The Kellogg Foundation is funding a survey of four college campuses by Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute and the Educational Testing Service to examine how students of color’s experiences on college campuses impact the notorious black-white achievement gap. Namely, it will examine how the students feel “welcome and unwelcome, respected and disrespected, supported and unsupported, […]
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Students applying for college admission now face a new reality—the SAT is increasingly optional at our colleges and universities. The test-optional movement, pioneered by FairTest, a political advocacy group supported by George Soros and the Woods Fund—now list 815 schools that do not require SAT scores. That number may seem impressive, but it includes institutions […]
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I have been teaching a class at Columbia on Western Civilization since September. The class is highly diverse. By that, I mean that among the 21 students there is an Orthodox Jew, a child of Russian immigrants, and a couple of Korean-Americans. Plus a Chinese-American. And one of them grew up in France; just why […]
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Should colleges analyze their faculties by race, ethnicity and gender to see which group is happier and more content with life on campus? Short answer: no. Identity-group politics is already out of hand in the world of universities. Comparative contentment reports are sure to reinforce the notion of identity uber alles. Besides, grievance is still […]
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If your plans for next semester were ucertain, here’s a surefire plan: NYU’s new one-credit “Intergroup Dialogues” which are “designed to foster communication among racial groups at NYU.” The sessions are to be gerrymandered, of course, according to the Washington Square News: To ensure balance, a 14-student section addressing racial issues would have seven white […]
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“Colorado First State Not To Reject Affirmative Action”
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The Chronicle of Higher Education reports (no subscription required). They provide an additional list of state referenda related to higher education. Several reveal a surprising new direction for education-financing: lotteries and taxes from casino gambling. That’s one way to do it, I guess.
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Nebraska voters have approved a ballot initiative banning affirmative action, and Coloradans may do the same. As of 7:40 AM, CNN has the ban ahead 983,546 to 970,067, with 87% of precincts reporting). There’s victory for Ward Connerly, and hopefully soon two.
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Halloween is the perfect time for those dark and scary “Tunnel of Oppression” exhibits on many college campuses. The tunnels, billed as “grassroots diversity programs,” are meant to shock and waken students to the amount of hate and oppressiveness around the world and in America today. Photos and skits in the makeshift tunnels portray the […]
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The “Diversity In Academe” issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education is out. And how is the quest for diversity going? Badly, as always. The number of Asian-American university Presidents remains insufficient, Middle Easterners aren’t considered an ethnic group, and paltry numbers of minority students study abroad. And those are just the minor problems. What’s […]
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If you like “whodunit” books and “perfect crime” plots, I heartily recommend the Tim Groseclose experience of trying to obtain the data to evaluate the “holistic” admissions process of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). Groseclose is the political science professor who blew the whistle on what he considers to be UCLA’s violation […]
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Tim Groseclose, a Political Science Professor at UCLA, has resigned from its Committee on Undergraduate Admissions and Relations with Schools, stating that “a growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions” – of course, in order to circumvent the state ban on the use of race as a factor in admissions. […]
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How do you thwart an anti-affirmative action ballot measure likely to be overwhelmingly approved by state voters? Let me count the ways in which racial-preference boosters (typically college administrators, liberal state officials, and ethnic advocacy groups) have thwarted or tried to thwart anti affirmative action activist Ward Connerly’s hopes for a “Super Tuesday” this November […]
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I cannot reflect upon my four years at UC Berkeley without mentioning the word “Diversity.” When one’s college experience is oversaturated by incessant lessons in racial and ethnic awareness, the word becomes unavoidable in any mention of Berkeley. Berkeley’s particular concept of diversity seemed to avoid the basic goal of fostering cultural tolerance and understanding. […]
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Book Review: Ending Racial Preferences: The Michigan Story by Carol M. Allen (Lexington Books, 2008, 422 pp.) I like this book, but fairness to the prospective reader requires disclosure of three facts: (a) it is an odd book, (b) I am an odd reader, and (c) it costs ninety dollars, for Pete’s sake. The last […]
