The Harvard Civil Rights Project Strikes Again

I mentioned below that the Civil Rights Project at Harvard has just released a new report intended to support racial preferences at Michigan and elsewhere. No one familiar with the work of Gary Orfield and his Civil Rights Project will be surprised by its findings, but I nevertheless found the report useful for a couple of reasons.

The first half, 19 of its 38 pages, presents a reasonably succinct and generally fair overview of the main legal issues in the debate over preferences and their treatment in earlier cases. It is clear where the author’s sympathies lie, but even those whose sympathies lie elsewhere will find this a convenient summary of some of the legal issues.

For reasons not intended by the author, I also found quite useful the last half of the report, which dealt primarily with summarizing the social science literature attempting to demonstrate that “diversity” has such powerful educational benefits that it should be regarded as a “compelling governmental interest.” Actually, “revealing” may be a better word than “useful.”

I will not summarize all the summaries here. Suffice it to say (well, not quite; I will say more) that the more of these studies I read, or read about, the weaker the educational benefits of “diversity” seem to become. Far from seeming “compelling,” these studies, to me, tend to weaken rather than strengthen the claim that there are any benefits at all, even though I am perfectly willing to admit that “diversity” may well have some benefits.

For one thing, the claims of this body of research are so sweepingly extravagant as to arouse suspicion right off the bat. As summarized by the Harvard report:

Recent studies show that student body diversity can produce a wide variety of positive educational outcomes, including a greater variety of intellectual opinions among students, richer classroom environments, improved thinking ability, higher self-confidence, and improved interpersonal and leadership skills.

Not bad, if true. But is it?

Here’s a twofer on an example (twofer because the study was conducted by Gary Orfield, whose organization published the report being discussed here.

In the law school study by Gary Orfield and Dean Whitla, the Gallup Organization surveyed 1,820 law students to determine the effects of student body diversity on learning and other educational outcomes. When asked how diversity had affected the way in which they reflected upon problems and solutions in class, 68% of the Harvard students and 73% of the Michigan students responded that diversity had affected discussions positively. Sixty-three percent of the Harvard students and 66% of the Michigan students reported that racial diversity enhanced the manner in which topics were discussed in the majority of their classes. In addition, almost two-thirds of the law students reported

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  1. V. Feeley July 26, 2003 at 10:00 pm | | Reply

    I’m looking for the following publication which is mis filed under another site but seems to have been produced by your organization. Can you help me find it?

    AYPF Activities

    Holden of Missouri. (Forum Brief) 9/23 Racial Inequality In Special Education Implications For Idea

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