Discriminations

The Supreme Court has just decided a case dealing with age discrimination that could have a greater impact in race discrimination than the Michigan affirmative action cases. As USA Today reported today,

Older workers can sue over pay or benefit plans that favor younger employees, even if no evidence of deliberate age discrimination exists, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday in a decision that could have a major effect on the nation's workforce.

By a 5-3 vote, the court ruled that in addition to covering intentional bias, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act covers workplace practices that appear neutral but disproportionately affect workers over age 40.
....
The ruling puts a new category of age claims on the same footing as those filed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects against race and sex discrimination. The high court earlier ruled that Title VII covered not only overt discrimination but practices that appeared fair, but had the effect of being discriminatory.

If the effect of this case, Smith v. City of Jackson, is to revive the declining "disparate impact" analysis of discrimination claims in the racial arena, it will be bad news indeed, but there is some reason to hope its damage can be contained. As the Wall Street Journal article on the case pointed out, the 5-3 opinion written by Justice Stevens

gave employers an easier line of defense for age claims than they have in suits alleging race or sex discrimination. "Business necessity" is needed to justify disparate impact along lines of sex or race, but in age-discrimination cases, employers can take actions that disadvantage older workers if, as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act reads, "the differentiation is based on reasonable factors other than age."

While the court opened the door a bit further for future age claims, it frustrated the plaintiffs in the case before it. The suit was brought by senior police officers from Jackson, Miss., who claimed that the city's salary plan unfairly favored younger officers, who got higher percentage raises than those with more seniority. The city argued it needed to boost pay at the low end to recruit new officers. The court found that the city's pay plan was "unquestionably reasonable."

If this case should lead to the revival of successful disparate impact claims in the racial arena, perhaps Justice O'Connor can persuade her colleagues that she was right in 25 years (when she'll be 100) when she revisits affirmative action and surveys the damage her Grutter opinion will have done.

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I have written before about my long involvement in EEOC v. Sears, one of the largest sex discrimination cases ever tried (Find the heading about a quarter way into this long post), and more recently, as a result that "[f]or me, the Summers debate is déjà vu all over again." This point was just driven home, again, by an article on the front page of Wednesday's Wall Street Journal ostensibly about English girls closing the math gap with boys.

I'll come to that article in a moment. But first let me refer to one of the longest-running (and still going strong) debates between liberals and conservatives, nature vs. nurture. This is too simple, but typically, or perhaps stereotypically, conservatives believe (or are said to believe) that a great deal of an individual's identity is natural, inherited, genetic. Liberals, by contrast, generally believe that social influences are more significant than biological ones.

The political implications of this classic division are clear: conservatives often think it is futile, or worse, to try to undo what Mother Nature has done, while liberals, believing as they do that "society" has produced what they regard as unfair conditions, believe that "society" can improve those conditions through various kinds of reform. Nowhere is this division clearer than in differences over sex roles. Indeed, liberals minimize the salience, or even fact, of "sex," which is biological, in favor of "gender," which is "socially constructed." (Ironically, this division is frequently reversed regarding homosexuality, with liberals tending to believe it is genetic, like race, and conservatives arguing that more often it reflects a choice of lifestyles.)

I lived and breathed the Sears case for so long — around five years of many more 80 hour and longer weeks than I like to remember — that for a long time that's all I could talk about, much to the annoyance and boredom of many of my friends, not a few of whom are now former friends in large part because of my perceived character defect of agreeing to work with lawyers defending a corporation, a big corporation at that, accused of sex discrimination.

One of the things I would say in those days — in part (but not entirely) tongue in cheek, for shock value — is that the conventional wisdom was all wrong: the fact that some practice or behavior was "socially constructed" and not programmed into our DNA often made it harder, not easier, to change. Sex, after, all, can be changed with a sex change operation; "sex roles," on the other hand, are far more resistant and difficult to change.

Which brings me (I know you were wondering how I would get there) to that article about the math abilities of English girls. My off the wall observations may not have been so off the wall after all.

The English experience with math education suggests that gender differences, even those that seem innate and based in biology, do not lead inevitably to any particular outcome. That view fits into a broader current sweeping over how scientists think of genetics. Many now believe that traits that seem intrinsic -- meaning those grounded in the brain or shaped by a gene -- are subject to cultural and social forces, and that these forces determine how a biological trait actually manifests itself in a person's behavior or abilities. An "intrinsic" trait, in other words, does not mean an inevitable outcome, as many scientists had long thought.

"What's now in play is the question of what it means for a trait to be innate," says Eric Turkheimer of the University of Virginia. In 2003, a study led by Prof. Turkheimer found that the influence of genes on intelligence varies with social class: In well-off children, genes seem to explain most IQ differences, but in disadvantaged minority children environmental influences have a greater impact.

In another study, men carrying a gene linked to aggression and criminality were no more likely than other men to become violent adults -- unless they were neglected or abused as children, according to a 2002 article published in the journal Science. And last summer, scientists in Canada reported that rats carrying a "neurotic" gene became more jumpy than their peers only if their mothers neglected them. In rats with attentive moms, the same DNA sequence produced mellow animals.

"What we're learning is that culture and experience actually imprint themselves on the brain, on biology," says science historian Londa Schiebinger of Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. In other words, nature and nurture work together in a much more sophisticated way than many scientists had previously thought.

And the lesson is clear: if you're a rat, be sure to choose an attentive mom.

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It appears as though folks out in Iowa -- or at least in what a correspondent of mine calls "The People's Republic of Johnson County," where the University of Iowa is located -- define math and possibly science in a different way from the rest of us.

Consider, for example, this interesting article from today's Daily Iowan, which begins by noting:

Harvard President Lawrence Summers' suggestion that men often perform better than women in science and math was refuted Tuesday when seven UI students and faculty members were recognized for their activism and dedication.

But never mind. Here's a brief description of the seven recipients. If their accomplishments refute Summers, he must have said considerably more than has been reported in the extensive coverage of the controversy over women in math and science.

• a "distinguished professor of nursing"

• the University of Iowa ombudsperson

• "an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology," who was recognized not for scientific accomplishments but "for her effort in improving the status of women on campus, such as her work with reproductive rights."

• "a B.F.A. student in art"

• "a Ph.D. student in the College of Education" who "aspires to continue her commitment toward HIV/AIDS stigmatization in Africa"

• "a Ph.D. student in Spanish and Portuguese"

• "an undergraduate majoring in financial management who hopes to someday own a spa."
  

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By now you've all heard of the new study, reported here, finding -- Gasp! -- that college faculties tilt so far to the left that they're almost horizontal: 72% of all full-time faculty members, and 87% at "elite" universities, identify themselves as liberal.

What I found most interesting was not the dog-bites-man quality of this news itself (although the numbers are dramatic) but rather one of the common responses, of which a great example was quoted:

When asked about the findings, Jonathan Knight, director of academic freedom and tenure for the American Association of University Professors, said, "The question is how this translates into what happens within the academic community on such issues as curriculum, admission of students, evaluation of students, evaluation of faculty for salary and promotion." Knight said he isn't aware of "any good evidence" that personal views are having an impact on campus policies.

"It's hard to see that these liberal views cut very deeply into the education of students. In fact, a number of studies show the core values that students bring into the university are not very much altered by being in college."

But if the ideology, values, politics, etc., of professors are irrelevant to both the operation of universities and the teaching of students -- if, as Knight says, students are not influenced at all by the personal views and values of professors -- then what is the point of striving for a diverse faculty?

Oh, wait. I almost forgot. Those who demand "diversity" don't really care about that kind of diversity, i.e., a diversity of ideas, opinions, values. It's perfectly O.K. with them if nearly all faculty members are Democrats, so long as they sport a variety of skin colors and some variation in body parts.

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A good friend recently wrote:

You must be enjoying the Schiavo festivities. Those true principled states rights advocates must be spinning in their graves. The President flies back to DC so he can ceremonially take an issue out of the hands of the state courts and give it to the feds.

Fair, but limited. First, conservatives have been at least as critical of federal intervention in this matter as liberals. As Ronald Brownstein pointed out in today's Los Angeles Times, in one of the myriad articles that have appeared lately on the rift among the Republicans,

In a CBS News survey, opposition was so widespread that even decisive majorities of Republicans, conservatives and white evangelical Christians said Bush and Congress should not have intervened.

More relevant, however, is that throughout American history, starting with the New England Federalists who threw up a states rights argument when it suited their temporary interests, states rights has nearly always been an instrumental argument, not a principled position.

Indeed, Democrats like my friend may want to consider the advice traditionally given to people in glass houses before they start throwing around charges of inconsistency. At the moment they are beside themselves trying to keep the people of Michigan from having an opportunity to decide the fate of racial preferences, preferring the recent pronouncements of the Supreme Court on that issue. Nor were most Democrats heard to complain when the 9 Supremes took the abortion decision away from the states and handed it to the federal courts.

One could reply that, well, the Democrats never claimed to believe in states rights, but one would then have to deal with the embarrassment of the raging Democratic love affair with states rights that blossomed during the controversy over the 2000 election in Florida.

Perhaps there's a pattern here. Looking at the Democratic positions on racial preferences and abortion (let the federal courts decide) and Terry Schiavo and the 2000 election in Florida (let the state courts decide), the Democrats may indeed have coalesced around a new governing principle that trumps both states rights and nationalism: Let The Courts Decide!

Indeed, for them it appears that courts are the state. In 2000, for example, "the state" was what the Florida Supreme Court said, not what the legislature or the governor said. The reason the Democrats were so incensed by that case (other than the obviously partisan result) was not that it interfered with states rights but that it said there were some limits to how far a court could go in rewriting legislation under the guise of interpretation.

With Schiavo, similarly, you can be sure that they regard "the state" as embodied in what the Florida courts said, not what Gov. Bush did. Imagine if he had sent in the National Guard to take custody!