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The ABA is very big on diversity. To satisfy its standards, nearly all law schools must seriously relax their admissions standards for minority students. But how many of so-called beneficiaries of affirmative action are graduating and passing the bar? And how many are winding up with nothing to show for their trouble but students loans? […]
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Several years ago a Korean-American student in one of my politics classes at Princeton described the reaction of his Asian classmates in the California private school he attended when the college acceptance and rejection letters arrived in the mail the spring of their senior year. A female Black student, he explained, had applied to more […]
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Confirming what college administrators have known for years, Education Sector has released a report based on U.S. Department of Education figures detailing huge gaps between the college graduation rates of white students and those of blacks. The gap (measured by failure to graduate within six years from a four-year institution) averages about 20 percent, although […]
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There is a substantial academic performance gap between black and white high school graduates. Most who study education readily acknowledge this fact. Institutions of higher education are presumed to be places where students come to the campus reasonably prepared to compete with others who are similarly prepared. For decades, colleges and universities have sought to […]
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The University of Texas has been sued once again over racial preferences in its admissions policy – by an 18-year-old high school senior in Sugar Land near Houston who ranks in the top 12 percent of her class but says she was turned down by the university’s prestigious Austin campus in favor of less academically […]
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Recently I sat down with a young woman who shared with me the experience of her first year at Thurgood Marshall College, one of the six colleges of the University of California at San Diego. She explained to me that regardless of her major field of study and in order to graduate she was required […]
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UCLA has just approved an addition to the majors offered by their Spanish and Portuguese departments: Spanish and Community and Culture, reports the Daily Bruin. What makes this different? Well, the Bruin has an answer: “what makes this major different from the other Spanish majors are two community service-based courses that place students in quarter-long […]
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By Gail Heriot (Ms. Heriot is a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. This piece is adapted from Ms. Heriot’s Commissioner Statement for the Civil Rights Report on Affirmative Action at American Law Schools released last fall.) I have no doubt that those who originally conceived of race-based admissions policies – nearly forty […]
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Black History Month college speakers axiomatically slant left. This February, Al Sharpton appeared at Adelphi University, Nikki Giovanni at Southern University, and Mary Frances Berry at Reed College, to name just a few. The right-most speaker this year was likely an elected Democrat, Harold Ford Jr., who also spoke at Reed. It’s little change in […]
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The Harvard Crimson offers an unsurprisingly elliptical response to a new study “Admissions and Public Higher Education in California, Texas, and Florida: The Post-Affirmative Action Era” appearing in InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies. The study focuses on the enrollment patterns of school systems that eliminated affirmative action – and found significant increases […]
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At a recent Manhattan Institute forum, Ward Connerly, the fierce opponent of race and sex preferences by government (who’s leading a state-by-state referendum drive to abolish affirmative action) admitted how the Bush Administration has disgraced itself by endorsing racial and gender-conscious policies and practices. Connerly did not give examples, but one glaring illustration is President […]
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“Bans On Affirmative Action Help Asian Americans, Not Whites, Report Says” reads a Chronicle of Higher Education headline this week reporting on a new study of preference bans and attendance, offering little surprise to… any, it seems, aside from the study’s authors. The study examined the results of preference bans at a number of colleges, […]
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In our latest podcast, John Leo interviews Ward Connerly on his efforts to eliminate racial preferences in five states this November and the role of diversity in college admissions. Listen here.
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Randy Cohen, the New York Times “Ethicist”, offered a very slippery response to a reader last week, on the question of financial incentives for the hiring of minority professors. You’d best read the whole exchange first. My comments are beneath: I teach at a state university that offers financial incentives to hire minority candidates. A […]
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Angela Davis is busy this year with Martin Luther King day commemorations. On Jan. 17 she gave a lecture “dealing with racism in today’s world” as part of the University of South Alabama’s 2008 Martin Luther King Jr. observations. She’s appearing at Brown to deliver its 12th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Lecture on February […]
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