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With affirmative action gone, preserving racial diversity at Harvard is harder than ever. So why did the University just shut down one of its best means of doing so?

In May, Harvard quietly ended the Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program, a student-led outreach effort dating back half a century. News of the decision surfaced only now amid mounting federal pressure to purge anything that resembles race-conscious programming in the wake of the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions decision.

But UMRP was not an admissions program at all — it focused exclusively on recruitment. To the extent reaching out to qualified minority applicants is a crime, Harvard should litigate it in court.

The devil is in the details. Far from offering any semblance of an admissions boost, the separate program sent student coordinators to visit schools, answer questions, and send encouraging emails to high-achieving underrepresented students to throw their hats in the ring. It should go without saying: Encouraging students to apply to Harvard shouldn’t be illegal.

On its face, the program appeared to be successful — as of 2012 UMRP contacted the vast majority of minority students who later enrolled at Harvard. We can only speculate as to what percentage of such students would feel confident submitting an application without the guidance of the now-axed program. Without the presence of affirmative action, UMRP was an admissions-agnostic procedure that worked simply to increase the pool of qualified minority applicants, a necessary precondition for a diverse class.

And it did so while preserving meritocracy. Harvard’s outreach relied on academic indicators, including PSAT scores. Far from a push through the door, the program simply invited qualified students who might otherwise self-select out of applying to consider our institution.

The context adds insult to injury. While UMRP quietly has been quietly gutted, Harvard’s implicit feeder school recruitment efforts churn on. Feeder schools host admissions representatives, run essay bootcamps, and lend their students troves of information about applying. The Dalton School says over 100 college representatives visit each fall, Phillips Academy Andover’s “College Fair” draws 100+ colleges, and others run counselor-led essay workshops.

Underresourced schools simply can’t compete, and targeted outreach tells students without a feeder-style counseling office that Harvard isn’t a fantasy. It’s not about overlooking merit — it’s about making sure merit isn’t overlooked.

With the move, Harvard has continued its alarming tradition of convenient secrecy — publicizing its defense of science while taciturnly cancelling UMRP. If Harvard wants to claim that its new “Recruitment Ambassadors” program can match the UMRP’s reach, it should prove it by providing insight into its efforts and how they will accomplish Harvard’s recruitment goals.

When it doesn’t, Harvard broadcasts that it’s more afraid of headlines than committed to access. Most of all, opacity betrays the prospective students who deserve a University committed to equal access.

Compliance with SFFA is non-negotiable, but retreat from equal access is not. The constitutional routes forward abound — like when Harvard joined Questbridge’s National College Match — but these must complement, not replace, robust recruitment efforts reaching underrepresented communities.

And if a lawful, race-neutral recruitment program is challenged, Harvard should be ready to defend it in the courts and in the public square.

So reinstate UMRP, or stand up an equally muscular replacement. Harvard cannot claim to educate society’s leaders while quietly pulling up the ladder that helped so many find the first rung.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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