Below is my column in the Hill on today’s argument in the two college affirmative action cases in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.
Here is the column:
Forty-four years ago, the Supreme Court was the center of a raging protest by thousands as the justices took up the case of Regents of the University of California v. Bakke to decide if racial admission quotas were constitutionally permissible at a California medical school. As a teenage congressional page, I was one of the faces in that crowd gathered around the court in October 1977 to watch history being made.
It now feels like “Bakke to the future” as we once again debate the very basis for using race as race-based criteria for college admissions.
In Bakke, the court ruled against affirmative action in a fractured decision. Yet, in his plurality decision, then-Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. stopped short of barring the use of race in admissions. Instead, he cited Harvard University’s admissions policy as an example of how race can be one of a number of diversity elements. That extremely nuanced decision would be replicated in decades of later precedent in which the court never seemed able to establish a clear rule on the use of race-based criteria.
For almost five decades, the court has struggled with the uncertainty left by Bakke. Now, the court — and likely another crowd — will gather again to consider the issue, including a review of Harvard’s current admissions plan.
There is reason to believe universities may have run out of time and patience from the court as it considers two challenges, Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. The recently minted 6-3 majority on the court could lose a conservative justice and still have the votes to brush aside nuance for clarity on the issue.
In a reflection of our changing demographics, the court will focus on discrimination directed against Asian applicants, not a white applicant like Bakke. With a higher percentage of top Asian American students, universities have been accused of creating an effective ceiling on Asian American admissions to favor other groups.
At Harvard, admissions officials allegedly used a “personal” rating to achieve a constructive quota. Critics noticed that the admission of Asian students remained suspiciously similar from year to year, between 18 and 20 percent.
In the briefs before the court, Harvard is accused of a sophisticated, disingenuous system designed to hide racial preferences. Harvard uses scores in four “profile” categories for academic, extracurricular, athletic and personal ranking. Challengers argue that Harvard manipulates the score given for personality, likability, courage and kindness, to achieve the same race-based admissions levels.
It turned out that only 22 percent of Asian American applicants received a score of 1 (“outstanding”) or 2 (“very strong”) while over twice that percentage of African American applicants received those scores. That percentage roughly tracks the percentage of admitted Asian American students.
The Harvard and North Carolina cases raise long-standing objections that universities are gaming the system by using ambiguous “critical mass” arguments on diversity to achieve the same results as formal quota systems.
Race-based criteria in admissions have long discomforted justices, even some who have voted to allow its limited use. Since Bakke, the court has handed down a series of fractured and often conflicting 5-4 or plurality decisions.
For some justices, the use of race in admissions stands in sharp, irreconcilable conflict with the ban on racial discrimination in the Constitution under the Equal Protection Clause as well as the Civil Rights Act. In 2017, Chief Justice John Roberts declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
That clarity may well be at hand for Roberts. Last term, the new 6-3 conservative majority brought greater clarity to several areas with long-standing 5-4 divisions, including its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Justices now are asked to establish the bright-line rule that was lost with Powell’s plurality decision. To do so, they must curtail or overturn the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger.
Back then, the justices considered two different admissions programs at the University of Michigan. In Grutter, the court voted 5-4 to uphold the UM law school’s admissions system that evaluated applicants based on individual merit but used race as a “plus factor.” In Gratz v. Bollinger, which involved UM’s College of Literature, Arts and Sciences, six justices rejected an admissions process that applied individual considerations after a “threshold” use of race.
Notably, even the author of the majority decision in Grutter was uneasy with the use of race-based criteria. Then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 20 years ago.
There should be no serious debate that diversity in a class improves the educational experience for students. The question is whether time has finally run out on racial criteria for college admissions.
Some justices have indicated they have little tolerance for race-based criteria. In 2006, Chief Justice Roberts wrote: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
The court, however, has been in the business of race-based admissions criteria for 44 years. In addition to the view of race-based criteria as unconstitutional, some justices may believe past cases show that universities have been able to easily manipulate admissions systems to use race as a determinative factor.
While Justice O’Connor did not believe the use of racial preferences would be necessary past 2028, universities clearly do not agree.
Indeed, some universities are moving toward a new approach that could make it more difficult for future challenges. A few years ago, then-University of California President Janet Napolitano called upon the university system to study whether standardized tests are racist and contrary to diversity policies. She created a task force that seemed designed to answer those questions in the affirmative.
To the surprise of many, the task force did not find the tests to be unreliable or call for abandoning them. Instead, in its final report, it found such standardized test scores “are currently better predictors” of success than other available means, including a better predictor of success for “Underrepresented Minority Students (URMs).” Napolitano thanked the task force and promptly announced she would discontinue the use of the tests and move toward a “test-blind” system.
