The Bloomberg Businessweek article contains this sentence: “Harvard ‘does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants,’ and doesn’t comment on the specifics of complaints under federal review, spokesman Jeff Neal said.”
Now, I suspect that under cross-examination Harvard actually would admit that it does discriminate in favor of “underrepresented groups” (like African Americans and Latinos), which of course means that it is discriminating against “overrepresented groups” (like whites and, yes, Asians). Of course, it would prefer not to put it that way, to say flatly that it discriminates against Asian-Americans: It would rather say that it considers race as a just one factor in admissions so that it will have a diverse student body — something like that. But the fact is that, if you consider race, then in some instances it’s going to make a difference in whether a person is admitted (otherwise, why bother to consider it?), and when that happens, you have racial discrimination. Simple as that.