新花木兰 》 剧情介绍！！！
第一集
隋朝末年，突厥入侵，千夫长花弧勇战受伤，解甲归田。妻田氏怀胎十月，夫妻二人渴望生男，继后香火，岂料竟又是个女儿，花弧 大失所望，田氏对木兰更生厌恶。木兰长大，性格豪爽，不拘小节，常惹麻烦，花弧常为其 婚事烦恼。 灶神稣吉利躲懒好吃，木兰出言偌侮辱，稣吉利怀恨在心，向 玉帝诬陷木兰，差点使木兰丧命。 木兰与好友余承恩久别重逢，却不料承恩奉命征兵，花弧也在 名策之中，木兰不忍老父年老体衰，决定代父从军。
第二集
王母欣赏木兰志比天高，与玉帝打赌木兰必能出人投地，并命稣吉利下凡助木兰建功立业，但玉帝却暗叫稣吉利从中破坏，使他左右为难。 木兰往军营报到途中，与将军李亮结下梁子，不料李亮负责训练新兵，与木兰狭路相逢，木兰被编入伙头军，以为李亮公报私仇，二人仇怨更深。木兰找承恩相助，向元帅李崇举她。岂料稣吉利从中搞鬼。使木兰当场出丑。
第三集
稣吉利为使木兰知难而退，在伙食中暗放泻药，士兵苦不堪言，个个对着木兰大骂。李亮罚木兰打三百板子，打得她死去活来，稣吉利乘机劝说木兰放弃，但木兰不肯。 突劂可汗之弟铁勒混入军营，刺探隋军虚实，但为木兰发觉，铁勒终为李亮所擒，李崇本要把他处死，但李亮欣赏铁勒是个汉子，把他放了。
第四集
李亮舅父徐富贵贪财成性，欲包揽军营内 的采购生意，不异带妓女入军讨好相关人等。此事为木兰所知，并告之余承恩，承恩本就和李亮不和，正想大与问罪，稣吉利向二人施以法术，使李亮以为妓女是木兰带来的，双方闹得不可开交。木兰其后得知是稣吉利搞鬼，用弄逼问他是谁指使，稣吉利坦言是玉帝旨意，木兰反以为他中了邪，致有一派胡言。
第五集
木兰以为稣吉利有病，细心照顾，稣对木兰竟起了遐思，藉故亲近，诈癫纳福。突劂入侵边境，大开杀戒，余承恩主张以暴易暴，李亮反对不果。余承恩训练突击队，不异杀一儆百，以树军威。木兰知承恩派突击队偷袭突厥村落，并下令屠杀，木兰不值承恩所为，带伙头军前往阻止。李亮知道后亦赶往声援，两人不幸为突厥所擒。
第六集
木兰和李亮为突劂所擒，受尽折磨，命在旦夕。李亮为免木兰受苦，把一切包揽上身，木兰大受感动，两人尽释前嫌。 铁勒向李亮劝降，李亮指突厥必败，铁勒不信，与李亮展并模拟战，结果铁勒大败。他释放李亮和木兰，并声言有他一日，也不会再侵大隋。木兰立了大功，回营后受嘉赏。
第七集
稣吉利倾慕木兰，难以自制，乃发奋图强，加入前锋营，得以日夕亲近木兰。木兰借承恩营房洗澡，承恩发觉木兰原是妩媚少女，不禁心神荡漾。承恩劝木兰及早退役，找个如意郎君。木兰坚持一日未达理想，决不退役。 王母以稣吉利表现良好，赠以蟠桃，稣一心把蟠桃送与木兰，却给茅神偷吃了。茅神警告稣吉利别动凡心，否则必遭天谴。李亮与木兰上山巡视，两人互吐心事和理想，李亮胸襟广阔，木兰大为欣赏。皇上派太子杨勇和皇子杨广到幽州犒赏三军，岂料杨勇浪荡不羁，带了杨广到妓院逍遥。
第八集
稣吉利借醉挑情，与杨勇大打出手。李亮不知杨勇是太子，把他打得鼻青脸肿。李崇大感不安，幸杨勇认李亮是个真汉子，不予追究，众人松一口气。稣吉利为了要使自己对木兰死心，况施法以元神上了木兰的身，主动向余承恩示爱，恩错愕以为木兰跟她开玩笑。杨勇欣赏李亮不畏权势和忠君爱国，乃拜他为师，杨广对皇位早有野心，对这不禁起了猜忌。
第九集
承恩见木兰与李亮亲近，心里不悦，借小事向李亮亲信开刀，木兰直指承恩妒忌李亮。表妹徐依人倾慕李亮，亮母提议二人成亲，李亮极力反对。亮母竟装病，并买通大夫，指自己只余三个月命，李亮为成全母亲心愿，答应与依人成亲。
第十集
木兰知道了李这婚事，丧然若失，稣吉利点破她害单思病，木兰悚然心惊。承恩看在眼里，向木兰求婚，木兰拒之。木兰恐暴露出自己的女儿身份，急中生智向李亮论称胸口为狠毒的母亲用东西烧了两个洞，故不愿别人见到，以免勾起伤心往事。徐富贵知道杨广的真实身份后，为领贪求富贵想把女儿依人嫁给杨广，但杨广为了更大的野心只得推辞。
作者： 可可爱人 2005-5-22 02:46 回复此发言
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2 《新花木兰 》 剧情介绍！！！
第十一集
军市羡开张仪式中，徐富贵又要把女儿嫁于太子，众人惊愕。李亮为获母亲原谅特向太子讨人情把依人要回。余恩妒恨木兰心系李亮，找李亮比武并使诈令其受伤。承恩酒后强拉木兰要木兰嫁给他，木兰拼命挣扎。承恩酒醒，懊悔不已向木兰道歉不为木兰接受。承恩公报私仇向元帅检举木兰为女儿身但为稣吉利以法术脱身。
第十二集
木兰发现城里失踪了十几位少女，李亮与众人商议认为得以男扮女装引采花贼现身，木兰不中选。木兰的女装扮像引起军中的兄弟有非非之想，就连李亮也迷惘起来。采花贼终于出现并将掳往幽州巨富凌四公子之府。
第十三集
在凌府木兰发现有花贼竟然是二皇子李广。李亮为搭救木兰搬出太子，不意发现采花贼是二皇子，便殿下却袒护皇弟之行径，木兰与李亮均感有气。李亮因怕自己对木兰想入非非，故意疏远木兰。此时正好木兰的父亲花弧到营中探望木兰并要木兰快快离营方为上策。
第十四集
花弧探亲女儿木兰但不幸却为正在练箭的稣吉利射伤肓头，养伤阶段花弧发现木兰爱上李亮。木兰送走父亲与李亮相遇重修与好。 突厥的突然来犯。李崇要承恩和李亮献破敌大计，但两人针锋相 对，而多数将领附和李亮，承恩心理不悦。承恩鼓其如簧之舌向太 子解释作战方略，令太子大为激赏要李崇采承恩之作战方略，战乱 中，承恩与太子和军队冲散了，太子责怪承恩之计中看不中用。
第十五集
李崇担心承恩的下落向李亮吐出内心秘密，原来承恩就是他的儿 子。一干人等待救援时，李崇派木兰冒险前往向李广求援，李广为 夺太子位不愿见木兰亦不愿意发救兵，此时军营仅存一天食粮且突 厥骑兵重重包围，李崇奋战不敌，死前旗李亮将玉佩交与承恩。作战利，皇上追究责任，要追捕李亮和木兰，原来这一切都是李广为公报私仇。
