MCRI: Déjà Vu All Over Again

Stuart Hurlbert sends a timely and powerful reminder that the misrepresentations, distortions, and alarmist predictions from critics of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative are simply déjà vu all over again.

Stuart is a biologist at San Diego State University with some experience in these matters.

My own initiation into these battles came eleven years ago when I was able to obtain some normally difficult to obtain information on admission and graduation rates at my own university. In an article in the student newspaper, I pointed out that as a result of racial preferences, the 6-year graduation rate for all African-American students had dropped to 10%. This was the unhappy consequence of 2/3 of the African-American freshman class being admitted in the mid 1980s without the minimum credentials normally required for entrance to the university. The article was sympathetic to the dilemma of the students, but not so sympathetic to the white administrators whose nearsighted and predictably damaging policies were responsible for the harm.

On appearance of the article, my department chair and another faculty member sent a letter to all faculty members in my department asking them to sign a letter censuring me for my “racial insensitivity”. Par for the course in some segments of academia, as most of you will understand. But the effort badly boomeranged. Numerous colleagues told them they were way off base, and the letter was withdrawn. Eventually I received many positive responses from both within my department and  around campus for having addressed a serious, controversial matter in an honest and sensitive way. The PC forces have been, at least in my department, quiet ever since. Higher administrators have become aware that roughly half the faculty oppose racial preferences, and no longer talk about ways to circumvent Prop. 209 in open meetings.

When I asked Stuart’s permission to quote the above, I told him I’d be happy to keep both his name and university anonymous. He replied:

John, Go for it! You need keep neither my name or university anonymous. I fly well above the radar here — in part so my special equipment can pinpoint those radar transmitting sites!

If every university had at least one professor willing to expose the corruption of racial preference with Stuart’s verve, and had his ability to dodge the predictable politically correct flak, the future of racial preference would be even shorter than it is now.

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  1. Anita March 21, 2006 at 9:21 am | | Reply

    Stuart said: This was the unhappy consequence of 2/3 of the African-American freshman class being admitted in the mid 1980s without the minimum credentials normally required for entrance to the university.

    the solution is obvious. reduce the credentials required for graduation. problem solved. just kidding. but that is the inevitable next step.

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