The eminent American historian David Potter (one of my old professors) was fond of saying that if you scratch a states rights man you will find someone in a national minority. The Democrats appear to have taken their new minority status to a new level, identifying not with states against a national majority but with the courts against both state and national majorities. For them, the independence of the judiciary has become the new foundational principle.

And will remain a fundamental principle ... unless and until the Republicans control the courts.

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A short while ago I asked whether the University of Virginia was a "racial scofflaw" for giving race-based financial aid. One of the questions there was whether the ostensibly private source of the aid provided enough of a fig leaf to protect the University from legal challenge.

Maybe not, suggests a new report from the College Board.

When reviewing race-conscious financial-aid programs, colleges should also look at scholarships provided by outside organizations. Just because the financial aid is coming from external sources does not mean the college is off the legal hook. That's particularly true, the manual says, if institutions are directly involved in the administration of such aid.

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Writing in the Washington Post today ("It's The Law, Not The Judge"), Jeffrey Rosen writes that

Mark Tushnet of Georgetown University Law Center argues in a ...convincing new book, "A Court Divided" [that] the Rehnquist court has actually supported the views of a narrow majority of the American people, rather than thwarting them, in all the most controversial cases of the culture wars, involving affirmative action, gay rights and access to early-term abortions.

I don't have time now to cite all the polls to the contrary, but I do have time to say that I am not aware of any such evidence. If this claim were true, then proponents of preferences would be eager to place the matter on the ballot in liberal states such as California, Washington, and Michigan. Instead, they have fought tooth and nail to keep it off ballots, and everywhere it has appeared (California and Washington) they have lost.

I am aware of a poll or two, and one vote (in Houston), where people supported "affirmative action," but they may well have been thinking of the original versions of affirmative contained in the two presidential executive orders, which required employers to take affirmative action to

take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. [Emphasis added]

This is the opposite of what "affirmative action" has become in practice.

UPDATE

PollingReport.Com presents the findings of a number of polls on affirmative action.

A good example of a question I regard as worthless was asked in a poll conducted by Gallup from June 12-June 18, 2003. The question: "Do you generally favor or oppose affirmative action programs for racial minorities?" The result? 49% favored; 43% opposed. Whites opposed by 49% to 43%; blacks favored by 70% to 21%; Hispanics favored by 63% to 28%.

Here is a much more useful question from that same poll:

Which comes closer to your view about evaluating students for admission into a college or university? Applicants should be admitted solely on the basis of merit, even if that results in few minority students being admitted. OR, An applicant's racial and ethnic background should be considered to help promote diversity on college campuses, even if that means admitting some minority students who otherwise would not be admitted.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll conducted January 19-21, 2003, asked the following:

As you may know, the U.S. Supreme Court will be deciding whether public universities can use race as one of the factors in admissions to increase diversity in the student body. Do you favor or oppose this practice?

Polls frequrently find support for "affirmative action" as long as it is not explained that racial preferences are involved. Thus the same NBC/Wall Street Journal poll just cited also asked the following question:

Now let me read you two brief statements on affirmative action programs, and ask which one comes closer to your own point of view. Statement A:  Affirmative action programs are still needed to counteract the effects of discrimination against minorities, and are a good idea as long as there are no rigid quotas. OR, Statement B:  Affirmative action programs have gone too far in favoring minorities, and should be ended because they unfairly discriminate against whites

Is this the narrow majority support cited by Mark Tushnet and Jeffrey Rosen? I hope not, since the same poll reports clear opposition to the very preferences that are at the core of affirmative action admissions, as virtually all polls report. One more: a Time/CNN poll also conducted in mid-January 2003 asked:

Do you approve or disapprove of affirmative action admissions programs at colleges and law schools that give racial preferences to minority applicants?

I've polled myself, and I disapprove of the Rosen/Tushnet assertion.

UPDATE II [29 March]

I've still not read all of Mark Tushnet's book, A COURT DIVIDED, but I did buy it today, read the chapter on race and affirmative action, read the introduction and conclusion, and scanned some f the rest.

I did not find any detailed or specific discussion of public opinion that would support the conclusion Jeffrey Rosen mentions, but Tushnet clearly does come close to arguing that the Rehnquist Court's decisions mirror popular opinion. For example, in the Introduction he asserts that conservatives lost "rather consistently on the social issues -- abortion, gay rights, and affirmative action."

The reason the Court's economic conservatives won and its cultural conservatives lost is simple. In the arena of politics, economic conservatives were winning and cultural conservatives were losing. The economic conservatives dominated Congress and the presidency, making help from the Supreme Court less important to their cause, though they received some. The cultural traditionalists, on the other hand, needed major assistance but received little, as they were forced repeatedly to retreat. So the patterns discernible in the Rehnquist Court's decisions reproduced the patterns occurring in American politics generally. [p. 10]

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"Affirmative action is a blessing and a curse," said Grand Valley State University [Michigan] sophomore Vivian Kendall.

We do get to go to school, but people don’t understand that there are blacks who earn their way in. We have to take the ACTs and get good grades like everyone else. We are holding our own.

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I have argued here a number of times that the experience of watching the civil rights movment abandon colorblind equal protection in favor of racial preference not long after the colorblind standard was enacted into law in the 1964 Civil Rights Act has stiffened the resistance to what are now demands for equal rights for gays.

Additional evidence for this conclusion can be found in Arkansas, where legislation to add sexual preference to Arkansas's 1993 civil rights act has stalled.

Evan Breedlove of Fort Smith, a longtime personnel manager representing Arkansas self-insured businesses, said the change would make his job more difficult. "I would see an increase in litigation. As an employer, I don't care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom, even if I don't agree with it. With this I will have to become concerned," he said.

Breedlove said the change would make gays and lesbians a protected group under the law, and employers would have to take steps to ensure they are not discriminated against. "I have to keep records on females and on race now, and I have to recruit [based on that] now," he said.
....
Democratic representative Bob Adams of Sheridan suggested the law could open the door to affirmative action laws requiring companies to hire gays and lesbians.

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Chetly Zarko, who has already made a nice contribution here today, has posted on his own blog some persuasive evidence that the University of Michigan padded its short list of presidential candidates with the names of minorities and women in whom it had no serious interest just to make its affirmative action numbers look good.

In one of many documents the university was ordered by a court to release,

Virginia N. [Nordby, then-Director of Affirmative Action] says that it is totally proper to add back names to a list for affirmative action purposes.

She advises search committees to do that all the time.

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In a comment on this post below, Chetly Zarko, one of the leaders of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative and a frequent commenter here, points to this fascinating article in the Michigan Daily. Drop whatever you're doing and go read it now (because if you don't I'll have to quote the whole thing, and that's not cool).

The University of Michigan believes (and in this belief it is typical, not unique) that "diversity" is so important that those it deems "underrepresented minorities" are judged by different admissions standards (but only admissions?) from whites and minorities who are not regarded as "underrepresented," such as Asians and others.
The predictable, inevitable, and indeed intended effect of this double standard is that a significant number of minorities are admitted -- and a significant number of whites, Asians, and others are not admitted -- because of their race or ethnicity. Because many defenders of racial preference attempt to deny or evade this fundamental fact, let me restate it: if all applicants to selective schools with preference policies were judged by the same standard, many minority applicants who are now admitted under the reign of "diversity" would not be, and many white and non-preferred minority applicants who are now rejected would be admitted. Reasonable people can disagree over whether or not this is a Good Thing, but not over whether or not it is true.

But once admitted, a number of "diversity" dilemmas raise their ugly heads. If colorblind admissions is discriminatory, why not colorblind grading? What's the point of grading on a colorblind, neutral scale students who were not admitted under the same standard? Wouldn't (doesn't?) colorblind grading result in a "disproportionate" number of preferentially admitted students flunking out?

Moving on, since "diversity" -- being exposed to the "difference" of others -- is the stated rationale of racially preferential admissions, shouldn't there be a ceiling on the number of black students allowed into any particular class? And shouldn't white students be assigned to at least a minimum number of classes containing at least a minimum number of blacks? I realize this smacks of racial assignments, but then the Michigans have already demonstrated that they have no principled objection to admitting and rejecting students on the basis of race, so why not assigning?

And then there's the matter of housing, the cause of the current "diversity"-based discomfort at Michigan. It seems that the black students there have a tendency to self-segregate, thus depriving their peers of the advantages -- no, the absolute necessity, to listen to Michigan administrators -- of being exposed to them. I mean, how selfish can you get, choosing to live among your friends rather than with people who need to be exposed to you? Since Michigan has justified lowering its standards to admit some minorities instead of the non-minorities who would otherwise have been admitted based on the advantages to others the preferentially admitted will provide, shouldn't it assign those students to dorms where they will do the most good?

The mind of Michigan is divided by and troubled over this issue. On one hand, as the Michigan Daily reports in the article linked above,

Patricia Pacania, director of the Office of Multi-Ethnic Student Affairs, said she thinks the University still does not have a large enough population of minority students to achieve a critical mass. Pacania said this creates a need for minority students to self-segregate in residence halls and said she thinks the University should allow this clustering to happen. "To just sprinkle students in dorms, knowing that we have not achieved that critical mass … I don't think that that's effective," she said....

Pacania said she worries that spreading minority students throughout all the dorms, rather than allowing them to form communities, would "add another set of stress upon students of color."

"I think to primarily look to students of color to say 'educate me' is an unfair burden, and I don't think that's something we as a University should ask of students," she said. "And students of color also need opportunities to have a living space where they don't feel like they always have to educate other people or don't have to always justify themselves or explain themselves."

University President Mary Sue Coleman said that while she understands the desire of minority students to live together, she believes a more diverse living experience is desirable.