第十六集
李广诬陷木兰和李亮并动以大刑，稣吉利前往求助太子之时将李 亮与木兰救出校场，但太子为向父皇有所交代只得暂时解除李亮的职务。承恩自新野一役知自己刚愎自用使得隋军死伤不计其数，受尽内疚与自责的煎熬成为乞丐。李亮带承恩来到李崇的墓前，并揭 开随恩就是李崇的独生子的秘密，遂将玉佩交与承恩，承恩激动不已。
第十七集
承恩自害死自己的父亲，抱头痛哭。李广设下陷进要害太子，导致帝后对李勇误会，恰巧突厥又来犯，皇上决定御驾亲征，而三里 屯失利一战皇上亦决定格决李亮的将军职务，李亮等人决定自己向 突厥兵卫杀。李亮等人将突厥军队人马击退，令突厥军队拔营急撤了。李亮与木兰放弃军旅生涯。李勇从稣吉利处得知亮与兰打退突 厥的经过。经皇上之命要对他们论公行赏。
第十八集
亮与兰面圣上以后得以恢复原来的军职，两人在军中声名大噪。 庆功宴中，突厥杀手混入，兰与亮救出皇上。皇上要承恩继承李崇 的爵位，承恩不愿竟出家作道士表明悔恨心足迹。稣吉利向木兰表 达心意愿照顾木兰一生一世，木兰则渴望有一位大哥即认稣吉利为 大哥。木兰留于李亮表思乡情切，木兰返乡路途中因伤势恶化命在 旦夕，稣吉利一路尾随保护。
第十九集
苏吉利想方设法治好了木兰的伤口，跟随木兰回到家，却遭到木 兰母亲的刁难，苏吉利说明木兰在宫中相救皇上并升职。知县告之 木兰家，皇上将来巡视本县，并探视木兰及家人。李亮亦随同前 往。亮对木兰不辞而别而颇有微辞，两人在街上走着，各怀心事。
第二十集
李亮因将随皇上返京接掌禁军，思及离别不禁惆怅。帝后要招木 兰为驸马，木兰推辞不果只得表明女儿身份，帝后感念木兰一片孝 心反要纳木兰为太子妃。
第二十一集
木兰不能拒绝帝后，李亮心伫难受。苏吉利想请王母娘娘帮忙， 但王母认为一切均是命数无法更改。木兰要李亮表白，李亮明知二 人结合无望，不想木兰陷深渊中，认为表白只是延续痛苦而已。木 兰赴京将与太子完婚，途中向李亮表白宁死只求与亮结为夫妻，李亮控制不住压抑已久的激情，两人遂携手私奔。亮被扣上诱拐太子 妃的罪名，御林军押走亮母，木兰不愿累及亮及家人，前往京城向 皇上负荆请罪。
作者： 可可爱人 2005-5-22 02:46 回复此发言
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3 《新花木兰 》 剧情介绍！！！
第二十二集
皇上感念木兰救命之恩及杨勇表明不愿娶木兰，帝后看在木兰又 救了杨广的份上，赦免了亮与木兰的罪，并赐他们结为夫妻。李亮与木兰拜堂成亲，依人心中不悦与亮母联手为难木兰，亮母搬出家 规要木兰遵守，木兰却使出将军府的军事重地守则令母气结。木兰 与亮夫妻恩爱，两人比武，李亮输了便替木兰打洗澡水，亮母气不过决定想办法惩治木兰。
第二十三集
苏吉利自与天兵天将大战之后被玉帝贬为凡人，要他历尽老病死 三劫，甚是潦倒，亮与木兰认为苏吉利既已是凡人，该要成家立室，但苏吉利调侃的说意中人已嫁人了。
第二十四集
吉利被贬为凡人，尚无法适应凡人的病痛，诸多不适，更有次因 腿抽筋，木兰扶吉利进屋时，依人误认木兰与吉利有奸情乘报亮 母，亮母纠众家丁不由分说将吉利打成重伤。吉利孤身一人，无人照顾，木兰因此想将吉利接进将军府中居住好就近照料，孰知亮母以家中多为女眷不便加以婉拒，亮无奈讹称吉利不能人道，亮母只得答应。
第二十五集
亮母突然间对吉利虚寒问暖，令大家不解，依人甚至为此要回 乡，亮母不得以下，只好将吉利不能人道之事告知依人，因此吉利 不能人道的谣言在家丁中流传，吉利甚为愤怒，亮见慌言被拆穿，不知如何善后，亮母误会木兰教唆亮说谎，两人明争暗斗不意先后有族中长老和皇后为木兰撑腰，亮母气愤难平，故意到尼姑庵要削 发为尼，亮大叹独生子与丈夫难为不如带兵打仗。
第二十六集
木兰为因跟亮母之间相处情形，甚为心灰意懒，无心于军中事 务，而众官兵自战胜回朝后得意忘形疏于练兵致使军心涣散，皇上 突击阅兵大感震怒，令亮等六位将军除原本兵马外另召新兵，三个月后于教场比试选出新元帅。木兰虽为女中豪杰但众人多不愿受教于女流，故招不到新兵，甚是焦虑。吉利为帮木兰，而四处找人，不管三教九流都找了进来。
第二十七集
木兰的部队，总算凑足人数，但却都是一些乌合之众，就连依人 也女扮男装混进木兰的部队。新兵训练时，各将军的队员都是朝气 勃勃，只有木兰的队员打闹成一团，溃不成军，木兰为之泄气。亮 为木兰耽心，特找杨勇商议，杨勇答应将来在皇上面前为木兰解 释。木兰为了不在再众将军面前丢人现眼，特将这群乌合之众带往 乡间，对于各位已经放弃训练的他们，各人无聊之际与村中老人切 磋武艺竟然败下阵来，老人们误以为部队故意承让，备酒菜来道谢，反让众人羞愧不已，决心全力以赴接受木兰的训练。
第二十八集
依人蓄意挑拨离间拢乱军心，正当依人向亮母报告现况时为木兰 识破，木兰以此要胁依人要用心接受训练。木兰加紧训练，各人皆用心于受训。杨广存心挑唆马忠伤李亮，岂料亮武艺略胜一畴反将 马忠刺伤，木兰与亮相互鼓励并对马忠提防。三个月之期已到，皇上下令各将以抽签方式决定比试对手，第一场由木兰与马忠同组比 试，众人各自加紧练习。
第二十九集
比试当日，木兰擅于调兵遣将以些微分数胜了马忠，众兵喜极而 泣更是发奋图强。亮及众将分别比试。众将轮番比试过后，最后由 木兰与李亮问鼎元帅之位，众将皆希望由李亮胜出，然而皇后希望 木兰能够成为第一位女元帅。两队人马使出浑身解数，千钧一发际 依人被击中，木兰为了救依人不由饮恨，亮夺得大隋元帅。
第三十集
木兰为安慰吉利谎称为顾及亮面子所以故意放水，亮听到甚表激 愤。突厥又来侵犯隋土，皇上派亮镇守，亮故意不用木兰为先锋， 木兰惊愕。杨广暗中派人刺伤刘将军，却将此事诬陷为木兰部下所 为。因刘将军受伤，杨广为挑拨李亮与木兰，而向皇上进言改派木 兰为先锋，杨广眼见亮与木兰不合心中暗喜。
