The Boston Globe Opposes Preferences!

Reader Fred Ray points to a hard-hitting attack by Jules Crittenden against an editorial opposing preferential treatment in the Boston Globe, which Crittenden calls a “Lefty Rag” and others refer to simply as the New York Times outpost in New England.

Oh, wait. “No, not race, gender or sexual-orientation preferences,” Crittenden explains. “Don’t be ridiculous.” What it slams is “civil service police preferences for that other much-abused minority, Military-Americans, in a bigoted, ill-informed editorial that plays on some of the worst stereotypes about veterans….

Why? Well, the editorial explains, because “there is … the potential for giving preference to veterans who might lack education or be suffering from stress or aggression issues.” And besides, preferential treatment “isn’t necessary for the most deserving veterans and serves to push out more suitable candidates.”

Do you think the Boston Globe opposes preferences for other minority groups for similar reasons? Your guess, I’m sure, is as good as mine.

Say What? (3)

  1. ACF August 15, 2009 at 5:33 pm | | Reply

    More discrimination here:

    http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/08/14/texas

    By the way, when I submitted a comment to that page, it got rejected. This is familiar to me for every piece published by Scott Jaschik. When a comment does not match his political world view (class, race, gender), he just rejects them.

    I wish that academia had a web site that supported the free exchange of ideas instead of the extreme editing of comments at Inside Higher Education. Then again, perhaps that web site provides an excellent mirror of the suppression practiced “inside higher education!”

  2. fenster moop August 15, 2009 at 8:42 pm | | Reply

    As a long-time and continuing Globe reader you are spot on in assuming the paper would not extend its thinking to other minority groups. But for the record, what is your view relative to an otherwise (for you) suspect thumb-on-the-scales for for vets?

  3. John Rosenberg August 16, 2009 at 12:08 am | | Reply

    I think prefs for vets are similar to prefs for legacies — good arguments on both sides, but the issue is beyond the sphere of my real concern since both raise only policy issues, neither raise constitutional issues. Academic freedom gives colleges the right to prefer legacies, wise or not, and national gratitude probably gives my nod to vet prefs. Those who ground their objection to race prefs in pure merit don’t have my latitude to make these arguments. By the way in EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck, which I’ve discussed here several times, at one point Sears actually sued the Attorney General on the grounds that vet prefs meant Sears had to hire many more men than women. Interesting argument, but it didn’t fly.

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