{"id":1315525,"date":"2019-10-10T21:48:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-11T03:48:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/will-column-college-diversity-tinkering-what-a-tangled-web\/"},"modified":"2019-10-10T21:48:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-11T03:48:00","slug":"will-column-college-diversity-tinkering-what-a-tangled-web","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/will-column-college-diversity-tinkering-what-a-tangled-web\/","title":{"rendered":"Will column: College diversity tinkering: What a tangled web"},"content":{"rendered":"
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WASHINGTON \u2014 The judge took 130 pages to explain that Harvard\u2019s \u201cholistic review\u201d admissions policies \u2014 which include ascribing particular attributes to certain ethnicities, such as Asian Americans, and assessing the value to Harvard of those attributes \u2014 are, considering 41 years of Supreme Court precedents, permissibly race-conscious. She said the policies do not discriminate against Asian Americans.<\/p>\n

However, the suit some Asian Americans filed against Harvard correctly cited evidence from Harvard that more objective admissions policies than Harvard\u2019s would admit many more Asian Americans. What a tangled web we weave when we deceive ourselves into thinking that we can favor some groups without disfavoring others, or disfavor some without acting on the basis of stereotypes. But before disparaging Harvard\u2019s attempts to shape its student body, and before judging the judge\u2019s opinion, consider three facts:<\/p>\n

First, Harvard admitted just 4.5% of the 43,330 applicants to this year\u2019s freshman class of 1,650, so it needs some sorting metrics (to serve the institution as a whole and many subconstituencies, from the athletic department to alumni relations). Second, if Harvard were to admit every applicant with a perfect grade-point average, it would increase the size of its entering class 400%. Third, a Harvard document presented in the trial estimated that relying exclusively on objective academic measurements \u2014 secondary school transcripts and SAT scores \u2014 would produce a Harvard student body 43% Asian American and 1% African American. (Caltech, which relies much more heavily on those than other highly selective institutions, enrolled a 2018 freshman class that was 40% Asian.)<\/p>\n

Now, three questions. Would you be comfortable with a legal requirement that only such objective metrics be used in college admissions? If that were required, would Harvard have to choose by lottery the 25% of the \u201cperfect GPAs\u201d to admit? Would you be comfortable with the nation\u2019s most elite institutions \u2014 very few schools are selective enough to be able to curate their student bodies for whatever diversity is desired \u2014 looking so little like the nation?<\/p>\n

Before the discomforting reality of racial preferences was blurred by the anodyne phrase \u201caffirmative action,\u201d the 1976 Democratic platform spoke of \u201ccompensatory opportunity,\u201d thereby presenting race-conscious policies as remediation for past social injuries. But the Supreme Court\u2019s 1978 Bakke decision, the first concerning higher education admissions, authorized schools to consider race as a small \u201cplus\u201d factor in admissions in order to achieve \u201cdiversity.\u201d So, \u201crace-conscious remedies\u201d were not to be remedial. Or of finite duration. They would be forever, for the benefit of the privileged \u2014 those admitted to, and who administer, colleges and universities.<\/p>\n

In this fifth decade of judicial tinkering, with the Harvard case probably heading to the Supreme Court, it is clear that the admissions departments of highly selective universities will devise metrics compatible with porous judicial language in order to shape student bodies to serve what they consider institutional needs. Courts can try to confine admissions departments with porous terms like minor \u201cplus-factors\u201d that are \u201cnarrowly tailored\u201d to achieve a \u201ccritical mass\u201d of this or that minority without \u201cunduly\u201d harming any group. But those departments will resort to cynical evasions.<\/p>\n

Taking race \u201cinto account\u201d could just as well be called taking into account cultures (of communities or ethnic cohorts). Some attributes, including those conducive to academic excellence, are disproportionately prevalent among various groups (e.g., Asian Americans, Jews at various times).<\/p>\n

So, a fourth question: If universities do not consciously shape their student bodies, who will? The U.S. Education Department, with criteria as variable as the nation\u2019s election results?<\/p>\n

America\u2019s great universities, having become playthings of progressives, are now targeted by populists. Two years ago, the Republican tax bill targeted elite schools with the largest per-student endowments. This tax raises a pittance but scratches a populist itch \u2014 resentment of excellence. Last month, a Republican administration\u2019s Education Department threatened to withdraw federal funding from a joint Duke University and University of North Carolina Middle East-studies program because it lacks viewpoint \u2014 wait for it \u2014 diversity. And reflects hostility to Israel, is insufficiently \u201cpositive\u201d about Christianity and Judaism, and is saturated with extraneous progressive propaganda. These charges, and accusations of anti-Semitism, are entirely plausible, but are conservatives, supposed proponents of modest government, comfortable with bureaucrats dictating the contents of college courses?<\/p>\n

The uninhibited District Court judge in the Harvard case, who suggested Harvard admissions officers be trained against \u201cimplicit bias,\u201d asserted that student-body diversity fosters \u201ctolerance, acceptance and understanding.\u201d So, consider a fifth question: Is it a mere coincidence that academia\u2019s obsession with diversity has coincided with a tsunami of campus intolerance and hysteria?<\/p>\n

George Will\u2019s email address is georgewill@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 The judge took 130 pages to explain that Harvard\u2019s \u201cholistic review\u201d admissions policies \u2014 which include ascribing particular attributes to certain ethnicities, such as Asian Americans, and assessing the value to Harvard of those attributes \u2014 are, considering 41 years of Supreme Court precedents, permissibly race-conscious. She said the policies do not discriminate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1315525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-06 19:24:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1315525"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315525\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1315525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1315525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1315525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}