"I would think that one of the huge values of being in a University setting is being able to get acquainted with people from a different background or different race, and I encourage students to really pursue that. I think it's important. It's one of the great things we offer at the University of Michigan," she said. "I would hope that we can continue to find ways to get to people to mix themselves up."

the process of housing application and assignment is done without racial information, meaning the uneven distribution of minorities in the dorms is not a product of the housing assignment process.

UPDATE

Chetly Zarko points to the evasive and disingenuous answers regarding residential segregation in the dormitorites Michigan attorney John Payton gave to Justice Scalia during the oral argument in Gratz.

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Michael Yaki, a San Francisco Democrat (literally and figuratively) recently appointed to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, defends the Commission against charges of financial and political mismanagement.

His strongest argument is that the Commission could not be guilty of serious financial mismanagment because it never had much money.

If alleged financial mismanagement is justification for termination, then Congress should consider it in context. The entire annual budget of the commission is a little more than $9 million. If one were to logically extend the rationale of the commission's critics to other governmental bodies, there would be little left of the federal government after the sentence is administered to the most egregious transgressors.

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Tim Wise, Director of the newly-formed Association for White Anti-Racist Education (AWARE), is a white Southerner who has made a career of supporting racial preferences for blacks. He recently spoke for the third or fourth time at the University of Michigan.

Among his remarks were a couple that are wrong and one that is interesting.

Wrong:

• Wise said that "a person’s views on affirmative action depend on whether he believes that racial discrimination still exists." Wrong. I believe discrimination still exists, but I don't believe affirmative action is a reasonable remedy for it.

• Wise said that affirmative action is "about demanding similar standards." Wrong. It's about demanding different standards.
  

like driving around your campus trying to find a parking spot and getting pissed at disabled parking. That makes no damn sense.

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I never cease to be amazed at how defenders of affirmative action cannot or will not describe it as it actually operates, i.e., as systematic racial preference.

A good example of what I mean is a recent article in the Daily Cal by two Berkeley undergraduates, Amy Sweeney and Yet Wa Li. Amy, poor thing, grew up somewhat privileged in Washington state and

didn’t understand the ways affirmative action would eventually benefit her. As is the case with many white students, she wasn’t forced to think about the effects her race would have on her life course and her chances of getting into the college of her choice.

Sadly, as a former student in the Oakland Public School system, even Yet Wa was not sure whether she supported affirmative action or not.

The program is associated with many negative generalizations, including the belief that minority students admitted on the basis of race weren’t as qualified as students with whom race was not a factor. Yet Wa and her friends were opposed to the idea of being admitted to college out of pity; they wanted to be sure they were admitted because they were just as capable as other students.

What else did they learn at Berkeley, you ask? You shouldn't have.

Now, as sociology majors at Cal and interns at Berkeley’s Discrimination Research Center, we had the opportunity to learn that affirmative action is designed as a temporary solution to eradicate racial preferences that exist in our society. Rarely is attention given to the fact that the majority of white students are given preference in college admissions every year.

The structure of our society allows policies favoring non-minority students to be carried on without question. Affirmative action does not grant privilege to less qualified students because of their race; it is illegal to do so. What it forces us to do is reevaluate our notions of merit and qualifications to include a wider portion of the population.

Such confusion, however, is not limited to undergraduates. Writing in Business Week Online, Francesca Di Meglio defines affirmative action as "the efforts to redress past discrimination by providing equal opportunities." Luckily for Ms. Di Meglio, there are only two things wrong with that statement: 1) According to the Supreme Court, affirmative action is specifically not an effort "to redress past discrimination," which in fact the Court disallowed as a justification; and 2) in practice (as opposed to in rhetoric), affirmative action works by providing unequal opportunity on the basis of race. The whole point of affirmative action is to treat individuals differently based on their race.

Indeed, "difference" has become the new mantra. The Business Week Online article just cited also quotes a Stanford dean:

"We sincerely believe that you learn more from people who are different from you," says Derrick Bolton, assistant dean and director of MBA Admissions at Stanford [Graduate School of Business] and an African American alumnus ['98] of the program.

For over a century the animating passion of civil rights was that, except for the superficial and morally insignificant accident of skin color, blacks were just like whites and should be treated the same. Since the advent of affirmative action the controlling argument is that blacks are different and need to be treated differently.

This is not progress.

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Under court order, a long-running discriminatory program ends. Some are sad: The Boston Globe's story ran under the headline "For second year, Boston swears in all-white firefighter class."

Twenty-four new Boston firefighters were sworn in yesterday at Florian Hall in Dorchester. The Fire Academy graduates, including one who is 51 and four in their 40s, are the second all-white class in two years.

Caitlin Sullivan, 18, has spent her entire life hearing about her dad's unrealized dream, a goal he never gave up on: to become a Boston firefighter.

Yesterday, the 51-year-old Charlestown father hugged his children, Caitlin, and Eddie, 8, to his chest, as his eyes filled with tears.

Ed Sullivan had waited 33 years for his Bravest badge.

"I'm really happy for him,'' Caitlin Sullivan said. "I'm proud of him.''

Sullivan, and 23 other Boston firefighters, came onto the job yesterday as the result of a discrimination lawsuit that resulted in a 2003 federal ruling abolishing the fire department's affirmative action plan.

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In an interview in the Knoxville News Sentinel as part of that paper's coverage of Black History Month, Tennessee highway patrolman De'Ossie Dingus criticized affirmative action "and said government handout programs have been -- quote -- 'devastating to the black community.'"

As a result, Dingus, who is black, is now the subject of two separate police investigations, one of which "is focused on allegations that Dingus has contributed to a hostile work environment."

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The following is posted with permission:

Comments Made at the March 15, 2005 Meeting
of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Science
by
Stephan Thernstrom
Winthrop Professor of History

Many of the criticisms of President Summers involve his personality and management style. But I will focus exclusively on the issue raised by his remarks at the National Bureau of Economic Research in January. That is the issue I address because it raises crucial questions about something I thought we all cherished--academic freedom. Academic Freedom is on trial here, and a victory for President Summers' critics will be a deadly blow to academic freedom in American higher education. A previous speaker has claimed that the comments made by Professor Summers have set back the position of women at Harvard by forty years. I emphatically disagree, and suggest that a vote to censure him for his speech will set the university back by fifty years, back to the days of McCarthyism.

When I left came to Harvard as a graduate student in 1956, most academics understood the vital importance of academic freedom; they had to when it was so obviously under attack. That period produced what is arguably still the best book on the subject: Richard Hofstadter and Walter Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States, published in 1955.

How quickly we forget. It is amazing to me that many of us here no longer seem to understand that the expression of controversial ideas and the freedom to debate them is at the heart of any greater institution of higher learning. The whole point of tenure, as I understand it, is to protect professors from the thought police. But now they are not just outside, on some congressional or state legislative committee. They are inside too, in our midst.

If the carefully qualified, speculative, deliberately provocative remarks made by President Summers at the National Bureau of Economic Research are grounds for removing him from the presidency, I don't see how we can stop with that action. Shouldn't he be fired from his teaching post, or at least formally censured? If it is a grave offense for college presidents speaking from the perspective of their discipline at a closed academic meeting to advance certain controversial views, why should such a professor be allowed to warp the minds of our students? Won't female students, for example, find his classroom a "hostile environment"? One previous speaker, astonishingly, repeatedly referred to women at Harvard--both students and faculty--as "vulnerable" creatures, as if they had to be sheltered from certain ideas that should never be advanced in the presence of a lady. Full equality for women evidently requires reverting to Victorian conceptions of the oh-so-delicate female constitution. If this perspective is that of a majority of this faculty, some day, another Hofstadter and Metzger will tell the story of academic freedom in the United States since the 1950s, and I fear that the discussion of this controversy make a very sorry chapter in our history.

Recall how this whole brouhaha began. Nancy Hopkins, a professor at MIT, attended an academic meeting closed to the public and the press precisely in order to insure an uninhibited discussion of a hot-button issue. She was so offended by the suggestions made by President Summers' remarks that she felt she would vomit unless she rushed from the room. So she did rush out, and proceeded to inform the Boston Globe that she was shocked, shocked that some unbearably provocative speech had been committed at an academic conference. If hearing ideas that she deeply disagrees with makes her physically ill, I suggest that Professor Hopkins' temperament is ill-suited for academic life, the lifeblood of which is free inquiry and unfettered debate. She evidently prefers to live safely behind some mental Maginot Line where she never encounters ideas that upset her tender stomach. Sadly, a previous speaker has claimed that most Harvard women feel the same way. I cannot believe it, and I pray it is not true.

At our last meeting devoted to discussion of this issue, one speaker glossed the term "provocative," used several times by President Summers in his offending comments at the NBER. She contended that the term was in fact quite sinister because to provoke is to provoke conflict, sometimes even violent conflict, and we certainly don't want that in the university "community." I, to the contrary, think that a provocative speech in the academy is intended to provoke thought and reasoned argument.

Equally questionable, in my view, are the repeated references that faculty members have made to the Harvard "community," which are intended to suggest that President Summers had given voice to outrageous ideas violating the norms of the community. Is Harvard University really a "community" that requires ideological conformity? The First Baptist Church of Peoria is a community in that sense, with a common conception of God and how best to worship Him. Possibly Bob Jones University is a community. But no great university can long remain great if it attempts to enforce the equivalent of a religious creed on its members. What really holds the members of the Harvard "community" together is much more limited. It is simply a common commitment to pursue the truth through disciplined scholarship, and a faith that freedom of inquiry is the best means to arrive at the truth. I find the "provocative" remarks made by President Summers entirely consistent with that community norm.

I do have to admit that it is somewhat difficult to defend the academic freedom of a man who seems to have surrendered it again and again, in his ever more abject apologies for his NBER remarks. Nevertheless, President Summers is not the sole owner of the right of academic freedom, and he thus cannot surrender it for all of us.

