1. Thanksgiving is one of our important national legacies, and so let me urge any of you who may be reading this today or tomorrow to, no, not to stop reading but to read quickly (and follow the link below, and read that quickly) and then, but only then, to stop reading and rejoin your family and friends for a Happy Thanksgiving … and don’t let the turkeys get you down.
2. Since I’ve mentioned turkeys, let me also urge you (qualified by the injunction above) to see my essay, “Are Legacy Preferences Illegal?,” which was just posted on Minding The Campus.
ADDENDUM [26 November]
Hans Bader writes that his brother published a letter in the Washington Post in 2003 arguing that legacy preferences made racial preferences illegal. The entire letter is no longer available (for free) online, but the gist of it is here: “The federal appeals courts have repeatedly said that institutions cannot use racial preferences to offset the disparate impact of their own arbitrary selection criteria, because that perpetuates a problem of their own making.”
Interesting. But by that logic wouldn’t they also have to drop the SAT?
ADDENDUM II [30 November]
My Minding The Campus essay to which I referred you above is a criticism of recent arguments by Richard D. Kahlenberg, who responded to my criticism with his own essay on MTC. A rejoinder by me follows his essay.