Whatever value a test-blind system may have academically, it could be impactful legally. It is difficult to find an unconstitutional reliance on race if there are few objective measures to compare groups of students. Eliminating the main objective measure (beyond GPA scores) makes the system more subjective.
That is precisely the basis for the objection to the Harvard admissions process, which applied an amorphous, subjective criterion for “scoring” students.
Forty-four years have brought many changes, while other things have remained surprisingly the same: Bell-bottoms are back, James Taylor is still singing, the Chicago Bears are yet again working on a rebuild — and, yes, we are still debating race-based admissions criteria.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can find his updates on Twitter @JonathanTurley.
SCOTUS hears Haaland v. Brackeen in a few days. Would love to read Turley’s take on (1) the Indian Child Welfare Act in general, (2) this particular case, and (3) what a ruling might mean in the future.
Tristan Justice from The Federalist has a column on the issues, but sadly, the column was one sided and completely ignored what brought us ICWA (hint: generations/centuries of abuses gave us ICWA). T. Justice’s column can be found on the Federalist website (“SCOTUS To Decide If American Indian Babies Can Be Ripped From Adoptive Parents On The Basis Of Skin Color;” 11/01/22)
All one has to look at when president Truman intergrated the military . Blacks flourished on there own many became outstanding leaders without the help given todays blacks in our education system .
The court should overrule the deeply flawed Grutter decision.
The alleged compelling state interest is the educational benefit afforded by diversity.
First, the educational benefits are not demonstrated. The most that is articulated by its defenders is an alleged improvement in mutual understanding. This is not an educational benefit; it is a general aspiration of living in a multi-racial society. Moreover, even this is belied by the apparently increasing self-segregation by race on campuses and in academic departments. In addition, it assumes that skin colour denotes difference; given the socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds of many blacks accepted at elite schools, this assumption is unwarranted. Finally, some studies show that learning in a homogeneous environment does more to enhance academic performance.
Secondly, the level of diversity needed to confer the alleged benefits is not specified; references to “critical mass” are hardly enlightening.
Thirdly, even if you think educational benefit through diversity is a compelling state interest, this could be achieved by changing admission standards generally. Eliminating legacy, donor and other preferences would likely enhance the prospects for minority admissions. As would reducing academic selectivity generally. If the educational benefits of diversity are great, reduced selectivity need not result in poorer outcomes. In addition, there is no evidence that education has been harmed in those selective state universities where racial preferences have been eliminated, even though racial diversity has been somewhat reduced. Faced with a choice between selectivity and enhanced diversity, most selective universities will choose the former, and with good reason. They should be forced to make that choice.
No one really believes there are significant educational benefits to diversity. The argument is a sham and a fraud. The belief underlying racial preferences in higher education is that selective universities confer a credential that increases the likelihood of future economic well being. Regardless of what is actually learned at a selective university, the degree is a ticket to common measures of success. To ensure that success is achieved in some arbitrarily defined racial balance, it is necessary to hand out the tickets in a racially balanced way. This is what Kagan said when she referred to higher education as a pipeline to societal success and that for that reason the selective colleges needed to look like America.
The only way truly to improve the academic standing of blacks in this country is to improve their outcomes in K-12 schools. This may require breaking the power of the teachers unions by enhancing choice. More fundamentally, it may require a reduction in the 70% or so of black children currently raised in single parent homes, in many cases by a young woman who is not thriving financially.
The court may at long last speak the truth about racial preferences in selective universities by adopting Thomas’ dissent in Grutter. I hope he gets to write the majority opinion.
“The only way truly to improve the academic standing of blacks in this country is to improve their outcomes in K-12 schools. This may require breaking the power of the teachers unions by enhancing choice.”
Yes. The scientific proof is in Sowell’s book Charter Schools. Alternatively the interview of Sowell with Peter Robinson. The data is astounding.
I agree. Sowell’s book is excellent and very simple in concept.
What is the rest of the Bakke story?
—
“Having completed half a course in liposuction, Chavis went from being an ob-gyn specialist to practicing liposuction. While still basking in the warmth of media hype and just months after Edward Kennedy’s pean to Chavis as a defense of black racial privilege, he performed liposuction on 43-year-old Tammaria Cotton and killed her. Two other women came close to being killed at Chavis’s incompetent hands.”
“the student who replaced Bakke was hyped as a stellar example of the wonders of racial discrimination.” “Dr. Patrick Chavis, allegedly the man who replaced Bakke.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/02/the_man_who_replaced_bakke_.html
It’s not a “Conservative” court. It’s a Constitutionalist court – the type that most terrifies Democrats.