In sum, I think that the central issue at stake today is academic freedom. If the critics of President Summers have their way, it will be a terrible blow to that freedom. Given the visibility of this university, it will be a signal to higher education in general that research on certain sensitive subjects should only be undertaken by those who already know the answers and are prepared to suppress any discoveries that do not fit with the conventional wisdom. Today, the sensitive subject is gender disparities in the science, but the list of forbidden topics will undoubtedly expand over time. Can this really be defended in an institution whose motto is Veritas?

See reader Linda Seebach's column on Summers et. al. here.

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The historian Richard Jensen has argued that the still-burning Irish-American "memory of humiliating job discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming 'Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!'" is the result of what he termed a "myth of victimization." No one, he writes, "has ever seen one of these NINA signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent."

Ironically, however (is this really an irony, or something else?), in our age of rampant equality, the papers are crawling with want ads and announcements that could accurately appear under a banner reading, "Jobs Available: No [Irish, Jews, Etc.] Need Apply!" A good example is in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, p. D8 of the edition I saw. It's a large display ad, sponsored by the WSJ itself, CareerJournal.com, and the Lucas Group, announcing that "Minority Executives can find Major Opportunities" at The Executive Diversity Career Fair" in Chicago on April 28. The online version of this notice states the same thing:

Companies recruiting at the fair are strongly committed to seeking executive, managerial and professional minority candidates and women.

The mission statement of one such job fair is typical.

The Northwest Minority Job Fair's (Job Fair) mission is to foster access to employment opportunities for historically underrepresented persons in the practice of law and to provide a networking forum for legal employers and minority law students. Based upon the original purpose of the Job Fair and limited resources, the focus of our mission is ethnic minorities.

The Job Fair does not condone or support discriminatory hiring practices by any employer against any Job Fair participant on the basis of sex, race, age, creed, religion, color, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, or marital status.

The fact that such racially and ethnically exclusive programs strike so many people as a Good Thing, or at worst innocuous, is a measure of how far we've come from the days when "civil rights" meant treating individuals without regard to their race or ethnicity.

And it also clearly reveals the dissonant clash between the words we still mouth about "civil rights" and what is generally meant. Consider this typical statement from, of all places, the state of Michigan:

Advertisers need to be conscious of how they advertise for jobs or housing in order to avoid violating anti- discrimination laws. The following guidelines will help you determine what language is appropriate to use in your advertisements.

Generally, it is unlawful to indicate any preference or restriction based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, familial status, marital status, arrest record, height, or weight.

will not discriminate against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, creed, color, or national origin. The contractor will take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin. [Emphasis added]

(2) The contractor will, in all solicitations or advertisements for employees placed by or on behalf of the contractor, state that all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, creed, color, or national origin.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:21 AM | Permalink | Say What? (2) | TrackBacks (1)

Several posts ago (here) I gave University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman a (much-deserved) hard time for advocating gender-based hiring and research (not preferences, but hiring, least in certain medical areas, actually limited to women).

Recently there has been a flurry of activity as women's groups in several states have attempted to revive the Equal Rights Amendment., whose entire text follows:

Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Coleman obviously believes that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative would bar such "gender-specific" approaches. Does she really believe the similarly worded ERA would support them? Indeed, how could anyone who believes in preferences based on sex, i.e., affirmative action for women, support the ERA?

Posted by John Rosenberg at 5:35 PM | Permalink | Say What? (13) | TrackBacks (0)

I have had more than one occasion (here, here, and here, for example) to complain about the coverage of civil rights issues in the Washington Post articles by reporter Darryl Fears. Now he's committed another one.

Indeed, this last article is almost a textbook example of media bias. Ostensibly about the unexpected resignation of independent conservative Russell G. Redenbaugh from the Commission on Civil Rights, and his charges that the CRC doesn't seem to have improved in the four months of conservative control, Fears' own voice is indistinguishable from that of the liberal critics of the new CRC, whom he both echoes and quotes.

First, here's something that appears to be a quote, sort of:

The commission is poised to press what some civil rights advocates, some academics and the two remaining liberal board members call a Republican agenda. On Friday, the board is scheduled to consider launching studies on whether Social Security shortchanges African Americans and whether minorities and women deserve advantages in the awarding of federal contracts. Both issues are part of Bush's agenda.

The commission's staff relied on research by the conservative Heritage Foundation and the libertarian Cato Institute to shape the proposal for the study.

Wade Henderson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an umbrella group, predicted that "in each of these studies, I can assure you that they are going to reflect the right's ideology. It confirms our worst fears that the commission is little more than a handmaiden for the far right."

[CRC Chairman Gerald] Reynolds said the Social Security study has nothing to do with partisan politics. "I want to see if the current [Social Security] system has a disparate impact on racial minorities," he said. "I don't know where the truth is, and that's the whole point of the exercise."
...
Henderson, [Nancy Pelosi-appointed liberal CRC commissioner Michael] Yaki and others who are generally opposed to Social Security changes say they are concerned about the commission's reliance on the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute.

Did Fears, or anyone else in the WaPo, or any of the liberal commissioners, ever complain (surely the above is a complaint) about how the Mary Frances Berry Commission relied on research by liberal interest groups? Was their program part of the "Clinton agenda"?

The bias that is inherent in the way Fears wrote this article is not so much his portraying the new Civil Rights Commission as conservative -- for surely it is -- or even in noting that its approach to civil rights is in line with President Bush's. The bias is in the glaring but unexamined assumption that a conservative approach to civil rights isn't an approach to civil rights at all, but a right wing deviation. Thus, in this view, there's no such thing as a liberal approach to civil rights. In the Fears/Wade Henderson view, civil rights means what liberals and Democrats say it means, and so it would make no sense to write an article pointing with horror to the CRC relying on the research of "civil rights groups." Opposition to racial preferences, by contrast, does not represent a different view of equality and civil rights but an illegitimate, right wing abandonment of civil rights.

One of the chief counts in this indictment of the newly conservative CRC is Chairman Reynolds's interest in examining how blacks fare under the current Social Security system. This interest, the article charges, shows the new Commission to be little more than a right wing hit squad because the research of the conservative groups on which it allegedly relies (the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute)

supports Bush's contention that Social Security shortchanges African Americans because their life spans are shorter than those of white beneficiaries. That assertion was roundly condemned by AARP and the NAACP.

More than half of all women receiving Social Security benefits are spouses of deceased, retired or disabled workers. The same is true for only 3% of men.

Furthermore, older women rely more on Social Security for retirement income than older men do.

And women make up 58% of beneficiaries over age 65, so they cannot afford to put that security at risk.

The time is long overdue for women's voices and concerns to be a central part of a debate that is vital to women of all ages.

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If my posting is reduced for the next day or so it's because my wife Helene and I are off to Pasadena to spend Jessie's spring break (and a bit more) with her. Laptop, of course, will be going as well, and I'll try to pay at least some attention to what's going on....

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In yet another example of an overheated -- indeed, almost unhinged -- response to the prospect of Michigan voters voting to outlaw discrimination on the basis of race or gender, University of Michigan president Mary Sue Coleman made one of the most extreme and unqualified defenses of gender-based hiring I've ever seen coming out of academia lately. (And that's saying a lot.)

Coleman's talk was devoted to predicting the various ways that the sky would fall on Michigan women if MCRI passes. Some of the items in her parade of horribles were obviously true, though not horrible: "Coleman said any gender-specific program administered by the state could be targeted if MCRI succeeds." Well, yes. If you outlaw discrimination on the basis of gender, discrimination on basis of gender will indeed be "targeted."

Some of what she worried about was simply wrong -- that MCRI would prevent "outreach" programs to encourage women to enter non-traditional fields, or that it would bar support for activities that primarily involve women. As Chetly Zarko, MCRI spokesman, said, "MCRI allows programs that do not formally exclude men but attract women almost exclusively."

Some of what she said was inexplicably odd: "that research is funded by the federal government and taxpayers' dollars should not support a system that does not serve the entire population." Well, yes, but how would barring discrimination prevent research dollars from serving "the entire population"?

Good question! Now note Coleman's remarkable answer:

Coleman also argued that gender-specific policies in academia are necessary for the health of the American public. She noted that medical research conducted at the University must address the health concerns of both men and women. She held that women's health issues could only be adequately addressed if women were actually conducting the research.

I wonder if Coleman thinks that only women can research and teach women's history? That only women can research and teach women's literature? But if that's true, then it's presumably also true that only men can research and teach about activities done by men, and, it would follow, "that [men's] health issues could only be adequately addressed if [men] were actually conducting the research."

Who selected this person to be president of a major American university?

ADDENDUM [15 March 12:45AM]

I wonder if Coleman's reaoning and analytical abilities might be suffering from the same malady that led MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins to announce with great fanfare that she "would've either blacked out or thrown up" if she hadn't walked out of Larry Summer's talk when he suggested that it was worth investigating whether mathematical ability might not be evenly distributed between men and women.

Quick! Let's get a (woman) doctor on the case! Maybe there's some research by a (woman) psychologist or (woman) brain physiologist that could throw light on this mystery of why apparently sane and balanced women academics seem to lose their analytical equilibrium when confronted with views and values they dislike.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:41 PM | Permalink | Say What? (33) | TrackBacks (1)

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has a column discussing an interesting solution to the judicial nomination impasse: let the president nominate several candidates for appointment to the Supreme Court, and have the people vote.

Or, in the same vein, how about this, which might more truly reflect the nature of our current politics: have candidates run in a national election for election to the Supreme Court, and have the Chief Justice nominate the president, with the advice and consent of a special joint committee of the House and Senate....

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For unknown reasons beyond my control (and that is not the fault of any commenters, no matter how verbose and off-topics your comments may have been!), Discriminations is currently experiencing a Comment Glitch. Will try to get it straightened out, whatever it is, ASAP.

