John Rosenberg blogs at Discriminations.
Liberals have been complaining loudly about two recent Supreme Court decisions, Schuette, which ruled that Michigan’s constitutional amendment prohibiting preferential treatment based on race does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and Town of Greece v. Galloway, holding that, in the absence of any intent to discriminate or exclude, a town board opening its sessions with prayers […]
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Three dozen students picketed the admissions office at Smith College last week. “The protest,” Inside Higher Ed reports, “called for Smith to admit those who may be listed as male on their high school transcripts but have been living as women.” Smith explained that it does not discriminate against transgender students who are enrolled and […]
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“It has come to this,” Justice Scalia begins his devastating concurring opinion in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, referring with near-boiling incredulity to the fact that the Court was required to “confront a frighteningly bizarre question: Does the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbid what its text plainly requires? Needless to […]
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President Obama and three of his predecessors and assorted civil rights luminaries (Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, John Lewis) gathered recently at the LBJ Library in Austin, Texas, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and, belatedly, to honor the memory of Lyndon Johnson, who engineered its passage. (For years Democrats fled […]
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Fisher v. University of Texas was the most eagerly (or anxiously) anticipated Supreme Court case of the last several years. Opponents of affirmative action hoped (and supporters feared) that it would, finally, fire a silver bullet into the heart of racial preference policies. It did not, but what it did do (if anything) has been […]
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Sometimes it is hard to take affirmative action seriously, or to distinguish it from parody (or often, tragedy). A case in point is a recent decision by a three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upholding the dismissal of a discrimination complaint by Dr. Marvin Thrash, a former faculty […]
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Another day, another report on “gender inequities” in STEM fields. Early Academic Career Pathways in STEM: Do Gender and Family Status Matter? , just released by the American Institutes for Research, begins by summarizing the familiar litany of laments: not enough women on STEM faculties, and the few there “are more likely than men to be […]
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One of the criticisms of affirmative action acknowledged even by many liberals is that the preferential treatment it bestows tends to benefit those who need it least. For example, it is hard to imagine a group of minority students less in need of special, career-enhancing assistance than graduate students in STEM fields at Stanford, Caltech, […]
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The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) has a new State of College Admission Report that “provides a detailed look at some of the long-term trends observed in data collected by NACAC over the last ten years” as well as “a recap of some shorter-term observations.” For some unstated reason its release has been delayed, but […]
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The National Institutes of Health is worried that it, or somebody, is discriminating against blacks. According to a long article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, NIH “shocked itself in 2011 with a study that found a wide race-based variance in its grant awards,” and it is still struggling to explain that variance. That 2011 […]
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Conservative critics have long argued two related points against liberals: 1) that modern liberalism has turned its back on what for generations, even centuries, was one of its foundational principles, that individuals should be treated by the state “without regard” to race, creed, or color, and 2) that its abandonment of that principle was so […]
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By now the arguments for and against “diversity” are so numerous, so heatedly argued that squabbling pro- and anti-diversifiers have become the academic equivalent of the prisoners who memorized their joke book and hence no longer need actually to tell the jokes; simply stating “No. 14” or “No. 36” is sufficient. (As an example, I am particularly […]
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In Fisher v. University of Texas the Supreme Court held that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had given too much deference to the university’s conclusion that the nature and extent of its racial discrimination in admissions was essential to promote sufficient “diversity,” and it returned the case to that court for further review. The brief just filed by the Department […]
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Can public universities offer racially restrictive programs and scholarships, i.e., for which threshold eligibility is determined by the race of the applicants? No, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Podberesky v. Kirwan (1994), based on its “constitutional premise that race is an impermissible arbiter of human fortunes.” Some will regard it as ironic […]
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Thanks to Obamacare, the situation of adjuncts and other “contingent faculty” has become much more precarious. “Universities are cutting back on their work hours to comply with Obamacare,” the Daily Caller reports, in order to avoid that law’s requirement of benefits to those who work more than 30 hours a week. “Adjunct college instructors,” the […]
