Word: legacyism
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HARVARD officials usually offer two justifications for the policy of favoring legacies. Their primary reason is that legacy preference helps encourage contributions from alumni. The second is that it supposedly fosters a sense of loyalty and community with Harvard. We find both reasons morally indefensible.
Even if legacy-dependent alumni contributions did significantly affect Harvard fundraising--and we question that assertion--we would still oppose the legacy policy on moral grounds alone.
The second justification is even more flimsy. President Derek C. Bok says that legacy admissions foster a sense of "continuity" among alumni. That goal might be appropriate if Harvard were a WASP country club. But Harvard is a liberal university, whose admissions office ought to concern itself with recognizing merit...
HARVARD'S legacy policy might be a little more defensible if legacies represented a broad cross-section of American society, such that the advantage was spread around a little more equally.
This impact of the legacy policy on minority admissions is so undeniable that even Harvard admits it. In response to a complaint by Arthur T. Hu, who accused the admissions office of discrimination against Asian-Americans, Harvard attempted to justify its abnormally low acceptance rates for Asian-American applicants by...