tic inquiry, yet student members do make Clockwise from top right: sure that the publication comes out four the Advocate’s editors in 1869; the December 1967 times a year, despite the vagaries of under- cover, by Taite S. Walkonen graduate life and the magazine’s seemingly ’69; editors playing to the constant money problems. “It’s kind of an camera circa 1900-1910; organizational miracle the way people were the September 1950 cover, by Edward St. J. Gorey ’50 delegated to do things like tutor [other stu- dents through the comp process] and make students comping the fiction decisions,” says Jacobs. board had to read Hindsight may, of course, give student “They Ride Us,” work a polish it actually lacked. My friend a story written the writer and translator Jessica Sequeira ’11 “by a mythical fig- recently forwarded to me responses to the ure, Caleb Crain, many query letters she sent as a features- which just seemed board editor seeking contributions from like a pseudonym.” established writers. “Dear Jessica, Do you When he moved mean November 19 2010? That is eleven days to New York lat- from now. It takes me months to think of er on, Greif said, things. All the best, Colm [Toibin].” “I went to a par- Yet Mark Greif ’97 found professional im- ty at The Nation, plications in the characteristic impractical- where there was a ity of fellow Advocate members. “The fact of bespectacled person sitting on a banquette. of debauchery.” Yet having other people around you who are Someone said, ‘Have you met Caleb?’ ” I said the 150th celebra- preparing for that particular life, with all of ‘Not Caleb Crain! Author of “They Ride Us!” ’ ” tion ended almost calmly, until in their or- its ups and downs and sacrifices and glories, (“For a while I worried that I had peaked ear- derly departure, too many guests crowded even while at other parts of Harvard peo- ly and that that [story] was going to be my into the elevator and broke it. Stragglers ple were really oriented to money or public most famous work,” says Crain ’89, author of left through the back exit. life—it was really important in giving me the critically acclaimed novel Necessary Errors.) vmadeleine schwartz the idea that you could go do it,” he said. In a corner, a young man was talking HARVARD UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES HARVARD Greif is one of the ones who did “do it”— about undergraduate exorbitance. There’s Madeleine Schwartz ’12, a former Ledecky Under- about 10 years out of college, he founded the a reason, he was saying, that the event graduate Fellow at Harvard Magazine, was art literary magazine N+1 along with several other planner of the Advocate is called the “Dio- editor of the Advocate from 2010 to 2011. She is assis- Advocate graduates. (N+1 is the closest we have nysus.” “Every party reached new heights tant editor of The New York Review of Books. to the Advocate in the outside world, says New Yorker writer and Advocate board member D.T. Max ’83.) N+1 editor Ben Kunkel had read his News Briefs of Higher Education, Mark G. Yudof (former inspiring stories at the Advocate “to a rapt au- president of the University of California and dience,” says Greif. Fellow editor Keith Ges- College Admissions Challenges the University of Minnesota, and chancel- sen ’97 was among those who heard Kunkel In late june, the U.S. Supreme Court up- lor of the University of Texas at Austin) and read, though he was not a member of the held the limited use of race in admissions Rachel F. Moran (dean emerita at UCLA magazine. “Arriving and finding theAdvocate decisions, ruling in its second pass at Fish- School of Law) observed that “the patch- to be incredibly pretentious was just one of er v. University of Texas at Austin that properly work of state approaches to affirmative ac- the disappointments that I experienced [at constrained processes for reviewing appli- tion will persist, and every program of col- Harvard],” he says now. (He did later pub- cants pass constitutional muster. Harvard lege admissions that treats race as a factor lish a story in the magazine as an upperclass- had filed a brief in support of upholding the will be judged on its particular facts. Like man, an imitation of Pale Fire, “which I’m sure Texas procedures. (Read an analysis at har- [Justice] Powell before him [in Bakke], Jus- if a freshman read it, it would have sounded vardmag.com/fishercase-16.) tice Kennedy has left the courthouse door very pretentious.”) N+1 also found one of its This is the third time the court has ruled open to future litigation, even at the Uni- first writers in the pages of the undergradu- on public institutions’ consideration of race versity of Texas” in his Fisher decision. Given ate magazine. “Keith said, ‘Wasn’t there that in admissions­­ (following the 1978 Bakke an Inside Higher Education-Gallup poll finding tall Turkish girl who wrote something amaz- and 2003 Grutter decisions). These rulings soon after that ruling (majorities opposed ing?’” Kunkel remembers. That is how Batu- would seem to establish, nationwide, the any consideration of gender, race or ethnic- man started contributing. principles underlying consideration of ap- ity, or legacy status in admissions)—such The Advocate honored N+1, as well as Louis plicants’ broad qualifications, going beyond challenges seem likely. Begley and John Ashbery, at the anniversary single metrics such as grade-point average At least one such action—the 2014 Proj- party. Alums described how the Advocate had or standardized-test scores. But some ana- ect on Fair Representation/Students for appeared in unexpected ways after they left lysts think the issues remain subject to fur- Fair Admissions (SFFA) lawsuit alleging college. For years, as Greif had recalled earlier, ther legal challenge. Writing for The Chronicle that Harvard discriminates against Asian

