Thousands of Pages of Redacted Harvard Admissions Data Could Become Public

The Harvard Crimson reports:

Thousands of pages of redacted Harvard admissions data—including applicants’ files and internal correspondence between admissions officers—could become public information after a judge’s ruling in a lawsuit against Harvard Tuesday.

At an April 10 hearing at the U.S. District Court in Boston, Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that, within the next two months, lawyers for Harvard University and advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions must file two near-identical sets of previously confidential Harvard admissions documents—one unredacted set to be filed under seal and one redacted version of the set to be filed publicly. These filings could total thousands of pages but will only comprise "a small fraction" of the 90,000 total pages of documents designated as "Confidential" or "Highly Confidential" that the University has given over as part of this lawsuit, according to a filing made by Harvard lawyers last week.

Nonetheless, most of the information related to Harvard's admissions will not be contained in these filings and will remain private until Judge Burroughs rules. If the case goes forward, the majority of the information will become public at a later trial.

That trial is now likely going to take place in mid-October after hearing participants discussed moving up the tentative date Tuesday. Instead of a previously proposed date in early January, the judge, Harvard, and Students for Fair Admissions spoke about holding a trial in mid-October.

Judge Burroughs determined that Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions must work together over coming months to agree on redactions for the public set of documents prior to filing. She instructed both groups they should not redact the files to the point of being “incomprehensible.”

Students for Fair Admissions, an anti-affirmative action group, first filed the lawsuit against Harvard in 2014; the suit alleges Harvard discriminates against Asian Americans in its admissions process. Harvard has repeatedly denied this accusation.

When you take money from the federal government you always take the risk of things like this....