第三十一集
李亮率隋军出关与众将研讨军情，亮与兰常意见不合，木兰率领 先锋营前往敌阵一探虚实，发现隋民竟死状凄惨，众人皆为此愤怒不已，誓为他们讨回公道。众人为报惨死的隋民之仇，全力一战获得全胜。所到之处民众热烈欢迎，目光全集中在木兰身上
作者： 可可爱人 2005-5-22 02:46 回复此发言
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4 《新花木兰 》 剧情介绍！！！
第三十二集
回归京城后，木兰终日忙于应酬皇亲国戚，发现李亮却郁郁寡 欢，亮母对于木兰抢尽李亮的风头，而颇有微词，李亮甚为难堪， 只好外出找寻同僚，不料却遇到出宫的勇，勇即邀亮一同前往酒 楼。李亮成日与杨勇前往妓院喝酒，却跟木兰说是到众将军家中谈 事，而木兰仍旧周旋于贵夫人中，依人发觉亮其实是与勇前往妓 院，依人以此要胁亮陪她购物，亮母查觉藉机搓合依人与亮，木兰 知道亮原来是到妓院喝酒后与亮争吵。
第三十三集
李亮与木兰争吵后，二人各自认错，木兰与亮言归于好，二人约 定往后同进同出，各自为对方推掉其他应酬。木兰与亮终日面对 面，已到了无话可说的情况，二人决定还是各自办自己的事。木兰又与各贵夫人往来，而亮受不住枯燥无味的日子，遂和勇前往妓 院。
第三十四集
木兰故意到妓院侍酒有意让亮难堪。夫妻二人失和闹得帝后皆 知，皇帝罚李勇到祖宗陵墓看守并思过，罚亮与兰免去三月俸禄。 兰生亮的气，回娘家居住，吉利前往劝解，兰坚持要亮来接她才肯 回去。亮母称木兰与亮不合之际，要撮合依人与亮，吉利发觉往千 木兰，依人向亮母说明自己已不再喜欢亮，而另有意中人，木兰与 亮彼此认错，言归于好。而依人与吉利竟彼此互有爱意，但却为了 面子都不愿承认
第三十五集
广为除去亮与兰这对眼中钉，特向皇上请求跟亮切磋武艺，看自己是否武功有所精进，假意受伤想嫁祸于亮，幸兰有先见之明，已未开封的宝剑跟广比武，避过一劫。二人为免节外生枝，告假回乡祭祖，众乡亲前来祝贺亮母，有这样一位出类拔粹的媳妇，面对亮的战功毫无提及，亮母之生气。
第三十六集
利自以为依人喜欢的是湘，为此失魂落魄。朝中多名大将陆续暴 毙，宫中人心惶惶，帝紧急召回亮兰，追查原因。帝误信为亡魂作 崇摆坛祭祀，撤销追查行动，亮兰颇为惊愕，认为是有蹊跷，只好 暗中查探，全无头绪。亮母听信江湖术士之言，以为木兰不能传宗 接代，甚为苦恼。值此际亮遭受袭击，亮母为了不使李家绝后，决 定替亮纳妾。
第三十七集
兰将上门为亮纳妾之媒人赶回，亮母气结，只好将此事延缓。利与依人这对欢喜冤家，总算互表心迹，利恐玉帝回心转意招己回天 庭，因此不想耽误依人而远走他方。亮母为求早日抱孙，偕亮前往庙宇求神拜佛，途中避雨时遇上倩，亮不意被毒蛇咬中，倩不顾自身安危，为亮吸去毒液，众人皆为倩之义举折服。
第三十八集
亮母误以为依人与湘有暧昧关系，利因无法忍受庙内清淡的伙 食，外出觅食时遇上依人，利坦承自己是落难神仙，无法与之长相 斯守，依人一怒之下不再理利。亮母要湘对依人负责，招致接二连 三 的误会，幸得亮兰在旁协助，吉利与依人总算言归和好。倩体内毒素已清除，遂要告辞回乡，亮母极力挽留，倩只好答应。
第三十九集
亮母对兰命中注定无子嗣耿耿于怀。亮母大寿将届，众人暗中准备想给亮母一个惊喜，寿宴时倩粉墨登场，吸引无数目光。广带来 旨意要兰前往边关检视兵力，兰前往时，要亮小心广。亮母替倩作媒，倩因此不告而别，途中巧遇勇，勇将倩带回行宫，相处之下，勇为倩之不凡气质所著迷。
第四十集
兰前往雁门出视查，所到之处残破不堪，将士均是老弱残兵，兰 书信知亮详情，信中对朝迁殊多不满。亮母发觉倩中意之人竟是亮。遂暗中撮合。兰返京即被关入大牢，亮及众家人亦殃及，原来兰之信件经广手转给帝，帝愤怒下令斩兰亮，幸得勇及时前往制止，后要帝慎重考虑，不要因小失大，应重视边关问题。
第四十一集
帝要兰著手改善雁门山及军中一些规则。大难过后，兰致力于改 革军规，而疏忽亮。再此时倩则三番二次对亮表明心意，利与依人 察觉特提醒兰，女人应以家庭为重，兰则不以为意，仍旧忙于军 务。勇跟帝后提出欲娶倩为太子妃，兰也觉得倩与平民女子不同， 因此帝颁下圣旨不料当晚倩即欲自缢。帝宣倩入宫问明是否为勇所 迫婚，倩直言已向勇坦承另有意中人，勇百口莫辩，帝后怒将勇送 往汴京。兰发觉亮对倩颇有好感，一怒之下回娘家。利无意中看见 倩与广碰面，利急将此事告兰，兰为他事所忙未能得知。
第四十二集
军中粮库失火，利差点葬生火窟，幸兰及时赶到救出利。兰质问倩与广有何阴谋，亮竟维护倩，兰为之痛心。依人暗中探查倩之行踪，不料反遭倩下药精神错乱，亮母为依人之病状甚为著急，碍 于有圣旨，亮母只得著手筹备亮倩之婚事。
第四十三集
亮与兰已形同陌路，反倒与倩和乐融融。利在狱中不知依人近况，倩捎来依人已得了失心疯讯息，利越狱救依人，确被亮所阻止，兰带著利自首，不料狱卒全遭惨死，兰为查明真相，暂将利安 置破庙中，不料亮及官兵追踪而至，利终被官兵押送往刑场，兰劫囚，朝廷遂四处追捕兰利二人。
第四十四集
亮纳妾之日文武百官前往道贺，兰与利乔装混入府内。倩露出真 面目，原来倩乃突厥派来歼灭隋朝之大将，终被亮给识破。亮不慎 被擒，兰为救亮，不顾生命危险奋而一扑。兰在此役中受伤甚重， 回天乏术际，利与亮诚心求天，终令兰延续寿命。历经百劫兰与亮 决心携手解甲归田。（完
Showing posts with label Chinese. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Chinese. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
What if Meritocratic = Asian?
