A reader, all the way from Vienna, suggested an article in The New Yorker that he thought I, and you, would find interesting. He was right. I did, and you will.
“Getting In: The Social Logic of Ivy League Admissions,” by Malcolm Gladwell, tells the story, entertainingly and well, of the consternation created in the Ivy League after it turned to academically meritocratic testing early in the 20th century only to find that they were getting too many Jews.
The solution to this unfortunate problem was to turn away from the short-lived effort to admit the best students to a more all-encompassing look (some of us would, and do, call it “holistic”) at geography, extra-curricular activities, appearance (“Short with big ears” was noted on the file of one reject), even “manliness” — in short, “character.”
Although this effort can easily seem silly as well as obnoxious, Gladwell makes a strong case that this approach was not simply designed to exclude Jews, who were reduced after a while from 22% to 15% at Harvard. More substantially, it was an attempt to attract not the brightest but those who would become most successful — not those who would become the best law students, for example, but the best lawyers.
Gladwell argues that it worked. Others may disagree. Among the many things here that I find of interest is the confirmation of my view — argued here a number of times, most recently here — that in theory, principle, purpose, and practice there really is no difference between racial preferences today and Jewish quotas back then. “Harvard wouldn’t be Harvard” if it had too many Asians today, just as it wouldn’t have been if it had too many Jews then.
Gladwell finds the logic of this approach compelling. My problem is not with its logic, although even the logic of taking away Bob Jones’s tax exemption for a racially restrictive policy (against interracial dancing) that is arguably no more offensive than the pervasive Ivy League racial balancing that Gladwell seems to accept needs more work than he gives it.
UPDATE
An anonymous but astute reader send the following comment:
I was just about to write you about the gladwell piece but I see you already blogged it, and noted the obvious parallels between avoiding Jews and avoiding Asians. One thing you didn’t mention is the tactical similarity — when overt measures (Jewish quotas, race norming) were found distateful, the desired racial breakdown was accomplished by going fuzzy (“character” at Harvard in the 20s, “holistic review” at the University of California today as well as the endorsement of “winks, nods, and disguises” that distinguishes Grutter from Gratz).
The URL for the article returns an error. But http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/051010crat_atlarge this one works.
There are actually some important differences between present and past quotas. Harvard and Columbia switched to national recruitment, which was the main effect preventing Jewish enrollments from going into 30, 40 or higher percent ranges. Other schools did the same, ahead of any special Jewish interest in them. Colleges then were switching to standardized testing, rather than relying on the reputation of prep schools. So there were both promerit and antimerit tendencies operating at the same time. Today quotas are uniformly antimerit, and this is a much more serious charge against them. If schools were concerned about having too many Asians, they could use broadened recruitment geographically as the 1920’s colleges did.
Another difference between the quotas of that period, such as the czarist ones against Jews, and the disadvantaged minorities’ quotas of today; is that the older ones were aimed more at social cohesiveness. Today’s quotas appear to be motivated by a desire to inflame hostilities between groups of considerable percentage size in the total population. Dostoevsky saw his country’s quotas as indispensable for preventing an outgroup from precipitating social turmoil, in which the excluded could improve their chances at winning a leading role. Our current quota advocates in academia, insofar as they are radical, see minority quotas as a way to increase the chances for revolution. They nurture hopes of developing a revolutionary vanguard by such means. On such views, blacks have genes or effectively heritable tendencies for revolution; whites for conservatism and reaction.
John S. Bolton makes a good point. Many of the programs that Universities establish in the name of diversity do not seem to be aimed at education at all. I’m thinking of initiation courses for people of color only, or whiteness studies.
None of this is even aimed at education to remedy the horrendous grade disparities mentioned here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-exit1oct01,0,7413567.story?coll=la-story-footer&track=morenews
John S. Bolton writes:
>>>”Our current quota advocates in academia, insofar as they are radical, see minority quotas as a way to increase the chances for revolution. They nurture hopes of developing a revolutionary vanguard by such means. On such views, blacks have genes or effectively heritable tendencies for revolution; whites for conservatism and reaction.”
Could you CLARIFY that last sentence, sir?
–Cobra
Readworthies XVI
A handful of interesting, informative, and insightful articles: news, editorials, columns, essays, et al.
The advice given above is highly relevant. The article reveals some burning issues and questions that should be discussed and
clarified, found something similar to this page a couple days ago –
https://visionawards.org/best-scholarships-studying-abroad/. Furthermore, it is vital to
comprehend within the very detail. In the post, an individual can easily find something basic, unusually for him/her, something which
can be extremely useful. So I’m delighted with the data I’ve just obtained.
Thanks a lot!