UPDATE [5:15PM]

My hosting service, Hosting Matters, says that it has turned off comments because of a large amount of spam that has been coming my way, and that it will turn them back on when I "take the necessary spam prevention measures."

Since I have already taken all the prevention measures I can -- namely, installing MT-Blacklist (which now has about 2500 blacklisted URLs), I'm not sure what else I can do. Either they'll turn them back on promptly or I'll find another service.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE II [7:55PM]

HostMatters redeemed! Shortly after my last update (but too soon to be the result of it) HostMatters technical support wrote:

The disabling of comment scripts is a temporary measure, designed to prevent comment spammers from crashing a server by using up all available memory. The size/traffic of your weblog has absolutely nothing to do with anything, as a single perl script can bring a server down if it is hammered at often enough. Comment script re-enabled

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Stanley Crouch, the iconoclastic writer, must be regarded as quite a grouch by the civil rights establishment, which he is at great pains to distinguish from the civil rights movement.

The movement was a loose confederation of organizations and volunteers that faced fierce opposition, some of it murderous. Its moral and legal victories set the stage for the civil rights establishment, mainly a few well-known organizations and some public personalities.

changing demographics are undercutting the civil rights establishment's power. People with no history of legalized discrimination and infused with that good old immigrant drive are arriving in this nation. And some of them are black people from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean.

These new arrivals highlight a problem with one of the main legal remedies people have used to fight the legacy of segregation: affirmative action. This tactic was intended to help the descendants of slaves. But it is so loosely interpreted today that many blacks whose forebears were not American slaves demand and receive a boost from affirmative action.

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The University of Massachusetts at Amherst is not a happy campus. Even the Chancellor, John Lombardi, laments a "pattern of balkanization that often results in a disconnection of students of color from the general campus community."

The most recent set of problems derive from one of the ways "diversity" often plays out on campuses these days. A student running for in an election for speaker of the Student Government Association "had opposed a quota system that would have guaranteed a set number of senate seats for minority students." In reply, a minority student group opposed the anti-quota candidate of racism, and he lost the election. Later, photos surfaced of the losing candidate and friends drinking beers by "a caricature of one of the leaders as a Ku Klux Klan grand wizard."

"The students intended the caricature to represent a parody of the election campaign," but the university predictably experienced a paroxysm of guilt-induced self- flagellation, followed by the creation of the mandatory commission to study how to improve "diversity" on campus.

The commission issued its report two weeks ago, and the recommendations, and response to them, were surprising only in the size of the "diversity tax" that will be required to pay for them.

The University of Massachusetts at Amherst will hire a new associate vice chancellor for student affairs and campus life and create a center for student development as part of a multitiered initiative to improve race relations and boost minority student achievement, according to a proposal outlined by Chancellor John V. Lombardi yesterday.

Lombardi's draft initiative would cost more than $1 million. Of that, about $800,000 would come from a special chancellor's tax, which would allow him to redirect money from the existing budgets of a broad range of university departments.

Lombardi's proposal follows an 86-page report released two weeks ago by the Commission on Campus Diversity, an independent panel, which found that UMass-Amherst lacked centrally coordinated, diversity-building initiatives and at times failed to provide adequate academic advising for minority students. The panel also criticized the university for lacking a strategic plan to increase minority enrollment at a time when the numbers of minority students and staff are dropping.
....
Lombardi's plans include revamping undergraduate advising, increasing the number of minority students who participate in the university's honors program and rewarding departments that succeed in hiring a more diverse faculty. He hopes to establish a mentor program for minority faculty and hire external consultants to work with staff on race issues.

The university would also hire two additional admissions officials who would concentrate on recruiting more students of color from high schools and community colleges. It may consider adding a diversity course required of all first-year students.

Here's some free advice -- no "external consultant" required -- on how "to boost the inclusion of minorities" and "to eliminate the pattern of balkanization that often results in a disconnection of students of color from the general campus community": treat them just like everyone else.

UPDATE

I think Richard makes an excellent point in a comment below. "It's no accident," as we conspiracy theorists would say, that the American institution with the most highly refined sense of multicultural sensitivity and the most pervasive commitment to a whole panoply of racial preference programs, the American university, has become the leading hotbet of continuous racial strife.

By contrast, the arena with extensive racial interaction with the least amount of racial conflict is the sports arena, at all levels from professional down to pee wee. And second, I would guess, is the military. Again, "it is no accident" that it is in sport and in the military that individuals are more likely to be judged exclusively on their own abilities, with no deference to or discrimination against race. It is also important to note that both sports and the military emphasize co-operation and teamwork and common purpose.

Maybe everyone in American should be given a uniform.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Say What? (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Isaac Bailey begins his column in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Sun as follows:

Sometimes I'm afraid of being black, afraid of what it means.

I've been in this skin for more than 32 years and still can't quite figure out how it defines me, can't quite figure out how others view me.

Sometimes it's limiting. I write about race and instantly there are those who believe I do it because I have dark skin. It can't possibly be because it's an important issue in which we all have a stake.

I didn't expect hard work to pay off and didn't believe I would be afforded the same respect from white colleagues as from fellow black journalists. But for the most part, I've received it.

I didn't expect upon being named business editor - after a recommendation from a white colleague - that the white CEOs and other executives I'd come to know while covering real estate would be among the first to congratulate me.

I didn't expect black readers to accept my opposition to race-based affirmative action without revoking my negro card. But they've accepted it.

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The Democrats' new slogan for Social Security reform (Not) appears to be "Fix it, Don't Nix it." As George Will comments today,

The spectacle of adults chanting such childishness is embarrassing, especially because their chant mimics their recent slogan about the government's system of racial preferences, "Mend it, don't end it," which meant: Change nothing.

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Los Angeles Times editor Michael Kinsley, quoted in an article about his nasty dispute with Susan Estrich, says that women are not the only group whose presence on his editorial pages he has been trying to enhance.

"I believe in diversity. I have written about this," Kinsley said. He said part of his struggle has been in simultaneously trying to increase the number of writers from several groups — including Latinos, African Americans and conservatives, the last of whom, he said, "at this point have become sort of another affirmative action class."

Posted by John Rosenberg at 1:18 PM | Permalink | Say What? (15) | TrackBacks (0)

Having lost my patience, I've just announced a new comment policy, in the 59th comment to this post.

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Another lightweight pebble thrown by the pro-preferences forces is rippling the waters of the MCRI debate in Michigan (see here, here, and here) even as election watchdogs are verifying the 500,000+ signatures the anti-preferences forces have submitted -- 317,757 valid signatures are required -- to place the matter on the Michigan ballot.

This time the offending rock, which deserves to sink quickly if for no other reason than preserving the reputation of the authors, is in the form of a "report" by the Center for the Education of Women (CEW) at the University of Michigan. (This is a pdf document that allows no copying or saving of any of the text [if I were the authors, I wouldn't want anyone to be able to copy or save it either]. Another, more user-friendly copy can be found here.) The "report" argues, metaphorically speaking (but not metaphorical by much), that if MCRI passes women in Michigan will all become battered victims -- scientific illiterates with breast cancer -- and besides, none of them will ever again be telephone linemen.

If you've discerned that I'm having trouble taking it seriously, you're right. It's hard to take seriously a "report" that, in its second footnote, cites Title IV of the Civil Rights Act when it obviously means Title VI, and continued reading convinces that that was not a typo. Chetly Zarko, MCRI spokesman and frequent commenter here, has some preliminary comments here, and they are right on the money.

The report boldly makes a number of assertions that are outright fabrications, exaggerations, and miscontextualizations, to build a variety of strawmen which it then flagellates.

I'm not going to go through it chapter and verse, but let's look at one or two items, beginning with the second sentence:

Although described as a civil rights initiative, the MCRI appears to confer no additional civil rights on the basis of race, gender, ethnicity or national origin. With proper enforcement, existing state and federal laws are clear and adequate. [It then refers to and cites "Title IV" among other items, when it clearly means Title VI.]

There follow a series of charges, many with footnotes to what is alleged to have happened in California after the passage of Proposition 209, about closing down breast cancer screening, battered women shelters, etc., etc. All of this is bogus, on the level of citing as authority a complaint that was dismissed.

I started by looking at the report's second sentence, but its first sentence correctly states that MCRI would bar state entities from discriminating against or granting preferences to anyone based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin "in public employment, public education or public contracting." In which of those categories do breast cancer screening and battered women
shelters fit?

Oh never mind.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Say What? (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The former seems more likely than the latter.

Abortion advocates are still upset with Democrat leaders who have coalesced behind two candidates for the U.S. Senate who oppose abortion. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has recruited Pennsylvania state Treasurer Bob Casey and Rhode Island Rep. Jim Langevin to run in Senate races in those states.

Not only have top Democrats recruited candidates who oppose abortion, they've attempted to clear the field and persuade other Democrats from declaring their candidacies.

Equating pro-life advocates with racists, Michaelman asked, "Can you imagine recruiting people to run for the Senate with a record of opposition to affirmative action or to Brown v. Board of Education?"

"It is a problem when leading Democrats publicly recruit candidates who do not share the core values of the party," former NARAL president Kate Michaelman told MSNBC. "I don't think you ever win in the long term by sacrificing core principles....

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:55 PM | Permalink | Say What? (2) | TrackBacks (0)

From the Pacific News Service:

Ethnic media are at the forefront of reporting a controversial student demonstration in north Texas called “Capture An Illegal Immigrant Day.”

In January, the student group Young Conservatives of Texas (YCT) organized a protest at the University of North Texas in Denton at which some students pretended to be undocumented immigrants, “while others received a prize each time they ‘captured’ one of the supposedly undocumented ones,” writes Vanesa Salinas in the Dallas-Fort Worth Spanish-language daily Al Dia. The protest, she writes, aimed to “raise consciousness of the problem of undocumented immigration and demand more energetic laws to stop it.”