Little Asia on the Hill
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
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By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: January 7, 2007
WHEN Jonathan Hu was going to high school in suburban Southern California, he rarely heard anyone speaking Chinese. But striding through campus on his way to class at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Hu hears Mandarin all the time, in plazas, cafeterias, classrooms, study halls, dorms and fast-food outlets. It is part of the soundtrack at this iconic university, along with Cantonese, English, Spanish and, of course, the perpetual jackhammers from the perpetual construction projects spurred by the perpetual fund drives.
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Too Many? Not Enough? Some say Asian-Americans are being denied spots at top colleges to keep their numbers in check (Asians make up 5 percent of the population). Click for percentages of Asian undergraduates at selected colleges.
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“Here, many people speak Chinese as their primary language,” says Mr. Hu, a sophomore. “It’s nice. You really feel like you don’t stand out.”
Today, he is iPod-free, a rare condition on campus, taking in the early winter sun at the dour concrete plaza of the Free Speech Movement Cafe, named for the protests led by Mario Savio in 1964, when the administration tried to muzzle political activity. “Free speech marks us off from the stones and stars,” reads a Savio quote on the cafe wall, “just below the angels.”
There are now mostly small protests, against the new chain stores invading Telegraph Avenue, just outside the campus entrance, and to save the old oak trees scheduled for removal so the football stadium can be renovated. The biggest buzz on Telegraph one week was the grand opening of a chain restaurant — the new Chipotle’s, which drew a crowd of students eager to get in. The scent of patchouli oil and reefer is long gone; the street is posted as a drug-free zone.
And at least on this morning, there is very little speech of any kind inside the Free Speech Cafe; almost without exception, students are face-planted in their laptops, silently downloading class notes, music, messages. It could be the library but for the line for lattes. On mornings like this, the public university beneath the towering campanile seems like a small, industrious city of über-students in flops.
I ask Mr. Hu what it’s like to be on a campus that is overwhelmingly Asian — what it’s like to be of the demographic moment. This fall and last, the number of Asian freshmen at Berkeley has been at a record high, about 46 percent. The overall undergraduate population is 41 percent Asian. On this golden campus, where a creek runs through a redwood grove, there are residence halls with Asian themes; good dim sum is never more than a five-minute walk away; heaping, spicy bowls of pho are served up in the Bear’s Lair cafeteria; and numerous social clubs are linked by common ancestry to countries far across the Pacific.
Mr. Hu shrugs, saying there is a fair amount of “selective self-racial segregation,” which is not unusual at a university this size: about 24,000 undergraduates. “The different ethnic groups don’t really interact that much,” he says. “There’s definitely a sense of sticking with your community.” But, he quickly adds, “People of my generation don’t look at race as that big of a deal. People here, the freshmen and sophomores, they’re pretty much like your average American teenagers.”
Spend a few days at Berkeley, on the classically manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay and the distant Pacific, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.
The revolution at Berkeley is a quiet one, a slow turning of the forces of immigration and demographics. What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill certainly does not look like the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state’s vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses.
The oft-cited goal of a public university is to be a microcosm — in this case, of the nation’s most populous, most demographically dynamic state — and to enrich the educational experience with a variety of cultures, economic backgrounds and viewpoints.
But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it — specifically, for bypassing highly credentialed Asian applicants in favor of students of color with less stellar test scores and grades.
In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics. This year, in a class of 4809, there are only 100 black freshmen at the University of California at Los Angeles — the lowest number in 33 years. At Berkeley, 3.6 percent of freshmen are black, barely half the statewide proportion. (In 1997, just before the full force of Proposition 209 went into effect, the proportion of black freshmen matched the state population, 7 percent.) The percentage of Hispanic freshmen at Berkeley (11 percent) is not even a third of the state proportion (35 percent). White freshmen (29 percent) are also below the state average (44 percent).
This is in part because getting into Berkeley — U.S. News & World Report’s top-ranked public university — has never been more daunting. There were 41,750 applicants for this year’s freshman class of 4,157. Nearly half had a weighted grade point average of 4.0 or better (weighted for advanced courses). There is even grumbling from “the old Blues” — older alumni named for the school color — “who complain because their kids can’t get in,” says Gregg Thomson, director of the Office of Student Research.
Mr. Hu applied to a lot of colleges, but Berkeley felt right for him from the start. “It’s the intellectual atmosphere — this place is intense.”
Mr. Hu says he was pressured by a professor to go into something like medicine or engineering. “It’s a stereotype, but a lot of Asians who come here just study engineering and the sciences,” he says. “I was never interested in that.”
But as the only son of professionals born in China, Mr. Hu fits the profile of Asians at Berkeley in at least one way: they are predominantly first-generation American. About 95 percent of Asian freshmen come from a family in which one or both parents were born outside the United States.
He dashes off to class, and I wander through the serene setting of Memorial Glade, in the center of campus, and then loop over to Sproul Plaza, the beating heart of the university, where dozens of tables are set up by clubs representing every conceivable ethnic group. Out of nowhere, an a cappella group, mostly Asian men, appears and starts singing a Beach Boys song. Yes, tradition still matters in California.
ACROSS the United States, at elite private and public universities, Asian enrollment is near an all-time high. Asian-Americans make up less than 5 percent of the population but typically make up 10 to 30 percent of students at the nation’s best colleges:in 2005, the last year with across-the-board numbers, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate population at Carnegie Mellon and at Stanford, 27 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14 percent at Yale and 13 percent at Princeton.
And according to advocates of race-neutral admissions policies, those numbers should be even higher.
Asians have become the “new Jews,” in the phrase of Daniel Golden, whose recent book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” is a polemic against university admissions policies. Mr. Golden, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is referring to evidence that, in the first half of the 20th century, Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students despite their outstanding academic records to maintain the primacy of upper-class Protestants. Today, he writes, “Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites. Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.”
As if to illustrate the point, a study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent) — despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks.
To force the issue on a legal level, a freshman at Yale filed a complaint in the fall with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, contending he was denied admission to Princeton because he is Asian. The student, Jian Li, the son of Chinese immigrants in Livingston, N.J., had a perfect SAT score and near-perfect grades, including numerous Advanced Placement courses.
“This is just a very, very egregious system,” Mr. Li told me. “Asians are held to different standards simply because of their race.”
