From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Dean.

Today, in 2013, Abigail Fisher sued the University of Texas, saying she was discriminated against for being white.

Now, a group of students are suing Harvard, saying they were discriminated against for being Asian-American.

Both lawsuits take aim at affirmative action, and both can be traced to the same man.

But this time, the White House is taking up his cause. It's Friday, August 4th.

So, brief background, I guess. So, I had, I think it was 4.6, I remember correctly, for my GPA.

Wow, so you had more than a 4.0?

Yeah, I had more than a 4.0. I took multiple honors in AP classes.

I had a perfect ACT score. For extra curriculars, I played the piano for over 15 years. I did speech and debate.

I also sang an acquire, which actually went to Obama's inauguration back in 2008.

You sang at Barack Obama's inauguration for president?

Nope, it's first inauguration that's correct. This keeps getting better.

There's a lot of stuff. I think that most of the summer isn't it.

So, with that resume, where did you apply to college?

I applied to all IVs except one.

And how many accepted you?

One, that was 10.

What was your reaction to that ratio of acceptance to rejection?

I was definitely quite disappointed in that.

So, I actually reached out to the schools and missions offices. I wanted to know how these schools use race as a factor of consideration.

So, I was wondering whether, you know, my race had any factor or how large proportion of the play.

You know, there's just a natural perception that there's a quota set on how many Asian-American students in the school kind of step.

...