Ex-president Summers pushes Harvard to end legacy admissions

Former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers is prodding the Ivy League institution to end legacy preferences in admissions, while admitting he could have done more to end the practice while he was in office.

Professor Summers issued the plea in the aftermath of the US Supreme Court rulings on racial preferences in admissions, which put heavy focus on the persistent and large-scale advantage in admissions that Harvard gives to the children of its alumni.

“No more legacy admissions,” Professor Summers, a university professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government who served as the university’s president from 2001 to 2006, wrote in a Twitter posting. “The important test for elite colleges in this era is their overall contribution to opportunity in America.”

In a subsequent exchange with Times Higher Education, Professor Summers described his attempts in office to push Harvard away from its reliance on legacy admissions, said he doubted he could have abolished the practice entirely, and acknowledged some regret over the matter.

“Fair question – I wish I had,” Professor Summers said in response to the question of why he didn’t stop legacy preferences during his tenure. “But the president of Harvard does not have dictatorial powers, so [I] doubt I could have. And as with gay marriage, certain issues become much more morally clear as time passes.

“I am proud of what happened while I was president to open up Harvard to students from poor and lower-middle-class families.”

The Supreme Court, with a conservative supermajority from three Trump administration appointees, used lawsuits involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to end decades of legal authorisation of racial preferences in college admissions decisions.

In the Harvard case, the court majority echoed assertions of the plaintiffs that Harvard could use race-neutral practices in its admissions decisions if it wants to build a more diverse student body, largely by ending the heavy preferences the university gives to legacy candidates and others, including athletes and children of donors.

Also in the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, several Massachusetts-based groups have filed a civil rights complaint with the US Department of Education asserting that Harvard’s favouritism for relatives of donors and alumni is a violation of federal law. The groups cited data showing that donor-related applicants to Harvard are nearly seven times more likely than others to win admission, and family relations of alumni are nearly six times more likely.

The Supreme Court ruling also has brought to light more cases of US universities declaring an end to their own systems of racial preferences, either recently decided or just recently publicly disclosed. Such recently reported cases include Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Maryland, College Park.

But Harvard, with the world’s largest endowment, as well as some minority-serving institutions that struggle to attract donors, have made clear their intent to maintain some level of preference for alumni in admissions decisions.

Dr Summers, in his Twitter posting, also called on Harvard and top-ranked universities to “expand their class sizes so that more can benefit from what they bring, and not defining their greatness by just how exclusive they are”.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com