To back his claim, he cites a 2005 study by Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung, both of Princeton, which concludes that if elite universities were to disregard race, Asians would fill nearly four of five spots that now go to blacks or Hispanics. Affirmative action has a neutral effect on the number of whites admitted, Mr. Li is arguing, but it raises the bar for Asians. The way Princeton selects its entering class, Mr. Li wrote in his complaint, “seems to be a calculated move by a historically white institution to protect its racial identity while at the same time maintaining a facade of progressivism.”
Private institutions can commit to affirmative action, even with state bans, but federal money could be revoked if they are found to be discriminating. Mr. Li is seeking suspension of federal financial assistance to Princeton. “I’m not seeking anything personally,” he says. “I’m happy at Yale. But I grew up thinking that in America race should not matter.”
Admissions officials have long denied that they apply quotas. Nonetheless, race is important “to ensure a diverse student body,” says Cass Cliatt, a Princeton spokeswoman. But, she adds, “Looking at the merits of race is not the same as the opposite” — discrimination.
Elite colleges like Princeton review the “total package,” in her words, looking at special talents, extracurricular interests and socioeconomics — factors like whether the applicant is the first in the family to go to college or was raised by a single mother. “There’s no set formula or standard for how we evaluate students,” she says. High grades and test scores would seem to be merely a baseline. “We turned away approximately half of applicants with maximum scores on the SAT, all three sections,” Ms. Cliatt says of the class Mr. Li would have joined.
In the last two months, the nation has seen a number of new challenges to racial engineering in schools. In November, the United States Supreme Court heard a case questioning the legality of using race in assigning students to public schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. Voters are also sending a message, having thrown out racial preferences in Michigan in November, following a lead taken by California, Texas, Florida and Washington. Last month, Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209, announced his next potential targets for a ballot initiative, including Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska.
When I ask the chancellor at Berkeley, Robert J. Birgeneau, if there is a perfect demographic recipe on this campus that likes to think of itself as the world’s finest public university — Harvard on the Hill — he demurs.
“We are a meritocracy,” he says. And — by law, he adds — the campus is supposed to be that way. If Asians made up, say, 70 percent of the campus, he insists, there would still be no attempt to reduce their numbers.
Asian enrollment at his campus actually began to ramp up well before affirmative action was banned.
Historically, Asians have faced discrimination, with exclusion laws in the 1800s that kept them from voting, owning property or legally immigrating. Many were run out of West Coast towns by mobs. But by the 1970s and ’80s, with a change in immigration laws, a surge in Asian arrivals began to change the complexion of California, and it was soon reflected in an overrepresentation at its top universities.
In the late 1980s, administrators appeared to be limiting Asian-American admissions, prompting a federal investigation. The result was an apology by the chancellor at the time, and a vow that there would be no cap on Asian enrollment.
University administrators and teachers use anguished words to describe what has happened since.
“I’ve heard from Latinos and blacks that Asians should not be considered a minority at all,” says Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at Berkeley. “What happened after they got rid of affirmative action has been a disaster — for blacks and Latinos. And for Asians it’s been a disaster because some people think the campus has become all-Asian.”
The diminishing number of African-Americans on campus is a consistent topic of discussion among black students. Some say they feel isolated, without a sense of community. “You really do feel like you stand out,” says Armilla Staley, a second-year law student. In her freshman year, she was one of only nine African-Americans in a class of 265. “I’m almost always the only black person in my class,” says Ms. Staley, who favors a return to some form of affirmative action.
“Quite frankly, when you walk around campus, it’s overwhelmingly Asian,” she says. “I don’t feel any tension between Asians and blacks, but I don’t really identify with the Asian community as a minority either.”
Walter Robinson, the director of undergraduate admissions, who is African-American, has the same impression. “The problem is that because we’re so few, we get absorbed among the masses,” he says.
Chancellor Birgeneau says he finds the low proportion of blacks and Hispanics appalling, and two years into his tenure, he has not found a remedy. To broaden the pool, the U.C. system promises to admit the top 4 percent at each high school in the state and uses “comprehensive review” — considering an applicant’s less quantifiable attributes. But the net results for a campus like Berkeley are disappointing. His university, Dr. Birgeneau says, loses talented black applicants to private universities like Stanford, where African-American enrollment was 10 percent last year — nearly three times that at Berkeley.
“I just don’t believe that in a state with three million African-Americans there is not a single engineering student for the state’s premier public university,” says the chancellor, who has called for reinstating racial preferences.
One leading critic of bringing affirmative action back to Berkeley is David A. Hollinger, chairman of its history department and author of “Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism.” He supported racial preferences before Proposition 209, but is no longer so sure. “You could argue that the campus is more diverse now,” because Asians comprise so many different cultures, says Dr. Hollinger. A little more than half of Asian freshmen at Berkeley are Chinese, the largest group, followed by Koreans, East-Indian/Pakistani, Filipino and Japanese.
He believes that Latinos are underrepresented because many come from poor agrarian families with little access to the good schools that could prepare them for the rigors of Berkeley. He points out that, on the other hand, many of the Korean students on campus are sons and daughters of parents with college degrees. In any event, he says, it is not the university’s job to fix the problems that California’s public schools produce.
Dr. Birgeneau agrees on at least one point: “I think we’re now at the point where the category of Asian is not very useful. Koreans are different from people from Sri Lanka and they’re different than Japanese. And many Chinese-Americans are a lot like Caucasians in some of their values and areas of interest.”
IF Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley: relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented? Is that the inevitable result of color-blind admissions?
Eric Liu, author of “The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker” and a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, is troubled by the assertion that the high Asian makeup of elite campuses reflects a post-racial age where merit prevails.
“I really challenge this idea of a pure meritocracy,” says Mr. Liu, who runs mentoring programs that grew out of his book “Guiding Lights: How to Mentor and Find Life’s Purpose.” Until all students — from rural outposts to impoverished urban settings — are given equal access to the Advanced Placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is bunk, he says. “They’re measuring in a fair way the results of an unfair system.”
He also says Asian-Americans are tired of having to live up to — or defend — “that tired old warhorse of the model minority.”
“We shouldn’t be calling these studying habits that help so many kids get into good schools ‘Asian values,’ ” says Mr. Liu, himself a product of Yale College and Harvard Law School. “These are values that used to be called Jewish values or Anglo-Saxon work-ethic values. The bottom line message from the family is the same: work hard, defer gratification, share sacrifice and focus on the big goal.”
Hazel R. Markus lectures on this very subject as a professor of psychology at Stanford and co-director of its Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her studies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. “You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,” she says. “Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.”
One study at the institute looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students. “This can make for some big problems,” she says, like misunderstandings between classmates. “But people are afraid to talk about these differences. And one of the fantastic opportunities of going to a Stanford or Berkeley is to learn something about other cultures, so we should be talking about it.”
As for the rise in Asian enrollment, the reason “isn’t a mystery,” Dr. Markus says. “This needs to come out and we shouldn’t hide it,” she says. “In Asian families, the No. 1 job of a child is to be a student. Being educated — that’s the most honorable thing you can do.”
BERKELEY is “Asian heaven,” as one student puts it. “When I went back East my Asian friends were like, ‘Wow, you go to Berkeley — that must be great,’ ” says Tera Nakata, who just graduated and now works in the residence halls.