At today’s oral arguments, the lawyer for the University of North Carolina volunteered that Elizabeth Warren is, shall we say, less than forthcoming about her ethnicity. That’s something that everyone knows, but we’re not allowed to say out loud. Has it ever been more obvious that the whole diversity edifice is anchored on a foundation of sand?
First, the windup:
JUSTICE ALITO: Let me just ask one more related question, and that is the circumstance — and this is a real problem, and I’ve heard it described to me by people who face it, when can a student honestly claim to fall within one of these groups that is awarded a plus factor? So let’s say the student has one grandparent who falls within that class. Can the student claim to be a member of an underrepresented minority?
MR. PARK: Yes, we rely on — on self-reporting. And — and we don’t give any —
JUSTICE ALITO: All right. One great grandparent.
MR. PARK: If that person believes that that is the accurate expression of their identity, I don’t think there would be any problem.
JUSTICE ALITO: One great-great grandparent? Are you going to make me continue to go on?
MR. PARK: Right, right, right. I think that as we go on, I agree that it would seem less plausible that that person would feel that this is actually capturing my true racial identity but the same is true for any of the other diversity factors that we rely on.
Here’s where it gets really good:
JUSTICE ALITO: It’s family lore that we have an ancestor who was an American Indian.
MR. PARK: So I — I think in that particular circumstance, it would be not accurate for them to say based on —
JUSTICE ALITO: Well, I identify as an American Indian because I’ve always been told that some ancestor back in the old days was an American — was an American Indian.
MR. PARK: Yes, so I think in that circumstance, it would be very unlikely that that person was telling the truth.
Elizabeth Warren. Progressive role model. Striking a blow for diversity.
I would be very cautious going to a black doctor who received admissions preference to medical school based on his race. I would, likewise, be very cautious going to a white doctor who received admissions preference to medical school because a parent graduated from that school.
I would, likewise, be very cautious going to a white doctor who received admissions preference to medical school because a parent graduated from that school.
One-third of all students in mid-tier rated medical schools are admitted precisely because of quid pro quo. More than half of all students in upper-tier MD schools. Whites don’t talk about it because….. reasons
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion paradigm is no more authentic amongst its proponents than the millions of Americans who say they are Christian while they spew bile online at anyone whom they hold suspect, which is everybody 25 feet outside of their WiFi signal
It is very difficult to find a competent doctor of any race. Good reason to overhaul the medical school admissions process, making it exclusively based on merit, and good reason to overhaul the training provided in medical school.
You guys are looking at it all wrong. A new frontier, brought to us from the best minds in progressive race science. If you don’t believe me, Google it:
Racial concordance. A promising new framework for social justice.
A growing body of scientific research supported by the National Institutes of Health suggests that racial concordance in the healthcare setting plays an important role in improving patient-provider communication, patient satisfaction, and healthcare outcomes. The benefits of racial concordance are especially striking for diverse patient populations.
These findings suggest avenues for extending existing policy initiatives to improve racial concordance in healthcare. These avenues could include eliminating standardized testing and other barriers to medical training for diverse populations (not just for physicians but extending through all levels of the healthcare system), specialized training on racially concordant health issues, and expanding federal programs to encourage racial concordance – and discourage racial discordance – in patient-provider interactions.
The framework could be generalized to improve racial concordance in other areas including education, housing, and employment.
Racial concordance. Eliminating racial discordance. A promising new framework for social justice.
Lol @ Turley’s claim this court that has been packed from the right has brought “clarity” to abortion rights, especially with the on the ground results of the Dobbs decision….
And I also lol @ Turley referring to race “finally” timing out in admission policy. We certainly can tell where he stands on the issue….
Sorry though right wing America…, there will be no racial time out bell for a nation built on the back of slavery.
there will be no racial time out bell for a nation built on the back of slavery.
I’ll have those N*********** voting Democrat for the next 200 years
– President Lyndon B. Johnson
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7197990-i-ll-have-those-niggers-voting-democrat-for-the-next-200
NB: Peter, did you get your 6th COVID booster vaccine yet ? Don’t forget to wrap it
😉
Correct we can tell were Turley stands on many issues – quite often he stands on the side of the constitution.
As well as reason.
The idiocy that you can end discrimination with discrimination is nonsense.
How many bonus points do we give to blacks applying to harvard ? Hispanics ? Do we have to subtract points for asians ?
The best way to end discrimination by race is to stop discriminating by race.
Always a pleasure to see the workings of the fever dream that guides your thinking!
It is called logic – you should try it.
Your ideology is so bad that not only does it fail in practice
But it can not survive in any debate.
