Is the Ivy League's Admission Bias a 'Trade Secret'?

Princeton sues to block the government’s release of documents that could show discrimination.

Shortly after the Supreme Court’s dispiriting decision last year in Fisher v. University of Texas, which upheld the use of racial preferences in college admissions, Gallup released some encouraging poll results. More than 6 out of 10 white, black and Hispanic respondents said they disagreed with the ruling. And 7 in 10 people—including 76% of whites, 61% of Hispanics and 50% of blacks—said colleges should admit applicants based “solely on merit.”

Of course, the Supreme Court’s job is to interpret the commands of the Constitution, not opinion surveys. Still, the polling results are a reminder that the courts and the college administrators who cheered the ruling are much bigger fans of racial double standards than are the general public—even those who supposedly benefit from race-based affirmative action.

But the Gallup poll also illustrates how our national discussion of racial preferences in higher education has gotten so dated. Nowhere mentioned in the survey—and only glancingly referenced in the Fisher majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy—are Asian-Americans, though they are the country’s fastest-growing racial group and have become increasingly fed up with their treatment at elite colleges.

“The old paradigm of affirmative action being about white versus black has been completely upended,” says Edward Blum of Students for Fair Admissions....

Read the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal

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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal