Search

Since the post-George Floyd protests and Black Lives Matter/Antifa riots of last summer, the left has become increasingly insistent about the need to "do more" to eliminate what it sees as "systemic racism"--a demand that implicitly, and often explicitly, rejects as woefully inadequate the results of what is by now almost fifty years of affirmative action. The often-dormant resolve of conservatives and others to resist racial preference policies has been aroused by the decisive rejection of Proposition 16 by California voters, the attempt of Democrats to repeal Proposition 209 and revive affirmative action in that state. The gap between elites and popular opinion, between left and right, between Democrats and Republicans, is perhaps wider on this issue than any other. There are virtually no elected or appointed Democrats in federal or state government remaining who believe it is necessary for the state to treat citizens "without regard" to race or ethnicity. Thus even if affirmative action remains as a label, its substance is sure to change. This change will not be the first it has undergone. John S. Rosenburg argues that society should start to think of its next phase as Affirmative Action: Release 3.0.

"Systemic racism" implies that racist policies are embedded in laws and institutions. That claim is patently false as evidenced by Americans having elected a biracial president for two terms and, more recently, a biracial vice president--not to mention blacks serving in the cabinet, in the highest ranks of the armed services, and in various other prominent positions, both public and private. The truth is that the only systemic racism that exists today is in the form of affirmative action measures "favoring" blacks, among other presumably disadvantaged groups. In this article, the author examines how "systemic racism" has effected Art Education.

In "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College ("SFFA")," the United States Supreme Court revisited an issue that had been litigated before it twenty years earlier. In two separate cases brought against the University of Michigan, the issue was whether it was a violation of the Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for the university to use "race" as a factor in student admissions. On June 23, 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for a 5-4 majority in "Grutter v. Bollinger," declared that it was not. For the past two decades, according to the author, relying on Justice O'Connor's deeply-flawed reasoning in "Grutter" schools across the country, including service academies, have openly used race to benefit certain applicants and to racially discriminate against others. Fast forward twenty years, according to the author, and they remain perplexed by the continuing support for these divisive policies. The author states they had always assumed the compelling interest in having an effective military demanded that the military recruit and train the very best officers it could attract, irrespective of race.

Russell K. Nieli writes in this opinion paper that as far as the ability of state colleges and universities to use race as a criteria for admission goes, "Fisher v. Texas" was a big disappointment, and failed in the most basic way. Nieli states that although some affirmative action opponents have tried to put a more positive spin on the Court's 7 to 1 decision favoring Abigail Fisher, the bottom line is that the "Fisher" decision will change very little and do nothing to stop academic administrators intent to maintain the racial bean counting and quota- like admissions policies that have been in effect now at leading universities for the last forty years.

This article describes the outcomes of the case "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin," in which the plaintiff had accused the University of Texas (UT) of racial discrimination in the admission process. The author believes that the ruling of the court in this case makes it harder to hide race-based measures used in college admissions. The article examines the post "Fisher" options open to college and university faculty who wish to limit campus use of racial preferences. It also provides practical ways for academics and others to challenge affirmative action on campus based on the above-mentioned case. Specifically, these are presented in four steps: (1) Read the "Fisher" decision; (2) Determine what use of racial classifications currently exists on a campus; (3) Request copies of the documents supporting compelling interest and narrow tailoring basis for race-based campus policies; and (4) Create an appropriate public discussion of race-preferential policies.