You need only go to colleges in, say, the Midwest to appreciate the Asian feel of this campus. But Berkeley is freighted with the baggage of stereotypes — that it is boring socially, full of science nerds, a hard place to make friends.
“About half the students at this school spend their entire career in the library,” one person wrote in a posting on vault.com, a popular job and college search Web site.
Another wrote: “Everyone who is white joins the Greek system and everyone who isn’t joins a ‘theme house’ or is a member of a club related to race.”
There is some truth to the image, students acknowledge, but it does not do justice to the bigger experience at Berkeley. “You have the ability to stay with people who are like you and not get out of your comfort zone,” says Ms. Nakata. “But I learned a lot by mixing it up. I lived in a dorm with a lot of different races, and we would have these deep conversations all the time about race and our feelings of where we belong and where we came from.” But she also says that the “celebrate diversity aspect” of Berkeley doesn’t go deep. “We want to respect everyone’s differences, but we don’t mix socially.”
Near the end of my stay at Berkeley I met a senior, Jonathan Lee, the son of a Taiwanese father and a mother from Hong Kong. He grew up well east of Los Angeles, in the New America sprawl of fast-growing Riverside County, where his father owned a restaurant. He went to a high school where he was a minority.
“When I was in high school,” he says, “there was this notion that you’re Chinese, you must be really good in math.” But now Mr. Lee is likely to become a schoolteacher, much to the chagrin of his parents, “who don’t think it will be very lucrative.”
The story of Jon Lee’s journey at Berkeley is compelling. As president of the Asian-American Association, he has tried to dispel stereotypes of “the Dragon Lady seductress or the idea that everybody plays the piano.” His closest friends are in the club. It may seem that he has become more insular, that he has found his tribe. But Mr. Lee says he has been trying to lead other Asian students out of the university bubble. Once a week, they go into a mostly black and Hispanic middle school in the Bay Area to mentor students.
For the last five semesters, Mr. Lee has worked with one student. “I take him out for dim sum, or to Chinatown, or just talk about college and what it’s like at Cal,” he says. “We talk about race and we talk about everything. And he’s taught me a lot.”
The mentoring program came about not because of prodding by well-meaning advisers, teachers or student groups. It came about because Mr. Lee looked around at the new America and found that it looked very different from Berkeley. And much as he loves Berkeley, he knew that if he wanted to learn enough to teach, he needed to get off campus.
Timothy Egan reports for The Times from the West Coast. He won a 2006 National Book Award for “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.html?ei=5070&en=2100b567250576d4&ex=1173243600&pagewanted=all
Jim Wilson/The New York Times
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By TIMOTHY EGAN
Published: January 7, 2007
WHEN Jonathan Hu was going to high school in suburban Southern California, he rarely heard anyone speaking Chinese. But striding through campus on his way to class at the University of California, Berkeley, Mr. Hu hears Mandarin all the time, in plazas, cafeterias, classrooms, study halls, dorms and fast-food outlets. It is part of the soundtrack at this iconic university, along with Cantonese, English, Spanish and, of course, the perpetual jackhammers from the perpetual construction projects spurred by the perpetual fund drives.
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Too Many? Not Enough? Some say Asian-Americans are being denied spots at top colleges to keep their numbers in check (Asians make up 5 percent of the population). Click for percentages of Asian undergraduates at selected colleges.
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“Here, many people speak Chinese as their primary language,” says Mr. Hu, a sophomore. “It’s nice. You really feel like you don’t stand out.”
Today, he is iPod-free, a rare condition on campus, taking in the early winter sun at the dour concrete plaza of the Free Speech Movement Cafe, named for the protests led by Mario Savio in 1964, when the administration tried to muzzle political activity. “Free speech marks us off from the stones and stars,” reads a Savio quote on the cafe wall, “just below the angels.”
There are now mostly small protests, against the new chain stores invading Telegraph Avenue, just outside the campus entrance, and to save the old oak trees scheduled for removal so the football stadium can be renovated. The biggest buzz on Telegraph one week was the grand opening of a chain restaurant — the new Chipotle’s, which drew a crowd of students eager to get in. The scent of patchouli oil and reefer is long gone; the street is posted as a drug-free zone.
And at least on this morning, there is very little speech of any kind inside the Free Speech Cafe; almost without exception, students are face-planted in their laptops, silently downloading class notes, music, messages. It could be the library but for the line for lattes. On mornings like this, the public university beneath the towering campanile seems like a small, industrious city of über-students in flops.
I ask Mr. Hu what it’s like to be on a campus that is overwhelmingly Asian — what it’s like to be of the demographic moment. This fall and last, the number of Asian freshmen at Berkeley has been at a record high, about 46 percent. The overall undergraduate population is 41 percent Asian. On this golden campus, where a creek runs through a redwood grove, there are residence halls with Asian themes; good dim sum is never more than a five-minute walk away; heaping, spicy bowls of pho are served up in the Bear’s Lair cafeteria; and numerous social clubs are linked by common ancestry to countries far across the Pacific.
Mr. Hu shrugs, saying there is a fair amount of “selective self-racial segregation,” which is not unusual at a university this size: about 24,000 undergraduates. “The different ethnic groups don’t really interact that much,” he says. “There’s definitely a sense of sticking with your community.” But, he quickly adds, “People of my generation don’t look at race as that big of a deal. People here, the freshmen and sophomores, they’re pretty much like your average American teenagers.”
Spend a few days at Berkeley, on the classically manicured slope overlooking San Francisco Bay and the distant Pacific, and soon enough the sound of foreign languages becomes less distinct. This is a global campus in a global age. And more than any time in its history, it looks toward the setting sun for its identity.
The revolution at Berkeley is a quiet one, a slow turning of the forces of immigration and demographics. What is troubling to some is that the big public school on the hill certainly does not look like the ethnic face of California, which is 12 percent Asian, more than twice the national average. But it is the new face of the state’s vaunted public university system. Asians make up the largest single ethnic group, 37 percent, at its nine undergraduate campuses.
The oft-cited goal of a public university is to be a microcosm — in this case, of the nation’s most populous, most demographically dynamic state — and to enrich the educational experience with a variety of cultures, economic backgrounds and viewpoints.
But 10 years after California passed Proposition 209, voting to eliminate racial preferences in the public sector, university administrators find such balance harder to attain. At the same time, affirmative action is being challenged on a number of new fronts, in court and at state ballot boxes. And elite colleges have recently come under attack for practicing it — specifically, for bypassing highly credentialed Asian applicants in favor of students of color with less stellar test scores and grades.
In California, the rise of the Asian campus, of the strict meritocracy, has come at the expense of historically underrepresented blacks and Hispanics. This year, in a class of 4809, there are only 100 black freshmen at the University of California at Los Angeles — the lowest number in 33 years. At Berkeley, 3.6 percent of freshmen are black, barely half the statewide proportion. (In 1997, just before the full force of Proposition 209 went into effect, the proportion of black freshmen matched the state population, 7 percent.) The percentage of Hispanic freshmen at Berkeley (11 percent) is not even a third of the state proportion (35 percent). White freshmen (29 percent) are also below the state average (44 percent).