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The Supreme Court heard oral argument yesterday in an important Michigan affirmative action case, and the transcript reveals what a strange argument it was. The case is on appeal from the Sixth Circuit, whose eight Democratic-appointed judges had decided, over the bitter dissents of their seven Republican-appointed colleagues, that Michigan voters violated the 14th Amendment’s […]
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Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy probably deserves his own chapter in the history of black intellectuals and black legal scholars. Over the years he has told us a great deal — some of it intentionally, with scholarship and skill; some inadvertently or unwittingly –about how race is regarded and debated in the academy, especially the legal academy. […]
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Academic politics can be vicious and hence an often entertaining spectator sport. Still, it is not altogether clear why Howard University president Sidney Ribeau’s recent announcement that he will resign the end of this year — unexpected and even shocking though it was — has attracted so much press attention, and not just in the usual higher education sources. It is true, as […]
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Critics (often but not always conservatives) have long complained that political correctness has cast a a pall of conformity over college campuses, compromising and even violating academic freedom. A new case from Dartmouth has now put meat on the bones of that criticism. The Rt. Rev. James Tengatenga had resigned his position as Anglican Bishop […]
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At the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in New York, which concluded yesterday, Frank Samson, an assistant professor at the University of Miami, argued that “white people” who criticize affirmative action are biased, racist hypocrites, and Inside Higher Ed backed him up. “Critics of affirmative action generally argue that the country would be […]
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If Anthony Carnevale, higher education apparatchik extraordinaire and, according to Inside Higher Ed, “a grizzled expert on educational access and equity,” were a corporation he would be the bluest of blue chips, perhaps even a one-man conglomerate. His resume is a virtual road map of the loftiest sinecures of politically correct labor and educational policy […]
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What would we do without educational research, and how did we manage when there was less of it? A new study I discussed on Monday, for example, informed us that organized students who master advanced subjects in high school do better in college than disorganized students who don’t. The authors of today’s new study, to […]
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As a long-time refugee from higher education, I tend to forget — and hence am continually shocked when I rediscover — that denizens of that strange land are often impressed by research findings that those of us who live in more pedestrian territories assume everyone (even college administrators) already knew, without the need of research. […]
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Both Inside Higher Ed and the Chronicle of Higher Education have just reported on a new finger-wagging “report card” that scolds college athletic programs for “racial hiring practices” resulting in insufficiently “diverse” staffs. The card, issued by TIDES, the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, is aghast that only 18.8 […]
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Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for a 7-1 majority (Justice Kagan recused herself), disappointed both left and right today with his opinion for the Court in Fisher v. Texas, vacating the Fifth Circuit’s decision and remanding it “[b]ecause the Fifth Circuit did not hold the University to the demanding burden of strict scrutiny” required, he said, […]
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Articles touting “diversity” often tell us more than they intend to, frequently by casual comments off the main topic or by what is not said at all. Three articles from the past few days provide good examples of the subtext being more interesting, and more revealing of the nuts and bolts of “diversity,” than the […]
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Socioeconomic preferences can be a better proxy for race than race preferences, according to an Inside Higher Ed report this morning on a new study to be published this summer in the Harvard Law & Policy Review. More precisely, the authors, Matthew N. Gaertner, a researcher at Pearson’s Center for College and Career Success and […]
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The University of Virginia prides itself on being “Mr. Jefferson’s university,” where unfettered free speech is both practiced and respected in the manner called for in his First Inaugural address when Mr. Jefferson (as locals still reverentially refer to him) fervently urged his fellow citizens to let misguided and even evil notions “stand undisturbed as […]
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports this morning that a new study by the American Council on Education discovered the “stark lack of representation” of Asian-Americans among leaders of higher education. “Despite leadership inroads made by other racial minority groups,” ACE announced, “only 1.5 percent of college and university presidents are Asian Pacific Islander Americans.” […]
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Two trains carrying loads of conflicting values, requirements, and prohibitions affecting college admissions and hiring are hurtling rapidly toward each other, but no one seems aware of the impending collision. On one track, the Supreme Court is probably poised to impose new restrictions on race- and ethnicity-conscious policies in Fisher v. University of Texas and […]
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