In my opinion, Harvard needs to just be straight about why they're doing what they're doing. If it's race-based quotas for the sake of class diversity or long-term societal benefit, then just say it outright and we can have a discussion as a society as to whether that's ok. I personally think this is bad (with medium confidence), but understand that there are arguments for why it may be necessary.

What they shouldn't do is try to say: Asian people have worse personal characteristics, when evaluated by our admissions committee, even though no such deficit is found by the face-to-face interviewers. That's not propping up one race for well-intentioned reasons, but rather suggesting that a specific race is timid, not leadership qualities, worker bees, and many of the other negative stereotypes assigned to Asians.

Can you imagine what the newspapers would say if Harvard just said that Jewish people, on average, had worse personalities? Say, less honest and forthcoming than other ethnic groups?