This is in part because getting into Berkeley — U.S. News & World Report’s top-ranked public university — has never been more daunting. There were 41,750 applicants for this year’s freshman class of 4,157. Nearly half had a weighted grade point average of 4.0 or better (weighted for advanced courses). There is even grumbling from “the old Blues” — older alumni named for the school color — “who complain because their kids can’t get in,” says Gregg Thomson, director of the Office of Student Research.
Mr. Hu applied to a lot of colleges, but Berkeley felt right for him from the start. “It’s the intellectual atmosphere — this place is intense.”
Mr. Hu says he was pressured by a professor to go into something like medicine or engineering. “It’s a stereotype, but a lot of Asians who come here just study engineering and the sciences,” he says. “I was never interested in that.”
But as the only son of professionals born in China, Mr. Hu fits the profile of Asians at Berkeley in at least one way: they are predominantly first-generation American. About 95 percent of Asian freshmen come from a family in which one or both parents were born outside the United States.
He dashes off to class, and I wander through the serene setting of Memorial Glade, in the center of campus, and then loop over to Sproul Plaza, the beating heart of the university, where dozens of tables are set up by clubs representing every conceivable ethnic group. Out of nowhere, an a cappella group, mostly Asian men, appears and starts singing a Beach Boys song. Yes, tradition still matters in California.
ACROSS the United States, at elite private and public universities, Asian enrollment is near an all-time high. Asian-Americans make up less than 5 percent of the population but typically make up 10 to 30 percent of students at the nation’s best colleges:in 2005, the last year with across-the-board numbers, Asians made up 24 percent of the undergraduate population at Carnegie Mellon and at Stanford, 27 percent at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 14 percent at Yale and 13 percent at Princeton.
And according to advocates of race-neutral admissions policies, those numbers should be even higher.
Asians have become the “new Jews,” in the phrase of Daniel Golden, whose recent book, “The Price of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges — and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates,” is a polemic against university admissions policies. Mr. Golden, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is referring to evidence that, in the first half of the 20th century, Ivy League schools limited the number of Jewish students despite their outstanding academic records to maintain the primacy of upper-class Protestants. Today, he writes, “Asian-Americans are the odd group out, lacking racial preferences enjoyed by other minorities and the advantages of wealth and lineage mostly accrued by upper-class whites. Asians are typecast in college admissions offices as quasi-robots programmed by their parents to ace math and science.”
As if to illustrate the point, a study released in October by the Center for Equal Opportunity, an advocacy group opposing race-conscious admissions, showed that in 2005 Asian-Americans were admitted to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, at a much lower rate (54 percent) than black applicants (71 percent) and Hispanic applicants (79 percent) — despite median SAT scores that were 140 points higher than Hispanics and 240 points higher than blacks.
To force the issue on a legal level, a freshman at Yale filed a complaint in the fall with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, contending he was denied admission to Princeton because he is Asian. The student, Jian Li, the son of Chinese immigrants in Livingston, N.J., had a perfect SAT score and near-perfect grades, including numerous Advanced Placement courses.
“This is just a very, very egregious system,” Mr. Li told me. “Asians are held to different standards simply because of their race.”
To back his claim, he cites a 2005 study by Thomas J. Espenshade and Chang Y. Chung, both of Princeton, which concludes that if elite universities were to disregard race, Asians would fill nearly four of five spots that now go to blacks or Hispanics. Affirmative action has a neutral effect on the number of whites admitted, Mr. Li is arguing, but it raises the bar for Asians. The way Princeton selects its entering class, Mr. Li wrote in his complaint, “seems to be a calculated move by a historically white institution to protect its racial identity while at the same time maintaining a facade of progressivism.”
Private institutions can commit to affirmative action, even with state bans, but federal money could be revoked if they are found to be discriminating. Mr. Li is seeking suspension of federal financial assistance to Princeton. “I’m not seeking anything personally,” he says. “I’m happy at Yale. But I grew up thinking that in America race should not matter.”
Admissions officials have long denied that they apply quotas. Nonetheless, race is important “to ensure a diverse student body,” says Cass Cliatt, a Princeton spokeswoman. But, she adds, “Looking at the merits of race is not the same as the opposite” — discrimination.
Elite colleges like Princeton review the “total package,” in her words, looking at special talents, extracurricular interests and socioeconomics — factors like whether the applicant is the first in the family to go to college or was raised by a single mother. “There’s no set formula or standard for how we evaluate students,” she says. High grades and test scores would seem to be merely a baseline. “We turned away approximately half of applicants with maximum scores on the SAT, all three sections,” Ms. Cliatt says of the class Mr. Li would have joined.
In the last two months, the nation has seen a number of new challenges to racial engineering in schools. In November, the United States Supreme Court heard a case questioning the legality of using race in assigning students to public schools in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. Voters are also sending a message, having thrown out racial preferences in Michigan in November, following a lead taken by California, Texas, Florida and Washington. Last month, Ward Connerly, the architect of Proposition 209, announced his next potential targets for a ballot initiative, including Arizona, Colorado, Missouri and Nebraska.
When I ask the chancellor at Berkeley, Robert J. Birgeneau, if there is a perfect demographic recipe on this campus that likes to think of itself as the world’s finest public university — Harvard on the Hill — he demurs.
“We are a meritocracy,” he says. And — by law, he adds — the campus is supposed to be that way. If Asians made up, say, 70 percent of the campus, he insists, there would still be no attempt to reduce their numbers.
Asian enrollment at his campus actually began to ramp up well before affirmative action was banned.
Historically, Asians have faced discrimination, with exclusion laws in the 1800s that kept them from voting, owning property or legally immigrating. Many were run out of West Coast towns by mobs. But by the 1970s and ’80s, with a change in immigration laws, a surge in Asian arrivals began to change the complexion of California, and it was soon reflected in an overrepresentation at its top universities.
In the late 1980s, administrators appeared to be limiting Asian-American admissions, prompting a federal investigation. The result was an apology by the chancellor at the time, and a vow that there would be no cap on Asian enrollment.
University administrators and teachers use anguished words to describe what has happened since.
“I’ve heard from Latinos and blacks that Asians should not be considered a minority at all,” says Elaine Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at Berkeley. “What happened after they got rid of affirmative action has been a disaster — for blacks and Latinos. And for Asians it’s been a disaster because some people think the campus has become all-Asian.”
The diminishing number of African-Americans on campus is a consistent topic of discussion among black students. Some say they feel isolated, without a sense of community. “You really do feel like you stand out,” says Armilla Staley, a second-year law student. In her freshman year, she was one of only nine African-Americans in a class of 265. “I’m almost always the only black person in my class,” says Ms. Staley, who favors a return to some form of affirmative action.
“Quite frankly, when you walk around campus, it’s overwhelmingly Asian,” she says. “I don’t feel any tension between Asians and blacks, but I don’t really identify with the Asian community as a minority either.”
