Anti-Asian Bias Alleged at Princeton

A young Asian immigrant, Jian Li, has claimed that he was rejected by Princeton University because of an anti-Asian bias on the part of admissions decision-makers.

Consequently, the U.S. Education Department's Office for Civil Rights is reviewing Princeton's admissions process, looking for evidence of discrimination.

Critics say admission quotas remain a dirty little secret in academia.

"There is almost no other area that colleges consistently lie about," said Russell Nieli, a professor in Princeton's department of politics, who recently published an essay titled "Is there an Asian Ceiling?"

Princeton, for its part, denies using quotas. The university declined, however, to release admissions data broken down by race and test scores, spokeswoman Cass Cliatt said, "because we don't want anyone to make the mistake that we make admissions decisions by category."

The federal review at Princeton -- which adamantly denies it discriminates against Asians -- was sparked by a complaint filed in 2006 by Livingston High School graduate and Asian immigrant Jian Li. He claims he was rejected by Princeton and other elite universities despite graduating in the top 1 percent of his high school class, earning various honors outside the classroom and nailing perfect SAT scores.

Nieli said Li's complaint, because it was made by an Asian-American, may carry more weight with proponents of racial preferences.

"The people making these decisions are post-'60s guilty white limousine liberals," Nieli said. "They don't take a protest by a white person as seriously as one by a Chinese or Japanese or Korean student."

I guess it's a foregone conclusion that an anti-white bias exists but it's not considered to be discrimination. After all, we must remember that:

A commitment to "acting affirmatively to ensure diversity," Cliatt said, is not the same as discriminating.

I hope everyone else is clear on that because it sounds like double-talk to me.