The Supreme Court has granted review for the 2012 term in the case "Fisher v. University of Texas." Abigail Fisher, a rejected white applicant to the University of Texas, has challenged the use of racial and ethnic admission preferences, which the Court had allowed in its 2003 decision involving the University of Michigan law school, "Grutter v. Bollinger." The claim that "diversity" requires that each classroom be diverse is both novel and radical in its implications, as Judge Edith Jones noted in a blistering dissent for herself and four Fifth Circuit colleagues. In any event, new evidence and new developments make it appropriate for the Court to reconsider the holding in Grutter that the purported "educational benefits" from student body "diversity" justify the use of racial and ethnic preferences in the first place. Numerous amicus briefs urge it to do so, and the plaintiff herself explicitly raises that possibility. According to the proponents of this sort of discrimination, "diversity" is the mother's milk of higher education, more important, it would seem, than books in the library or professors behind the podium. Who could oppose such a noble concept? The authors contend that they could, and give ten reasons why other people should, too. They include not only some first principles to which they hope the Court will return, but also the emerging social science evidence that the costs of this discrimination are high and the claimed benefits--which the Court accepted in 2003--minimal at best. (Contains 28 footnotes.)

In this essay, the author discusses how affirmative action contributed to an unnatural rise in enrollments in college. In considering the higher education bubble, he makes the case that as the opposition to preferences continues to build, the momentum of this trend will only increase as funding shrinks. He offers some tentative answers to a series of questions, which he has tried to arrange in a logical sequence. Did affirmative action help cause the higher education bubble in the first place? What are the costs of preferences? Will the purported benefits of preferences diminish if the bubble bursts? Does the outcome of a cost-benefit analysis really matter; that is, even if preferential programs cost money, will they likely be scaled back as money becomes scarcer, or is the commitment to these programs so stubborn that they will be defended at all costs? Finally, with or without a burst bubble, where are racial preferences likely headed? (Contains 7 footnotes.)

The assumption behind the fierce competition for admission to elite colleges and universities is clear: The more elite the school one attends, the brighter one's future. That assumption, however, may well be flawed. The research examined recently by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights provides strong reason to believe that attending the most competitive school is not always best--at least for students who aspire to a degree in science or engineering. In this article, the author discusses the research examined by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that focuses on the effects of race-based admissions policies on science and engineering majors, and suggests that, as a result of these policies, America now has fewer physicians, dentists, engineers, scientists, and other science-oriented professionals than the country would have had under a policy of color-blindness. While there are still a few unanswered questions, the author suggests that it is time for students to be advised of the issue and allowed to make their own decision about their future. (Contains 2 tables and 47 footnotes.)

Race preferences and the postmodern version of multiculturalism have always triggered opposition in academia, but it has seldom come from the political left. Now things are changing. Growing unease in the academic "priesthood" over preferences and multiculturalism may herald their end. Longstanding opponents of racial discrimination and identity politics will welcome some of the conclusions drawn by the new critics, while rejecting much of the reasoning used to reach them. Professor Dent discusses some of these critiques and the best way of responding to them. (Contains 9 footnotes.)

Significant voices have begun challenging the orthodox view of America as a land of limited opportunities for minorities, with the Obama phenomena constituting the most conspicuous case in point. Mr. Hicks explains why racial preferences have failed and discusses the challenges Americans face in transcending divisions caused by identity politics. (Contains 15 footnotes.)

Are we facing the end of racial preferences in America? Mr. Clegg thinks we probably are, and examines the role demographics, law, attraction, and vision may play in their demise. What makes preferences still attractive to so many people? Do most Americans share a vision that includes the continued use of racial preferences? Mr. Clegg offers a list of "E pluribus unum" features that "all Americans" must share to participate fully in the life of our ever-changing multiracial, multiethnic country.

"The first law of unintended consequences is that you can never know what they will be or how far they will reach." Professor Ellis examines the injuries American higher education has sustained through the unintended consequences of diversity. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Professor Cohen describes the arduous path to the passage of Proposition 2 in Michigan in 2006. In considering the reasons for its victory, he shows how claims (sometimes well-intended) "for" preferences rest on truly bad arguments. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

Advocates of preferences generally claim the moral high ground, insisting that we need them to advance the common social good. To oppose preferences, therefore, is "to act immorally." Preference's champions view them as weapons against hierarchy and oppression. Their foes stress individual identity and autonomy. The outcome of the debate will hinge on the answers given to a couple of uniquely American questions: Who are we? What is the right way forward? Peter Wood predicts that when Americans take an unblinking look at group preferences, they will reject them. (Contains 8 footnotes.)