Harvard Magazine 27 Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746 John Harvard's Journal

Americans—continues. (Background on the William F. Lee, a distinguished trial law- in diversifying faculty ranks from 1999 to case appears at harvardmag.com/sffa-16.) yer (and the University’s highest-ranking 2007, Yale suffered a “lost decade” under the That suit, filed under Title VI of the Civil Asian-American governing official). pressure of financial constraint—with par- Rights Act of 1964—therefore applicable to Elsewhere, the Asian American Coali- ticularly severe effects on the retention of a private entity—asserts that “the proper tion for Education asked the departments of underrepresented minority and junior fac- judicial response” is “the outright prohibi- education and justice on May 23 to investi- ulty members. The report made 19 recom- tion of racial preferences in university ad- gate alleged discrimination at Brown, Dart- mendations, ranging from a clear institu- missions—period.” Activity associated with mouth, and Yale—and require Ivy League tional commitment to fostering faculty and the suit had been deferred pending the Fisher colleges to cease engaging in admissions curricular diversity, to disseminating better decision; it has now resumed. practices that it maintains are discrimina- data and performance metrics, and targeting The SFFA case claims that Bakke was tory. The institutions “apply racist stereo- Yale’s $25-million fund to match departmen- wrongly decided (an argument likely weak- types and racial bias in their ‘holistic’ evalu- tal diversity initiatives. Survey research re- ened after Fisher); that even if Bakke is the ation of Asian-American candidates” and vealed much higher levels of dissatisfaction law, Harvard violates it by considering race “maintain a racial balance of Asian-Amer- among faculty members who are women or too heavily in undergraduate admissions; ican enrollment at an artificially low level, underrepresented minorities. That finding and that the College imposes an illegal quo- imposing an unlawful quota,” according to is consistent with “climate” surveys con- ta on Asian-American applicants. SFFA filed the complaint. It was countered by a state- ducted at Harvard and elsewhere (see “How a similar action against the University of ment from Asian Americans Advancing Jus- the Faculty Feels,” September-October 2014, North Carolina. tice in support of the institutions’ admis- page 21)—reflecting family-care demands, A protracted period of discovery likely sions practices. A similar federal complaint burdens of committee and other academic lies ahead. Making the second and third against Harvard was dismissed, in light of service, and relatively small peer cohorts. claims will depend on securing access to the SFFA lawsuit entailing the same issues. Achieving sustained gains in diversity has aggregate admissions data, and perhaps to Princeton’s admissions practices, also sub- proven difficult during a period of restrained individual records; Harvard will surely ob- ject to this kind of administrative challenge, growth. Data compiled by Harvard’s senior ject strongly to the latter, given that appli- were upheld upon federal review. vice provost for faculty development and di- cants expected their information to remain versity show that the tenured ranks have be- confidential. The University may also chal- Delving into Faculty Diversity come steadily, if sometimes modestly, more lenge SFFA’s standing to press its claims, Near the end of a year of student protests diverse from academic year 2006 through since it has not, so far, identified claimants about diversity on many campuses, Yale’s 2016—but that in the junior (tenure-track) who’ve applied for admission or intend to. In new Faculty of Arts and Sciences Senate ranks, the underrepresented minority share case the lawsuit proceeds to trial, Harvard’s (Harvard has no analogous body) released has risen only one percentage point (to 11 legal team now includes both Seth P. Wax- a significant report on faculty diversity and percent) during that period. vj.s.r. man, former U.S. solicitor general, an appel- inclusivity. It found late expert, and Corporation senior fellow, that after progress

New Fellows

The magazine’s Berta Greenwald Ledecky Undergraduate Fellows for the 2016-2017 academic year will be Matthew Browne ’17 and Lily Scherlis ’18. The fellows join the editorial staff and contribute to the magazine during the year, writing the “Under- graduate” column and reporting for both the print publication and harvardmagazine.com, among other responsibilities. Browne, of West Point, New York, and Adams House, is a senior concentrating in social studies. He is a staff writer for The Harvard Advocate and a member of the Signet Society. After sum- mers previously spent doing research in a biology laboratory and working for a real-estate tech startup, Browne spent this past mer, Scherlis received an Artist Development Fellowship from summer writing freelance articles for various publications and Harvard’s Office for the Arts to focus on her painting and writ- conducting research for a senior thesis about music festivals. ing, and worked as a research assistant at the Radcliffe Institute Scherlis, who hails from Pittsburgh, is a junior pursuing a joint for Advanced Study. concentration in comparative literature and visual and environ- The fellowships are supported by Jonathan J. Ledecky ’79, mental studies. She is a staff writer for The Harvard Advocate and M.B.A. ’83, and named in honor of his mother. For updates on a member of The Harvard Lampoon’s art staff. Before arriving at past Ledecky Fellows and links to their work, see harvardmaga- Harvard, she spent a year at art school in Greece. This past sum- zine.com/donate/ledecky-fellowships.

28 September - October 2016 Photograph by Stu Rosner Reprinted from Harvard Magazine. For more information, contact Harvard Magazine, Inc. at 617-495-5746