A columnist in Southern California online magazine HispanicVista skewered the event, its organizers and school officials as racist. “The event staged by the Young Conservatives of Texas was prima facie use of racial slurs against students of Mexican ancestry,” writes Felipe de Ortego y Gasca in the piece....

Maybe for the same reason that opposing all discrimination based on race is regarded as racist by those who favor some discrimination based on race.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 10:33 PM | Permalink | Say What? (9) | TrackBacks (0)

George Will, as usual, has some words of wisdom, suggesting that the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights be closed down.

WASHINGTON -- In contemporary American politics, as in earlier forms of vaudeville, it helps to have had an easy act to follow. Gerald Reynolds certainly did.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' new chairman follows Mary Frances Berry, whose seedy career -- 24 years on the commission, 11 of them as chairman -- mixed tawdry peculation, boorish behavior and absurd rhetoric. Because Reynolds represents such a bracing change, it is tempting to just enjoy the new 6-to-2 conservative ascendancy on the commission and forgo asking a pertinent question: Why not retire the commission?

Reynolds, the new chairman, has said the CRC can serve a useful function as a "bully pulpit," but Will is not persuaded.

But about this commission as bully pulpit: Does anyone really think America suffers from an insufficiency of talk about race? What is in scarce supply is talk about the meaning of the phrase "civil rights." Not every need is a right, and if the adjective is a modifier that modifies, not every right is a civil right -- one central to participation in civic life.

Thus getting rid of the civil rights laws should be welcomed by both left and right as a bold stroke to protect both sides from the charge of hypocrisy that now so justifiably sticks to them both.

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Affirmative action seems to promote conflict and division wherever it appears, whether it waylays Malays or ditches Manitobans.

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I have written about columnist Leonard Pitts more than a few times (such as here, here, here, and here). He is a big supporter of racial preferences, but these remarks in an interview at Ohio University suggest that he hasn't a clue how racial preferences actually work:

I am insulted by the idea that you have to lower standards to recruit minorities. The problem is that affirmative action is being defined as a way of increasing diversity. We need to remember that affirmative action was not originally defined in that sense; it was first defined as a way to redress years of systemic exclusion of people on account of gender and race. Now, should schools continue to broaden their reach, and attempt to recruit minorities? Yes. Should they consider factors other than, but including, scholarship? Yes, because that's done racially and nonracially. To lower entrance requirements, however, in the name of better representing a certain culture, is problematic and insulting.

Posted by John Rosenberg at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Say What? (15) | TrackBacks (0)

The Young Conservatives of Texas put on another affirmative action bake sale, at Tarrant County College Northeast, charging whites and Asians more for cookies than blacks and Hispanics to dramatize the inequities of racial preferences.

This time the young Democrats had a counter "sale," which some might think revealingly indicative of other Democratic policies.

HURST -- Local college conservatives thought they had a great recipe to gain attention about affirmative action -- cookies sold at prices based on race.

When the campus Democrats heard those plans, they came up with what they thought was a sweeter offer to challenge the conservatives -- homebaked cookies at no price at all.

I wonder if they had deleted the part where King famously stated that he wanted his children to be judged by the content of their characther, not the color of their skin.

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In a move that angered other Hispanic groups, the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic interest group, supported Alberto Gonzalez's nomination as Attorney General (as did the League of United Latin American Citizens), and last night they actually gave him an award.

Other Hispanic groups, such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, did not and do not support Gonzalez, and are not pleased with the Hispanic groups that do. Similarly,

Eugenio Arene, executive director of the Council of Latino Agencies, a Washington-based organization that represents Salvadorans, Nicaraguans and Guatemalans, and is affiliated with La Raza, said the move ignored the plight of Central Americans.

It will be interesting see how many women's groups and civil rights groups support the nominations of Judge Priscilla Owen, a woman, and California Supreme Court Justice Janice Rogers Brown, a black woman, to U.S. circuit court judgeships. Of course these political groups are entirely free to determine their own interests and priorities, but to be consistent shouldn't they advocate measures to ensure that no women and no blacks who hold views they regard as antithetical to women's interests and black interests are given any employment and admissions preferences?

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Many people, including many such as myself who are repulsed by Ward Churchill, believe it would be improper to fire him because of his offensive remarks. (I do, however, believe he not only could but should be fired if it is determined that he committed fraud, either in his scholarship or in falsely claiming that he is an Indian in order to benefit from a hiring preference.)

Now it appears that Churchill is not the only professor in Colorado saying offensive things.

Officials at Colorado State University-Pueblo are investigating a student's complaint that a professor called Mexicans "lazy and bitter" during a classroom tirade against illegal immigrants.

Two students claimed tenured anthropology professor Dan Forsyth made the comment in a speech March 3, The Pueblo Chieftain reported in Saturday's editions.

According to the students, Forsyth allegedly said illegal immigrants and Mexicans have filled up U.S. prisons and "raped the system," the paper reported.

Forsyth denied the allegations, saying he only reminded students after class about a campus appearance by Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., an outspoken advocate for tighter immigration controls.

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Everyone knows that no one, including affirmative action activists, likes quotas, but the National Women's Law Center is urging Senators to vote against the nomination of Thomas Griffith to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia because they say his past proposals would "gut" Title IX.

How, you ask, would he have done that?

Mr. Griffith's proposal would have eliminated entirely the "substantial proportionality" test for Title IX compliance, which allows schools to comply by offering athletic opportunities to male and female students in substantial proportion to each gender's representation in the student body.

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Two articles in the Metro section of today's Washington Post about racial disparities in the schools of suburban Montgomery County, Maryland, nicely (if sadly) reveal problems in how certain racial issues are understood -- both by parents, citizens, and educators and also by the journalists covering them.

"Parents Protest Magnet Makeup," by WaPo reporter Nancy Trejos, concerns the complaint of a group of 70 black parents that

has asked the Montgomery County school board to suspend the middle school magnet application process on the grounds that too few black students are accepted into some of the specialized programs.

The very next paragraph, however, states

that 80 percent of the approximately 2,100 black students who had taken the yearly test for the county's elementary gifted and talented program had not gotten in, even as the county has become increasingly diverse. Of the 139,000 students enrolled in the school system this year, 22.1 percent are African American, 18.7 percent are Hispanic, 44.6 percent are white and 14.3 percent are Asian.

Montgomery County school officials acknowledged yesterday that there are too few minority students in their magnet programs, which offer specialized classes. "These are very serious complaints and allegations, and it seems to me that they have some very good data that they have presented and the numbers are very disturbing," said school board member Valerie Ervin (Silver Spring)

Officials do not take race into consideration when selecting students, but the system has taken steps to boost the number of minority and low-income applicants....

To spread the word about the magnet programs, the county partnered with the local NAACP chapter to contact parents. This year, the school system offered workshops to parents, gave students practice booklets for the entrance exam and provided transportation to students on the day of the test.

Although the article does not clarify the exact dimensions of the alleged problem, it does succeed, inadvertently, in revealing the reporter's bias. Note this comment again, with emphasis added this time:

80 percent of the approximately 2,100 black students who had taken the yearly test for the county's elementary gifted and talented program had not gotten in, even as the county has become increasingly diverse.

* * * * *

Just below the above article on p. B1 of the WaPo today appears another article about another racial disparity in Montgomery County, "Young Students Make Gains In Reading," by reporter Ylan Q. Mui. The concern of the article, however, is contained in the subhead, "Minorities Still Lag in Montgomery."

According to a graph accompanying the article (right column; click to enlarge), about 83% of white students and 80% of Asian students in the county are reading at or above grade level, compared to about 61% of the black students and 55% of the Hispanics. Presumably this information is relevant to the proportion of students admitted into magnet programs, although it was not mentioned in the article discussed above.

And again, the country is making efforts, some would say heroic efforts, to correct the disparities, primarily in the form of a corresponding disparity of expenditures. The county spends "$8,792 for kindergartners and $11,178 for elementary school students," the Superintendent said, but in a swath of schools with lower scores it is spending an additional $60 million, just under an additional $2,000 per student. (At some point, I suspect, county residents may begin to ask how many of these students are "undocumented," and demand more federal assistance.)

What struck me most about this article, however, especially reading it as I did in conjunction with the one discussed above, is the absence of any organized parent group demanding that the reading gap be closed, much less to suspend other expenditures until that is done. But maybe that's just because it seems to me that the racial gap in reading scores is more serious than the alleged underrepresentation of minorities in magnet programs.

UPDATE [9 March]

The following is not about selection procedures for Montgomery County's magnet program, but it is about the county's Board of Education and so fits here, sort of.

Anyway, the board has instituted a very controversal experimental sex education programin six county schools, three high schools and three middle schools. I suspect the program's content is not out of the mainstream for such programs, with instruction in such things as putting condoms on cucumbers, teaching the legitimacy of homosexual couples, and encouraging students to develop a "gender identity," defined as ""a person's internal sense of knowing whether he or she is male or female."

What is rather striking, however, as pointed out on Townhall.com's blog, is that when parents who oppose the program sent emails to the board of education to complain, their emails were blocked because of "inappropriate content" that "surpassed the threshold set in the Adult Content dictionary."

UPDATE II [9 March 11:40 AM EST]

A couple of commenters below raised the good point that giving the percentage of successful blacks applicants to magnet programs, standing alone, did not say much, and I indicated I would attempt to gather some more information, which follows here.

With permission, I am reproducing below the response I received from an old email acquaintance, John Hoven, a math authority who said that I could identify him as someone who "spent 10 years fruitlessly working for school reform as co-president of the Gifted and Talented Association of Montgomery County, Maryland."

Being identified gifted is purely informational in Montgomery County. By policy, every gifted program in the regular classroom is open to any student who wants it. The magnets are selective, but the regular classroom gifted programs are not. So the statement you quote is misleading. The 80 percent of black students who were not identified gifted were not excluded from anything. And the scores on the 2nd grade Raven have nothing whatever to do with the selection process for the middle school magnets.

