The admissions process for getting into Harvard University is kept under lock and key. And because it’s one of the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the US — if not the premier — smarty-pants from all over the world pay careful attention to who gets in, and how. And why.

This year, Harvard sent acceptance letters to a mere 4.6 percent of its applicants. But a lawsuit against the institution is accusing the school of directing a significant number of those letters away from more-deserving students of Asian descent. . .

SFFA’s suit against Harvard claims that although Asian-American students tend to apply to the school with stronger academic and extra-curricular credentials, they are unfairly “rated down” in subjective categories pertaining to personality traits.

If Harvard applicants were granted admission based solely on their academic merit, Asian-Americans would have made up more than 43 percent of the 2013 freshmen…according to a Harvard study from that same year. . .

Putting the alleged disparity in perspective, SFFA claims that an Asian-American male applicant to Harvard with a 25 percent chance of admission would actually have a much better chance if he were of another race: 35 percent chance if he was Caucasion, 75 percent if he were Hispanic, and 95 percent chance if he were African-American. (Read more from “Harvard Sued for Racial Discrimination Against Asian-Americans – as Confirmed by Their Own Study” HERE)

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By The Blaze. Video showing a police officer allegedly punching a naked Harvard University student who was reportedly hallucinating on drugs has led to a use-of-force investigation, WBZ-TV reported.

Police arrested 21-year-old student Selorm Ohene in response to 911 calls that Ohene was naked in the street throwing clothes at bystanders. He was charged with indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, assault, resisting arrest, and assault and battery . . .

When Cambridge Police Department officers arrived on the scene, they found Ohene standing naked on a traffic island. According to the police report, Ohene clenched his fists and began walking toward officers, who grabbed him by the legs and took him down.

A witness was recording video of the incident, and it shows an officer punching Ohene several times, according to Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern, who called the video “disturbing.”

“We have high standards for our police officers in Cambridge,” McGovern said in a statement. “In most cases, the extensive training our officers go through results in the deescalation of dangerous situations. When confrontations cannot be averted and include use of physical force, we must be willing to review our actions to ensure that our police officers are providing the highest level of safety for all.” (Read more from “Officer Allegedly Punches Naked, Hallucinating Harvard Student and Is Now Under Investigation” HERE)

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Use of Force Investigation Against Officer Who Punched High Student

By CBS Local. . .Cambridge Police say that when they arrived, Ohene was standing naked on a traffic island in the middle of Mass. Ave. People who were with him told police that Ohene had taken drugs that likely had a hallucinogenic effect.

According to a police report on the incident, Ohene was clenching both fists and walking toward officers. They opted to grab his legs and bring him to the ground.

Cambridge Mayor Marc McGovern said video taken by an onlooker shows an officer punching the man, who is black, several times.

Ohene was taken to an area hospital for evaluation. Police say he spit a combination of blood and saliva at an EMT . . .

“We must learn from this incident and always strive to do better, but I want to be clear: my colleagues and I take these matters seriously, and will follow this closely to ensure that all the facts are properly investigated and that the public is informed of any and all developments,” McGovern said. (Read more from “Judge Freaks out at Assault Victim for Using ‘Incorrect’ Gender Pronoun of Attacker” HERE)

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Harvard University had only just announced its next president before he came under attack — not for anything he did, but for who he is.

That is, in the eyes of his critics, at least, a “white male.”

The New York Times greeted the selection with a news article reporting in its second paragraph that, in selecting Lawrence Bacow earlier this month, the search committee had missed “an opportunity for Harvard to choose a leader who would reflect the #MeToo and Black Lives Matter movements.”

Harvard’s student newspaper, the Crimson, of which I was president 25 years ago, reported that the announcement, “surprised and disappointed some College students who had hoped a person of color would take the University’s top job.”

Such intense reaction tells two newsworthy stories: a negative tale about the politics of race and gender on campus and a positive one about America and its Jews. (Read more from “Harvard Attacked for Choosing White Male as Next University President” HERE)

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“Harvard law journal: unborn babies are constitutional persons.” So reads the surprising headline on the press release from the student-run Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy. In a provocative article, law student Joshua Craddock fires a challenge not only at pro-choice orthodoxy but at mainstream pro-life thinking. He declares both “constitutionally unsound.”

Edited by Harvard Law School students, the journal describes itself as “the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.” New Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch’s article on assisted suicide first appeared there. Ted Cruz was an executive editor.

Before he went to law school, Craddock worked for Personhood USA, a United Nations NGO. A recent graduate of King’s College in New York City, he has written for The Stream.

The Article’s Challenge

Craddock’s article challenges the Supreme Court’s pro-choice decisions. The majority of the Court since 1973’s Roe v. Wade refuses to decide whether an unborn child is a human being with human rights. The court basically says, “Who knows? So we’ll say no.”

The justices think other matters are more important than the answer. One of them is the belief found in the majority decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” A definition of personhood “formed under compulsion of the State” would keep people from exercising this liberty. So the justices believe.

The article also challenges the broad agreement among pro-life legal scholars that the Constitution doesn’t say anything on the issue. Most speak as “originalists,” people who try to find what the Constitution meant to those who wrote and approved it.

Most conservative legal scholars claim that the Constitution doesn’t deal with the nature of the unborn at all. Conservative judicial hero Antonin Scalia declared that the Constitution says “absolutely nothing” about abortion. It assumes only “walking-around persons” are real human beings, he once said.

These scholars would leave the decision to the political process. That means the state governments. This allows what Scalia called “regional differences.” In their idea of the Constitution, an unborn child might be protected in one state and killed at any moment until birth in the next one. Craddock calls this “the states’ rights view.”

They’re Both Wrong

Craddock thinks they’re both wrong. Pro-choicers and pro-lifers both misinterpret the Constitution. The “original” meaning includes the unborn child’s right to life.

He focuses on the Fourteenth Amendment, passed in 1868. No state, it declares, shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

Whatever the original Constitution may have to say on abortion, Craddock argues that amendment includes the unborn among the “persons” whose rights it protects. They can’t be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” They, just as much as born persons, have the Constitution right to “the equal protection of the laws.”

Craddock provides three arguments: What the word person meant then, the anti-abortion laws of the time, and what the people who wrote the amendment said about it, all show that the amendment includes the unborn.

Take the state anti-abortion laws in place before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted. Almost every state had laws against abortion, he notes. Most of these laws were part of the law covering “offenses against the person.” In addition, 23 of the 37 states explicitly called the unborn child a “child” in their laws. Six of the 11 territories did so as well.

Craddock offers other evidence. In 1859, the American Medical Association demanded the government protect the “independent and actual existence of the child before birth.” Eight years later, the Medical Society of New York called abortion at any stage of the child’s life “murder.”

This and much other evidence shows that “a general consensus treated preborn human beings as ‘persons.’ … [T]he preborn were included within the public meaning of the term ‘person’ at the time the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted.” Therefore the amendment itself considers the unborn to be persons with the right to life.

A New Birth of Freedom

States that allow abortions violate the Constitution, Craddock declares in his conclusion. “Congress or the courts must intervene.” For example, if a state allows the unborn to be killed but prosecutes the murderers of other groups of people, it denies the unborn the equal protection of the laws. A higher authority must act to protect the lives of the unborn.

If Craddock is right, the Supreme Court may finally base its rulings on what the Constitution assumes about the unborn. “The Fourteenth Amendment,” Craddock concludes, “was to be a new birth of freedom for all human beings.” (For more from the author of “Harvard Law Journal: Unborn Babies Are Constitutional Persons” please click HERE)

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