Walter Robinson, the director of undergraduate admissions, who is African-American, has the same impression. “The problem is that because we’re so few, we get absorbed among the masses,” he says.
Chancellor Birgeneau says he finds the low proportion of blacks and Hispanics appalling, and two years into his tenure, he has not found a remedy. To broaden the pool, the U.C. system promises to admit the top 4 percent at each high school in the state and uses “comprehensive review” — considering an applicant’s less quantifiable attributes. But the net results for a campus like Berkeley are disappointing. His university, Dr. Birgeneau says, loses talented black applicants to private universities like Stanford, where African-American enrollment was 10 percent last year — nearly three times that at Berkeley.
“I just don’t believe that in a state with three million African-Americans there is not a single engineering student for the state’s premier public university,” says the chancellor, who has called for reinstating racial preferences.
One leading critic of bringing affirmative action back to Berkeley is David A. Hollinger, chairman of its history department and author of “Post-Ethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism.” He supported racial preferences before Proposition 209, but is no longer so sure. “You could argue that the campus is more diverse now,” because Asians comprise so many different cultures, says Dr. Hollinger. A little more than half of Asian freshmen at Berkeley are Chinese, the largest group, followed by Koreans, East-Indian/Pakistani, Filipino and Japanese.
He believes that Latinos are underrepresented because many come from poor agrarian families with little access to the good schools that could prepare them for the rigors of Berkeley. He points out that, on the other hand, many of the Korean students on campus are sons and daughters of parents with college degrees. In any event, he says, it is not the university’s job to fix the problems that California’s public schools produce.
Dr. Birgeneau agrees on at least one point: “I think we’re now at the point where the category of Asian is not very useful. Koreans are different from people from Sri Lanka and they’re different than Japanese. And many Chinese-Americans are a lot like Caucasians in some of their values and areas of interest.”
IF Berkeley is now a pure meritocracy, what does that say about the future of great American universities in the post-affirmative action age? Are we headed toward a day when all elite colleges will look something like Berkeley: relatively wealthy whites (about 60 percent of white freshmen’s families make $100,000 or more) and a large Asian plurality and everyone else underrepresented? Is that the inevitable result of color-blind admissions?
Eric Liu, author of “The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker” and a domestic policy adviser to former President Bill Clinton, is troubled by the assertion that the high Asian makeup of elite campuses reflects a post-racial age where merit prevails.
“I really challenge this idea of a pure meritocracy,” says Mr. Liu, who runs mentoring programs that grew out of his book “Guiding Lights: How to Mentor and Find Life’s Purpose.” Until all students — from rural outposts to impoverished urban settings — are given equal access to the Advanced Placement classes that have proved to be a ticket to the best colleges, then the idea of pure meritocracy is bunk, he says. “They’re measuring in a fair way the results of an unfair system.”
He also says Asian-Americans are tired of having to live up to — or defend — “that tired old warhorse of the model minority.”
“We shouldn’t be calling these studying habits that help so many kids get into good schools ‘Asian values,’ ” says Mr. Liu, himself a product of Yale College and Harvard Law School. “These are values that used to be called Jewish values or Anglo-Saxon work-ethic values. The bottom line message from the family is the same: work hard, defer gratification, share sacrifice and focus on the big goal.”
Hazel R. Markus lectures on this very subject as a professor of psychology at Stanford and co-director of its Research Institute for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. Her studies have found that Asian students do approach academics differently. Whether educated in the United States or abroad, she says, they see professors as authority figures to be listened to, not challenged in the back-and-forth Socratic tradition. “You hear some teachers say that the Asian kids get great grades but just sit there and don’t participate,” she says. “Talking and thinking are not the same thing. Being a student to some Asians means that it’s not your place to question, and that flapping your gums all day is not the best thing.”
One study at the institute looked at Asian-American students in lab courses, and found they did better solving problems alone and without conversations with other students. “This can make for some big problems,” she says, like misunderstandings between classmates. “But people are afraid to talk about these differences. And one of the fantastic opportunities of going to a Stanford or Berkeley is to learn something about other cultures, so we should be talking about it.”
As for the rise in Asian enrollment, the reason “isn’t a mystery,” Dr. Markus says. “This needs to come out and we shouldn’t hide it,” she says. “In Asian families, the No. 1 job of a child is to be a student. Being educated — that’s the most honorable thing you can do.”
BERKELEY is “Asian heaven,” as one student puts it. “When I went back East my Asian friends were like, ‘Wow, you go to Berkeley — that must be great,’ ” says Tera Nakata, who just graduated and now works in the residence halls.
You need only go to colleges in, say, the Midwest to appreciate the Asian feel of this campus. But Berkeley is freighted with the baggage of stereotypes — that it is boring socially, full of science nerds, a hard place to make friends.
“About half the students at this school spend their entire career in the library,” one person wrote in a posting on vault.com, a popular job and college search Web site.
Another wrote: “Everyone who is white joins the Greek system and everyone who isn’t joins a ‘theme house’ or is a member of a club related to race.”
There is some truth to the image, students acknowledge, but it does not do justice to the bigger experience at Berkeley. “You have the ability to stay with people who are like you and not get out of your comfort zone,” says Ms. Nakata. “But I learned a lot by mixing it up. I lived in a dorm with a lot of different races, and we would have these deep conversations all the time about race and our feelings of where we belong and where we came from.” But she also says that the “celebrate diversity aspect” of Berkeley doesn’t go deep. “We want to respect everyone’s differences, but we don’t mix socially.”
Near the end of my stay at Berkeley I met a senior, Jonathan Lee, the son of a Taiwanese father and a mother from Hong Kong. He grew up well east of Los Angeles, in the New America sprawl of fast-growing Riverside County, where his father owned a restaurant. He went to a high school where he was a minority.
“When I was in high school,” he says, “there was this notion that you’re Chinese, you must be really good in math.” But now Mr. Lee is likely to become a schoolteacher, much to the chagrin of his parents, “who don’t think it will be very lucrative.”
The story of Jon Lee’s journey at Berkeley is compelling. As president of the Asian-American Association, he has tried to dispel stereotypes of “the Dragon Lady seductress or the idea that everybody plays the piano.” His closest friends are in the club. It may seem that he has become more insular, that he has found his tribe. But Mr. Lee says he has been trying to lead other Asian students out of the university bubble. Once a week, they go into a mostly black and Hispanic middle school in the Bay Area to mentor students.
For the last five semesters, Mr. Lee has worked with one student. “I take him out for dim sum, or to Chinatown, or just talk about college and what it’s like at Cal,” he says. “We talk about race and we talk about everything. And he’s taught me a lot.”
The mentoring program came about not because of prodding by well-meaning advisers, teachers or student groups. It came about because Mr. Lee looked around at the new America and found that it looked very different from Berkeley. And much as he loves Berkeley, he knew that if he wanted to learn enough to teach, he needed to get off campus.
Timothy Egan reports for The Times from the West Coast. He won a 2006 National Book Award for “The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/07/education/edlife/07asian.html?ei=5070&en=2100b567250576d4&ex=1173243600&pagewanted=all
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