The purpose [of the 2nd-grade global screening for giftedness is purely] to identify bright children who might otherwise be overlooked -- e.g., because they are quiet, disruptive, African-American, etc. Nearly 40% of students are now identified gifted (up from about 25% a decade ago). Those who are identified may be encouraged to participate in accelerated math groups or the William & Mary Reading/Language Arts program -- but these groups are mainly based on reading and math abilities observed in the classroom, and they are open to any child on request. Montgomery County Public Schools does very little for gifted children in the regular classroom.

The Raven test scores from that global screening are also used as part of the selection process for the Centers for the Highly Gifted in grades 4-5. The cut-off scores are much higher for that selection, and there is also a series of more achievement-oriented screening tests. About 3% of the total student body are selected for these Center programs. I don't know how many apply. I think selectivity is better measured as a percent of the total student body, rather than as a percent of the total who choose to apply.

The middle school magnets, and the two highly selective high school programs (the Blair math-science magnet and the Richard Montgomery International Baccalaureate program) also accept a total of about 3% of the student body. Again, I don't know how many apply. The news story reports that 5 blacks and 62 whites were accepted into the Takoma Park Middle School Magnet. There are about 2500 blacks and 5000 whites per grade countywide, so that implies [to the extent that year at Takoma Park was representative -- jsr] that 0.2% of blacks were admitted, and 1.2% of whites. That is a huge disparity, but it is evidence of the racial achievement gap, not evidence of discrimination. To show discrimination, one would need to show that blacks are held to a higher standard than whites. In other words, the blacks who are admitted into the magnets should generally achieve at higher levels than the whites. I haven't heard any indication, anecdotal or otherwise, that that is true.

Several Montgomery County high schools also offer an IB program for their own students. The Richard Montgomery IB program is different because they select their students from the entire county.

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Asked about the prospects of Democrats starting to develop their plan [for Social Security reform], a Senate leadership aide said: "We're not there yet. We're on the cutting edge of a conversation that really hasn't begun yet.

In the same article Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg are quoted criticizing Democrats for denying that there is a problem with Social Security when, according to a recent NPR poll, 63% of Americans believe there is.

"To say there is no problem simply puts Democrats out of the conversation for the great majority of the country that want political leaders to secure this very important government retirement program," they wrote. "Voters are looking for reform, change and new ideas but Democrats seem stuck in concrete."

I'm no art critic, but to me the bronze Roosevelt looks more vibrant, alive, and forward looking than the backward-looking lock-step acolytes surrounding him.

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Holly Jackson, an enterprising Brandeis graduate student in English with a promising career before her, has a fascinating article -- really a detective story -- in the Boston Globe more or less proving that Emma Dunham Kelley-Hawkins, a prominent member of a group of recently rediscovered black women writers of the late 19th Century, was white. Read the article to follow the path to this conclusion.

Kelley-Hawkins's work had always proved problematic for the critics working in and with black literature since her characters appeared to be white and her work "lacked the themes of racial uplift found in the work of contemporaries," but they managed to cope with that unfortunate omission.

Scholars have explained this away by arguing that the abundance of white signifiers is actually politically radical, with some even going so far as to argue that this extremely white world depicts a kind of post-racial utopia. For example, in an essay on Kelley-Hawkins collected in the 2003 volume ''Women's Experience of Modernity, 1875-1945'' (Johns Hopkins), critic Carla L. Peterson argues that Kelley-Hawkins ''sought to offer her readers -- particularly African Americans -- a vision of what it would be like to live in a modern world in which racial difference no longer existed.''

follow a group of adolescent female friends in eastern Massachusetts from carefree youth through Christian conversion to appropriate wifehood, with no mention of the difficulties facing black women,

But a reconsideration of not only Kelley-Hawkins's racial identity but also the historical context of her novels suggests that a far different reading [different from portraying a post-racial utopia] is in order. Suddenly, they look not at all like hopeful African-American novels but like reflections of white racial anxiety in one of the most violently racist decades in American history.

Now that Kelley-Hawkins can no longer be regarded as "really" black, however, she is being dropped from the next edition of William Louis Gates's 40 volume anthology of 19th Century black women writers.

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This week Randy Cohen, the official ethicist of the New York Times, responds to the following inquiry:

I am a minority student who opposes affirmative action. Thus I decided not to reveal my color in my law-school application. It is extremely hard, however, to omit race from my personal statement: race has had a large impact on my decision to go to law school and on my experience volunteering in the community. What is the more ethical course -- to disclose my race and be an honest hypocrite or omit mentioning it and feel dishonest? Anonymous, San Francisco

One thing to consider is that many universities (most famously the University of Michigan) employ such programs not only to compensate groups that have been disadvantaged -- that is, to level the playing field -- but also to create a student body that will expose its members to a broad array of experiences, outlooks and ideas. There are, in other words, pedagogical rationales akin to those behind the quest for geographic diversity. And while you might think a school foolish for seeking regional variety, you would not feel hypocritical for revealing your hometown, or feel that you had not gained entry on your merits if you were one of a tiny number of West Coast applicants to a school in the Northeast.

More bothersome, however, is his condescending assumption that his advice seeker, whom he later identifies as "a senior at a prestigious Ivy League university," could somehow have failed "to consider" the diversity-justification for racial preferences that he trots out and parades before her, and us. And why does he assume that there would be no basis for thinking she had not gained entry entirely on her own merits if she received a "diversity" preference but that such a concern would be justified if she received instead a compensation-for-past-discrimination preference?

How offensively absurd. But then, preferentialists frequently assume that the only way anyone could disagree with them is by having failed "to consider" what they, being smart and perceptive, have thought of.

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Black billionaire Robert Johnson owns the Charlotte Bobcats, a professional basketball team, but ...

Johnson's ownership of the Bobcats is not "part of some NBA affirmative-action program," he is quick to point out. He paid $350 million for the club, mostly with his own money. His goals are for the Bobcats to flourish in the standings and at the cash register. The three men have no intention of following anyone else's social agenda. They want to win.

No one, in short, should think of Johnson's purchase as "part of some NBA affirmative action program." What does that suggest about how Johnson thinks -- and how we should think -- of deals/admissions/employment that are part of some affirmative action program?

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Over a decade ago the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that racially exclusive scholarships are unconstitutional, a decision that the Supreme Court let stand (Podberesky v. Kirwan, 38 F.3d 147 (4th Cir. 1994), cert. denied, 115 S. Ct. 2001 (1995)). (The text of opinion can be found here. In a twist that some will regard as ironic, Daniel Podberesky, the plaintiff who successfully challenged a merit scholarship program limited to blacks, is Hispanic.)

Virginia is in the fourth circuit, and yet the University of Virginia still advertises and presumably awards a slew of racially exclusive scholarships.

The Walter N. Ridley Scholarship at the University of Virginia provides scholarship for black students admitted to U.Va. Named for the University's first black graduate, The Ridley Fund is the product of the vision and generosity of the University's Black Alumni and friends. Since its creation in 1987, hundreds of alumni, parents, and friends have joined forces to award over 300 scholarships.

The Jerome B. Holland Scholarship "was created in 1987 to help the University compete for the most promising African American students in the country; students who are actively sought by the nation's most prestigious public and private institutions of higher learning."

The Gregory Raven Batipps Memorial Scholarship and Literary Prize were [sic established "to recognize talented African American students at the University of Virginia that have contributed to the University community through scholarship and literary works."

The Ravenell Ricky Keller III Scholarship provides "financially deserving, talented African American students with the opportunity to participate in International Exchange programs at the University of Virginia."

The Susan B. Merchant Fund "was established in November 1996 by Susan's father, John F. Merchant, founder of the Ridley Fund and the first black law school graduate, for the purpose of benefiting UVA students in a manner consistent with the purposes of the Ridley Fund."

The Meikel Andrade Memorial Scholarship "is given to an exceptional African-American female entering her first year at UVA...."

The Annetta Thompson Scholarship of $500 is awarded to a deserving 4th year Ridley Scholar

The University of Virginia has a highly regarded law school, as well as a general counsel who is not known for incompetence. Has it received advice from these or other sources that its racially exclusive scholarships are not inconsistent with the controlling 4th Circuit opinion in Podberesky?

Or is it standing in the schoolhouse door (metaphorically speaking), handing out money in a manner that has been ruled unconstitutional, hoping that no plaintiff comes forward to challenge the practice? If so, is that honorable behavior on the part of the University that still prides itself on its own Honor System?

UPDATE [6 March]

Several commenters on this post have suggested that there is nothing improper about UVa's racially exclusive scholarships because they appear to be funded by private funds. It's a very good point; it may be a legally winning point; but it is certainly not a slam dunk.

First, let me say that I have no objection (or at least no legal objection) to racially exclusive scholarships if they are in fact funded exclusively by private funds and have no public involvement. William Gray, the director of the United Negro College Fund, has a point (though a limited one), when he points out "that no complaints are being lodged against the many privately financed scholarships for members of various white ethnic groups, such as Italian-, Norwegian-, and Polish-Americans."

There would and should be complaints, however, if such ethnically exclusive scholarships were supported with any public funds. And since Gray arranged for the UNCF to administer the Gates Millennium Scholars program, which will distribute $1-billion to minority students over 20 years, he presumably is well aware that privately funded racially exclusive scholarships are alive and well. Of course, as I've argued here a number of times (see here, citing here and here) following the ruling in the Bob Jones case I don't believe any of those private funds, or the organizations administering them, should qualify for a tax exemption, nor should contributions to them be tax deductible.

