大学推行更多考虑社会经济因素而不是种族因素的模式。加利福尼亚州和华盛顿州的公立大学试图在他们的学生中设计基于阶级的多样性，他们认为鼓励低收入学生最终会导致更多的少数族裔学生入学。

But these methods have not produced classes with an ethnic makeup that mirrors that of the states where they have been used, and many selective private universities continue to admit students partly on the basis of race — though, until Harvard was forced to detail its internal admissions policies recently, few could say how elite universities actually weighed applicants’ race.

但是这些方法并没有形成能够反映这些州族裔构成的阶级，而且许多择优录取的私立大学继续部分基于种族录取学生——但是，直到最近哈佛被迫详细介绍其内部招生政策，之前几乎没人能说清，精英大学实际上对申请人的种族是如何考虑的。

Now, universities that factor race into admissions have found a powerful new opponent in the Trump administration, which argued in its filing Thursday that the court should deny Harvard’s request to dismiss the case before trial.

现在，在招生中考虑种族因素的大学在特朗普政府中有了一个强有力的新对手，司法部在周四提交的文件中称，法院应该否决哈佛在审判前驳回此案的请求。

The government said Supreme Court rulings require universities considering race in admissions meet several standards. They must define their diversity-related goals and show that they cannot meet those goals without using race as a factor in admissions decisions.

政府表示，最高法院的裁决要求，大学在入学时考虑种族因素，需要符合几个标准。它们必须定义与多样性相关的目标，并表明如果不将种族作为入学决策的一个因素就无法实现这些目标。

The department argued that Harvard does not adequately explain how race factors into its admissions decisions, leaving open the possibility that the university is going beyond what the law allows.

司法部提出，哈佛没有充分解释种族因素是如何影响其招生决定的，使这所大学有可能作出超越法律允许的范围。

“Harvard has failed to show that it does not unlawfully discriminate against Asian-Americans,” the Justice Department said in a statement Thursday.

“哈佛未能证明它没有非法歧视亚裔美国人，”司法部在周四的一则声明中表示。

Harvard said it was “deeply disappointed” but not surprised “given the highly irregular investigation the DOJ has engaged in thus far.”

哈佛表示“非常失望”，但“鉴于迄今为止司法部参与的极为不合规的调查”，对此并不感到意外。

“Harvard does not discriminate against applicants from any group, and will continue to vigorously defend the legal right of every college and university to consider race as one factor among many in college admissions, which the Supreme Court has consistently upheld for more than 40 years.

“哈佛不歧视来自任何群体的申请者，也将继续积极维护每一所学院和大学将种族作为大学招生因素之一的合法权利，而最高法院已经支持该权利超过40年了。”

A broad coalition of Harvard supporters filed briefs in support of the school Thursday condemning the lawsuit and saying that it would effectively threaten diversity at all American colleges.

周四，一个由哈佛支持者组成的广泛联盟提交了摘要，对这所高校表示支持，谴责了这起诉讼，并且表示它会对美国大学的多元化构成威胁。

Those groups include 25 alumni and student groups represented by the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the American Civil Liberties Union, a group of economists who criticized the experts whose work was used in the original lawsuit and a group of 531 social scientists and academics who study access to college.

这些群体包括25个校友和学生团体，出面代表它们的是全国有色人种协进会(NAACP)的法律抗辩和教育基金会；美国公民自由联盟(American Civil Liberties Union)；一个经济学家团体，他们批评了那些研究成果用于原诉讼的专家；以及一群由531人组成、研究大学招生的社会科学家及学者。

“Eliminating race-conscious admissions would disproportionately harm applicants of color, including some Asian-Americans,” Harvard alumni said in their filing.

“消除带有种族意识的招生政策，会不成比例地损害到有色人种申请者的利益，其中就包括亚裔美国人，”哈佛校友在他们的文件中表示。

“Applicants’ opportunities to amass credentials that make for a competitive college application are greatly affected by race,” alumni and students wrote. “Given racial bias in standardized testing and endemic racial inequities,” they said the school must continue to consider race.

“在一所竞争激烈的院校录取资格的竞逐中，申请者积累申请所需证书的机会，深受其种族的影响，”校友和学生写道。“鉴于标准化考试及地方性种族不平等的种族偏见”，他们表示学校必须继续将种族纳入考量。

The Harvard case, which was brought by an anti-affirmative-action group called Students for Fair Admissions, is seen as a test of whether a decadeslong effort by conservative politicians and advocates to roll back affirmative action policies will ultimately succeed. The Education and Justice departments said in July that the administration was abandoning Obama-era policies that asked universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses and would favor race-blind admissions instead.

哈佛案原告为反平权行动组织“大学生公平录取”(Students for Fair Admissions)，该案被视为保守派政客和维权者几十年来推翻平权行动的努力是否能最终成功的检验。教育部和司法部7月曾表示，特朗普政府正在抛弃奥巴马时代的政策，支持不分种族的招生政策。奥巴马时代的政策要求大学在让校园变得多元化方面将种族纳入考虑因素。

Officials from both departments said the Obama administration had used guidelines to circumvent Congress and the courts to create affirmative action policies that went beyond existing law.

两个部门的官员均表示，奥巴马政府利用指导方针绕过国会和法院，制定了超越现行法律的平权行动政策。

Civil rights leaders and others argue that this stance effectively undermines decades of policy progress that created opportunity for minorities.

民权领袖及其他人认为，这一立场实际上破坏了数十年为少数族裔创造机会的政策进步。

At the heart of the case is whether Harvard’s admissions staff hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than applicants of other racial or ethnic groups, and whether they use subjective measures, like personal scores, to cap the number of Asian students accepted to the school.

该案核心问题在于，相较于其他种族和民族，哈佛的招生工作人员是否对亚裔申请者有更高要求，并且他们是否采用了例如个性评分这样的主观衡量标准，来控制录取亚裔学生的数量。

“Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s,” Students for Fair Admissions said in a court filing.

“如今哈佛采取的歧视和刻板成见措施，与该校在1920年代和1930年代调整犹太申请者定额的方式一样，”大学生公平录取组织在一份法庭文件中表示。

Harvard, which admitted less than 5 percent of its applicants this year, said that its own analysis did not find discrimination.

每年录取人数不到申请者5%的哈佛大学表示，该校的分析没有发现存在歧视情况。

A trial in the case has been scheduled for October.

该案庭审定于10月开始。