> I would expect setting up Asian-American universities in which non-Asians need not apply to be highly illegal due to the Civil Rights Act.

Who said anything about non-Asians? I said "merit-based" and "academic-based".

Is it inconceivable that a university that accepts only on academic performance and focuses only on academic performance will end up disproportionally Asian?

[EDIT: Actually, they can make it so that the "merit" test is not in English, but a selection of Asian languages. That'd very quickly make it into an Asian-only university without specifying Capital-R Race]

Well, if you first racially discriminate against a subset of the public, then propose they can set up their own structures at great expense (which only will become similarly prestigious after decades if not centuries, even if they somehow manage to churn out nobel prize winners and presidents almost immediately), it may be a tall order to also demand they be "racially fair".

At the same time you will push out Asian kids from regular Ivy-League school admission processes, after all "they can go to that Asian school".

If you promote the parallel polis, you will get more segregation, not less. That's the very reason you create a parallel polis.