In his keynote address at "Race and Gender Preferences at the Crossroads," a January 2008 conference organized by the California Association of Scholars, Ward Connerly confidently asserts that the era of explicit race preferences will soon be "deader than a doornail." However, it is up to those who remember (in the words of John F. Kennedy) that "race has no place in American life" "to bury it"--hardly an easy task. In convincing the American people that a better vision exists than "diversity," our strongest asset will be their belief in the fundamental principle of fairness.

In pausing to reflect on twenty years service tending the fragile vineyards of higher education reform as president and one of the founders of the National Association of Scholars, Stephen H. Balch stops to toast his hardy fellow vintners. Dr. Balch raises a weary but wiser glass to those who across the years and in many states have braved harsh academic climes and hostile intellectual winds to safeguard the tender fruits of reform. The vines remain tenuous and the atmosphere continues to prove largely forbidding, leaving reformers much more often with the bitter taste of vinegar than wine. Dr. Balch shares a cautionary cup. But through the sturdy dedication of vintners like the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, the Center for Equal Opportunity, and the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, who can say what worthy wine the press of the next twenty years will yield?

The idea that lawsuits can move a public as well as a legal agenda is not new. In recent years, conservatives have brought high profile lawsuits designed both to vindicate the rights of an individual plaintiff and to educate the public about an important issue. For example, lawsuits filed nearly 10 years ago against the University of Michigan's race-based admissions system eventually led to the successful passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative in 2006, which amended the Michigan Constitution to ban the use of racial preferences. Terence Pell recounts the legal effort and the effects, both intended and unintended, that it had on Michigan institutions and public thinking.

Behind this discussion of minority achievement is a story of one who transcended poverty and rose to the top of American education. Carol Swain advises that a student from a poor family should not be penalized because her parents are not able to involve themselves in school. This and other recommendations on policy reflect a profoundly personal awareness of what it meant to be a smart, ambitious black student caught in a disappointing educational environment. (Contains 9 notes.)

Diversity researchers are in demand, Mark Bauerlein explains, because administrators at schools like U-Michigan need all the bogus support they can fabricate. The researchers ask students how they feel about minorities and somehow conjure their answers into a measurement of cognitive development. Those data are gathered and further processed into the "hard science" behind briefs like "Grutter", which foist racial preferences on an American population that has proven again and again to reject such unfairness.

The present-day Supreme Court ruling that skin color is a valid basis upon which to rest academic decision-making sets us on a course toward a world minutely regulated by identity-group politics. David F. Prindle's reverie of a subsequent majority opinion by Sandra Day O'Connor, ten years hence, mandating correct racial proportionality in GPAs and graduation rates, somehow seems less and less outlandish.

Sandra Day O'Connor seems to have given us the next 25 years to reach a resolution to the racial gap in education--a problem on which we've made little headway in the last 25. Nathan Glazer is not sanguine that we'll fnd that answer, but he's prepared to live with the messy but, to him, satisfactory scheme of affirmative action that Justice O'Connor blessed with her opinion in "Grutter v. Bollinger."

Given the overwhelming popular appeal of merit-based college admissions, George La Noue advocates a new transparency in how colleges and universities select their students. He has some suggestions about how colleges might comply with court-mandated requirements for case-by-case evaluations. He also provides hints from which NAS members might profit to insure that their institutions adhere to the spirit and letter of race-based affirmative-action law, as it has just been redefined. (Contains 12 notes.)

On 23 June 2003, the Supreme Court of the United States issued two rulings on the constitutionality of race preferences in university admissions. The cases in question both involved the University of Michigan and were designated Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger. The Michigan rulings were a stunning triumph for race preferences, from which those who put stock in the 14th Amendment's promise of racial equality can take little solace. Abigail Thernstrom laments that, as a consequence, our highest court has papered over lagging minority performance in higher education and thereby ignored the roots of the problem in American elementary and secondary schools.

