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Notes -
The whole thing could be solved by Harvard just not sucking at the federal teat. Their admissions process is only subject to strict scrutiny because they accept federal subsidies, which might lead you to wonder why the hell Harvard needs federal largesse deposited in its various accounts. Of course, research is substantially grant-funded and this ties into its own prestige system, but it seems pretty straightforward to me that if an organization wants to suck in billions of tax dollars, they must abide by the prescribed elimination of racial discrimination. I would have great admiration for Harvard if they simply said that they're so committed to discriminating against Asian-Americans and middle-American whites that they're willing to behave like an actual private institution to do that, but I suspect that this possibility will not even be briefly considered.
The situation with UNC and other flagship state universities seems much more clear - these really are supposed to be egalitarian schools, accessible to the hard-working, upwardly mobile kids of the state. That's the mission of land grant universities and I think they've done an absolutely amazing job of it. The role of these universities in creating the American knowledge economy really cannot be oversold. They do have some legitimate interest in uplift of all demographics and communities within their state, which it seems to me can be accomplished based on admitting the top X% of students from each district without respect to race. This likely results in positive discrimination for poor black and Hispanic kids, but it also provides positive discrimination for rural white kids, and has a sufficiently egalitarian and facially neutral aesthetic that it should survive all but the most vigorous pursuit of disparate impact doctrine.
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