> This is institutionalized racism. Perhaps Affirmative Action was needed in the past

Affirmative Action is institutionalized discrimination, at least when used to promote some groups over others. (Though it didn’t start that way; it started as a call to be purely race-blind in hiring.) I wouldn’t call it racism though, because it’s not based on any belief that races have different capability, it is purely intended to correct systemic bias based on the belief that races are equally capable.

> it was past due to get rid of it

This might be true, but there are still achievement and pay gaps in the US. There are lots of debates about why, and I don’t want to start one. I’m just curious how else to solve systemic biases if they’re still here. The whole problem with cultural bias is it’s sticky and difficult and people don’t believe they have biases. Today’s politics has done a lot to convince me that we haven’t solved it yet, but at the same time I’ll be the first to point out that we’ve come a long way even in my lifetime. The last little bit might take longer to fix than suffrage did just because of how subtle the issues are. If we take any preferential treatment off the table, preferential treatment that tries to artificially force equal opportunity, the question is what’s the alternative? We might have momentum, and do nothing might work, but what if it doesn’t? Wouldn’t that also be a form of institutionalized discrimination, effectively, like it was before Affirmative Action existed?

You didn't think the 50% admit rate for athletes, 40% admit rate for deans interest ie large cash donors, and 35% legacy admit rate were "the whole think"?

What data do you have to support the assertion that affirmative action is no longer necessary to ensure proper representation of minorities on campus?

I'm open to arguments that there are better ways to achieve the goal of equitable access to higher eduction, but looking at enrollment numbers, the problem is far from solved.

Yes but there's some nuance. I don't think Harvard admission is necessary for Affirmative Action goals. We're talking about a tiny minority of people who attend. In my own opinion, we're looking at rival elite groups fighting with each other.

The SFFA lawsuit targeted Harvard specifically and made the claim not that Affirmative Action was a problem but that secretive racial policies to help whites at the expense of Asians were. There wasn't any direct evidence of it and it's kind of laughable to think Harvard would do that. The SC didn't evaluate that claim and just struck down using race for admissions. But that doesn't mean you can't ask people to write a diversity essay about their race and grade them on that.

Harvard's present demographics[1]:

    Of students in the class who self-identified their race, 11.5 percent
    identified as African American or Black, 41 percent identified as Asian 
    American, 11 percent identified as Hispanic or Latino, and nearly 2 percent 
    identified as Native American, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander.

[1]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2025/10/class-of-2029...

If you treat prestige acceptance rates as a derivative of the progression of racial policy, it absolutely makes sense why affirmative action is in place given the history of racial justice in America.

Can you really claim that the trend won't reverse if purely meritocratic admissions are reinstated (disregarding legacy admits...although very unfair to disregard since their racial makeup heavily tracks with asian/white/etc)

It's simply a single lever to change the racial makeup of the upper class. And certainly it goes both ways, but to simply remove it with no solution implies a regression to the former system, which was all but equal, much less equitable.

Do consider the incentives of those developing the model that made those predictions. Afaict, it was not selected for purpose other than testimony.