Second (in case you've forgotten, all the above was "First"), it's a bit odd for liberals to be defending private racial exclusivity, since in other arenas the private nature of alleged discrimination does not prevent them from trying to eradicate it. Here's just one example, from People For The American Way:

While religious schools are permitted under Title VII to engage in religious discrimination in hiring when using private funds, serious constitutional issues are raised when those private schools receive public funds.... Federal taxpayers should not be required to subsidize private institutions that engage in religious discrimination in employment, however justifiable that discrimination may be for an institution when it is operated solely with private funds.

Our case involves a public university's use of allegedly private funds, but it is also instructive to note how liberals respond when the players are reversed. They vociferously oppose students being able to use vouchers at religious schools, arguing that the public funds in the voucher -- even though given to individual students to spend wherever they want -- implicates the organization that cashes the students' checks under all the federal anti-discrimination statutes and amounts to an establishment of religion. Or take the case of tiny Grove City College in western Pennsylvania (discussed here). Grove City adamantly refused all federal funds because it wanted to be free from federal regulation of its sports programs under Title IX. No matter. Liberals claimed that it was the indirect beneficiary of federal aid because a few of its students paid their tuition with benefits derived (often through a parent's service) from the GI Bill.

In short, where liberals want to eradicate discrimination nothing, for all practical purposes, is private. Where they want to protect it -- as with the ability of public institutions to benefit from racially discriminatory scholarships and private parties to receive tax breaks for contributing to racially discriminatory activities -- privacy all of a sudden becomes an important value. (Similar examples abound. As discussed here, liberals did not believe that the Boy Scouts had a First Amendment "associational freedom" right to exclude gays, but they do believe that law school faculties do have a First Amendment "associational freedom" right to exclude military recruiters without jeopardizing federal funds received by their institution.)

Finally, and most relevant to the substance of my original post, the University is so pervasively involved with the operation of these restrictive scholarships that their ostensibly private nature may be severely compromised or even obliterated.

• They are prominently mentioned throughout the University's web sites as examples of what the University is doing to promote diversity;

• The University houses the offices that administer the scholarships, and its officers work hand in glove with them. For example, Patricia Lampkin, UVa's Vice President for Student Affairs, points with pride to her conversations with the director of the Ridley Funds about ways the University "may collaborate in achieving his goals."

• Indeed, the University pays over 20% of the operating budget of the alumni association that administers the restrictive scholarships.
  

UPDATE II [6 March 1:55PM]

The Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Dept. of Education has ruled against privately funded minority scholarships in a case that bears considerable resemblance to the practice at UVa.

The U.S. Department of Education has issued policy guidance setting forth the circumstances under which race-targeted financial aid is permissible under Title VI as interpreted by the federal government. See 59 Fed. Reg. 8756 (Feb. 23, 1994). This guidance has been reiterated in light of subsequent federal court decisions and has been interpreted by the Department's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) in a number of agency findings, including a decision stating that privately funded "minority scholarships" at Northern Virginia Community College were not justified under Title VI because the College failed to demonstrate that the scholarships were needed for recruitment and retention of minority students, and because the college was involved in the creation of a foundation to administer the scholarships. [This discussion begins with a note that it had been updated as of January 2005.]

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In yet another example of the Michigan affirmative action cases having the effect of leading institutions to modify or even abandon their racial preference programs,

[t]he National Institutes of Health has been quietly overhauling several of its diversity-oriented grant programs, largely to avoid lawsuits accusing it or its grantees of discriminating against white or Asian-American researchers.

The agency still operates some programs that award grants only to members of certain racial or ethnic minorities. But NIH officials said the agency planned, in the long term, to open all the programs to applicants who have disabilities or are deemed disadvantaged, regardless of their race.

"We have basically broadened the diversity tent to include a number of other groups," said Norka Ruiz Bravo, the NIH's deputy director for extramural research.

some NIH officials had wanted to shift the programs from serving members of minority groups to serving those deemed "disadvantaged," but others, including himself, felt that such an approach "was wrongheaded," partly because it seemed to equate minority status with disadvantage and partly because disadvantage is hard to define.

Vanessa Northington Gamble, who is the director of Tuskegee University's National Center for Bioethics and has extensively examined minority health issues, said she is concerned that the changes being adopted by the NIH will erode minority gains in the health-care professions, and could lead members of minority groups, people with disabilities, and the disadvantaged to "feel they are in competition with each other."

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William Saletan provides a spirited defense in SLATE of Justices O'Connor and Kennedy against Justice Scalia's derision of them as flip-floppers in Roper v. Simmons, the recent decision barring the death penalty for anyone under 18.

Although Saletan quotes Scalia's much more devastating criticism of the American Psychological Association's contradictory positions, he doesn't address it. Here's part of what Scalia wrote:

As petitioner points out, the American Psychological Association (APA), which claims in this case that scientific evidence shows persons under 18 lack the ability to take moral responsibility for their decisions, has previously taken precisely the opposite position before this very Court. In its brief in Hodgson v. Minnesota, 497 U. S. 417 (1990), the APA found a "rich body of research" showing that juveniles are mature enough to decide whether to obtain an abortion without parental involvement. ... The APA brief, citing psychology treatises and studies too numerous to list here, asserted: "[B]y middle adolescence (age 14-15) young people develop abilities similar to adults in reasoning about moral dilemmas, understanding social rules and laws, [and] reasoning about interpersonal relationships and interpersonal problems."

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According to an article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, new report compiled by graduate students attempting to form a union at Yale charges that "Ivy League colleges have made few strides in hiring women and members of minority groups."

Data in the report, compiled from existing statistics at the U.S. Department of Education, show that of 433 new professors hired into tenure-track positions at Ivy League institutions in 2003, only 150 were women, 14 were black, and 8 were Hispanic....

.... [The report] blames the nation's most elite colleges, including Yale, Harvard University, and Princeton University, for failing in what the report calls "one of their primary missions as institutions in higher education: the promotion of social equality."

The social equality that universities should promote (if, indeed, they should promote it at all) is the same that all other institutions should promote: equality of opportunity unburdened by bestowing favor or disfavor based on race, religion, or ethnicity.

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Austin Bay has a perceptive, even profound comment about American foreign policy (and its critics) that (alas, less incisively) I have been attempting to apply here to our domestic racial politics (HatTip to InstaPundit):

All but the most recalcitrant, calcified and now laughable naysayers in the West suddenly recognize the pragmatism of American idealism.

That's the thing about principles: the best case for them is often instrumental, and it is usually highly impractical to abandon them.

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A reader who wishes to remain anonymous has called my attention to this forum on admissions policies in the Chronicle of Higher Education that features comments from six worthies. One of them, Anthony P. Carnevale, a senior fellow at the National Center on Education and the Economy, offered comments that are almost perfect in the purity of their expression of contemporary liberal dogma. An excerpt:

The flaw in the American process is that college-admissions procedures may be fair, but society is not. When people start out with unequal opportunities in elementary and secondary school, college access governed by metrics like test scores and grades can become a bit of a dodge --a way of laundering unfair racial and class barriers to opportunity. Hence, to an extent, the current admissions apparatus makes selective colleges passive participants in the intergenerational reproduction of privilege.

There are many ways to start out unequal in the admissions process long before an admissions officer gets involved. Race is still the worst. American racism persists even without racists because of the lingering effects of Jim Crow. That's why the share of black and Hispanic students at selective colleges is less than half their share of the college-age population.

Good question.

Carnevale's statement has the great virtue of saying explicitly what liberals are generally loathe to admit -- essentially, that nothing can be fair until everything is fair, that treating people equally, i.e., without regard to race, creed, or color, is repressive so long as society remains unequal.

But if this is true, why single out universities as perpetrators of "the intergenerational reproduction of privilege"? By this standard, law enforcement should not hold the underprivileged to the same standards as everyone else; the IRS should have different tax rates for blacks and whites with the same income; banks should pay minorities higher interest on savings and charge them lower interest on loans than others who present the same level of risk; etc. Admissions officers who share Carnevale's values should ignore "metrics like test scores and grades," or perhaps use them only if and where race norming is allowed. And, once admitted, the underprivileged should not be graded by the same standards as other students.

Finally, Carnevale never addresses the accuracy of the "metrics" he would have admissions officers ignore. And it's easy to see why: if he admits their accuracy, he's in the position of arguing that merit is measureable but should be set aside as a requirement for anything until the entire society is fair. But if he argues they are not accurate, then he loses his best evidence demonstrating that the society remains unfair. If, that is, the tests are wrong in suggesting that the underprivileged are less qualified than others, then it would seem that the underprivileged have not been as damaged by the effects of racism etc. as he otherwise claims.

UPDATE [2 March]

My correspondent who wondered "how 18-year-old Hispanics are affected by the lingering effects of Jim Crow" writes again to say, "I wish I'd thought to put in, from California whose parents came to this country in 1990."

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Henry Ford famously said of the Model T, "You can buy it in any color, as long as its black." Similarly, Avis Robinson has created the Washington Metropolitan Scholars Program "to draw more black students to elite universities and help them pay for it."

Robinson, whose husband, Eugene Robinson, a Washington Post columnist, is on the scholarship program's board of directors,

has asked every high school in the region to nominate 10 high-achieving African American students -- some nominate fewer -- for the chance of being named All-Met Scholars.

She has, in turn, partnered with nearly 40 colleges and universities, who look at the applicants, decide whom to admit and design financial aid packages for them.

The program steps in with money Robinson has raised to fill in the financial gaps for the neediest.

Here's another question for the lawyers: it is law in the Fourth Circuit, and increasingly agreed elsewhere, that public universities cannot offer racially exclusive scholarships. If that is so, should they be able to promise acceptance and/or financial aid to students who were selected by a private racially exclusive organization? Ball State University in Indiana, for example, promises to

provide scholarships for at least two students annually from the Washington Metropolitan Scholars program, which rewards black high school seniors from the Washington, D.C., area who display outstanding academic and leadership abilities.

"The program works because I'm not discriminating," [Ms. Robinson] said. "I'm helping everybody get into college. And I'm getting money for the kids who most need it."

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