Margaret Chin (Faculty)

Wrote a piece in Inside Higher Ed titled “Higher Education Needs More Affirmative Action, Not Less”

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When someone asks me to introduce myself, I don’t tell them my SAT scores.

Instead, I say that I was born in New York City, the daughter of working-class Chinese immigrants, who grew up in public housing and attended public schools.

I didn’t have my heart set on going to college anywhere in particular. During my junior year of high school, in 1979, I was recruited through Harvard University’s undergraduate minority recruitment program when I met Asian American student recruiters at a college fair in New York City’s Chinatown. Mind you, this was three years after Harvard began recognizing Asian Americans as a racial minority in admissions. I embraced opportunities to connect my identity with my education. My extracurriculars were excellent, but my SAT scores were not particularly outstanding. I was both excited and nervous about applying to such a prestigious school.

Well, I got in. At that time, Asian Americans made up barely 3 percent of the Class of 1980. My Class of 1984 had about 6 percent Asian Americans according to data compiled by the Coalition for a Diverse Harvard, of which I am a board member. Today, Asian Americans make up just over 25 percent of the Class of 2023 at Harvard. The importance of affirmative action clearly continues to this day, despite the ongoing concerted and disingenuous efforts to destroy it with Students for Fair Admissions’ pending cases at the University of North Carolina and the University of Texas and its appeal of a recent, highly publicized case at Harvard.

 

Read more here.