Advocates of racial preferences from the Harvard Civil Rights Project have criticized an initiative designed to provide race-neutral admissions to universities in Florida. George La Noue rejects their criticism, which, he says, confuses the definitions of affirmative action, establishes nonexistent criteria, and ignores crucial elements that support Governor Jeb Bush's "Talented 20" program. (Contains 5 notes.)

George W. Bush did signal his views on diversity during his campaign for the presidency, but what he said inexplicably aroused little notice. Campaigning in Miami on 25 August 2000, in a speech devoted to U.S.-Latin American relations, Bush presented a view of America that one would never have thought to hear from the lips of a U.S. presidential candidate, much less a conservative Republican. "We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world," W. Bush declared. "For years our nation has debated this change," he continued, "some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America." One can only wonder how a conservative politician, and one who has proven so effective a leader in so many other respects, came to embrace "diversity" in this meaning. An invaluable new book by Peter W. Wood, "Diversity: The Invention of a Concept," gives individuals some insight into the way in which this poison weed came to take such deep root in this society. Diversity seemed to arrive almost by stealth, Wood suggests. Unheralded by "any great mind, any prestigious philosopher or social theorist, or any major book," it was probably sparked by its mention by Justice Lewis Powell in his idiosyncratic concurrence in the "Bakke" decision of 1978, when he alone of the majority stipulated that colleges could consider race as one factor among others for the purpose of admitting an ethnically diverse student body. It thereafter germinated in the academy and at length began to burgeon in the early 1990s. Before long, it had invaded "one area of American life after another," altering "the root cultural assumptions on which American society is based." (Contains 27 notes.)

In December 2000, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the University of Michigan could provide preference in admission policies to minority students. He relied partly on expert social science testimony, which concluded that such policies advance racial and ethnic diversity and improve the education of all students, not just the minority students admitted under the policy. Shortly thereafter, however, another District Court ruled that preferences by the University of Michigan law school, designed to achieve the same goal, did not pass Constitutional muster. In his decision, the judge accepted some "facts" about the possible beneficial consequences of diversity, but he expressed doubt as to whether such facts "trumped" constitutional notions of equal protection. He was later overruled. It is unclear how much of a role social science evidence will play in the forthcoming Supreme Court decision that is expected to address these inconsistencies. However, key philanthropic organizations such as the Ford Foundation, believing that such evidence will play some role, are continuing to finance major survey research projects exploring the possible benefits of diversity for all students in colleges and universities. In this article, the authors outline the historical and legal context of this debate, showing how social science data gradually became a major factor in it. Then they describe the procedures and findings of their survey, and discuss their implications for the current debate.

When the author left California for the University of Minnesota twenty-five years ago, he vowed never again to become involved in departmental or university politics. He'd had enough of that at California State, Los Angeles, and he was determined to devote his full attention, apart from teaching, to several scholarly projects that had simmered so long on the back burners that they were beginning to scorch the bottom of the pots. Just a few years after arriving in Minnesota, the malignant cells of French literary, philosophical, and political ideas that had been kept more or less quarantined at Yale, Johns Hopkins, and an Ivy League campus here and there, suddenly metastasized across the whole country. The standard curriculum of English and American literature was being trashed. One time, Peter Shaw invited the author to participate in a panel on Deconstruction at the forthcoming first convention of the National Association of Scholars in New York. That was in November of 1988. That convention was the beginning of a long, unexpected education for him.

Author(s): Steve Balch [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) National Association of Scholars, , New York, NY, USA Melvin I. Urofsky is a man conflicted. A distinguished, retired constitutional historian with numerous [...]

Author(s): Carol Iannone [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) New York, USA 'Two roads diverged in a yellow wood.' So begins Robert Frost's famous poem, 'The Road Not Taken.' Regardless of Frost's [...]