There is a reason the left does not debate – they can not.
The left does not want to end discrimination by race, they want to perpetuate it indefinitely to create and maintain racial balance in those areas of social and economic life where they think blacks are “underrepresented.” That is the teaching of anti-racism as articulated by Henry Rogers (aka Ibram X Kendi).
Humans are not ants. We are not each identical. Equal outcomes are not possible.
Attempts to reach that must ultimately require kneecapping and lobotomizing all of us.
In the real world we want each of us to reach their potential – something different for each and every one of us.
Correct, How many short Asians do you see playing in the NBA?
America had slavery and ended it at great cost. Slavery didn’t build America. It existed.
Moreover, slavery was all over the world. In fact black slaves were bought from black Africans that enslaved them and slavery still exists in Africa. Can you prove slavery built America? No, but you will mouth the words just to sound ignorant.
Sorry, your response is nothing but a series of tropes trotted out by alt right media over the years to skate on serious discussions of race…
Not to mention, you appear to be a flagrant moron.
When you talk of morons look in a mirror.
“America had slavery and ended it at great cost.” True.
“Slavery didn’t build America. It existed.” True. The economic benefits of slavery are difficult to account for. However, one can search the net to see where wealth was concentrated. It was concentrated up north where slavery ended early or didn’t exist and was never a major factor.
“Moreover, slavery was all over the world.” True
“In fact black slaves were bought from black Africans that enslaved them and slavery still exists in Africa.” True.
“Can you prove slavery built America? No” True.
“but you will mouth the words just to sound ignorant.” That is exactly what you did.
Now look in a mirror and recognize the only moron in this discussion is you.
Then you would be able to provide data to back up your claims of error ?
Reality is not all that hard – especially the past. We can not know what was in the heart of a man 200 years ago.
But we can know what they did.
We can know from data that even in the south – only 25% of Southern GDP came from slave labor.
That despite being the industrial center of the nation that norther agriculture contributed more to US GDP than southern agriculture.
Thank you for truth…Let’s have some more…Blacks were enslaved by other blacks…And then sold to Muslim slave traders who transported them to the coast and sold them to European slave traders with ships…At the present time there are upwards of 50,000,000 slaves on this planet…Reparations to people who were not slaves, paid by people who never owned slaves is cretinous idiocy…
The country was hardly built on Southern agriculture, yankee ingenuity and the revolution in manufacturing maybe.
In 1860 at the height of slavery less than 5 percent of whites in the South owned slaves. The overwhelming majority neither owned slaves nor had an economic interest in maintaining slavery.
Yankee ingenuity led to things like mass producing ‘shoddy’ fabric to be made into clothing for slaves.
And of course some of the worst abuses in slavery happened in the north as not only were many ports slave entry points, but many indigenous were forced into slavery as well.
As to the percentage owning slaves…, they were the wealthiest, just like the wealthiest now control the economy. So there isn’t a one to one ratio that your analogy would require. Short of that, it just serves to be a deflection away from an ugly truth.
” just like the wealthiest now “
Open a book about the Civil War. If they were as powerful as you would like to think they would have won the war.
The South had the generals and the advantage of fighting on their own turf. The north had the economy.
Debate is not your strong suit. Try basketweaving.
The wealthiest people in the US did not own slaves.
The wealthiest people in the south did.
These were not close to the same.
In all of human history slavery has had a false allure, there is a belief that somehow you get something for nothing (or very little).
But the reality is that slavery has never made economic sense.
If Slavery was actually economically beneficial in a consequential way – the south would have won the war, the world would still have slaves everywhere.
But god forbid facts should interfere with ideology.
The notion that this country was ‘built on the back of slavery” is ridiculous. Blacks have never been much more than ~13% of the US population, making it impossible for them to have contributed much to anything, except making a few plantation owners wealthy. One can look through pages and pages of buildings being built and factories in operations in the north without seeing any blacks at all. Blacks weren’t around when the north was industrialized where child labor far outstripped the productivity of the slaves, just by virtue of using machines. If anything, the US was built on child labor that worked both the factories and the farms across the nation (that is why families had so many kids – to work the farms). The south suffered economically for decades because of their continued use of manual labor.
They still aren’t a huge part of the labor force. And look what happens to cities that become predominantly black. They become cesspools of crime and destruction. When blacks operate infrastructure, it simply deteriorates like it has in Jackson with the water situation, or African countries that have deteriorated since the Africans took over infrastructure and farms.
I’ve come to realized that blacks cost the US society so much more than just the government benes they received and the cost of all the crime they commit (incarceration, hospitalizations, justice system, etc.). They also use all of the infrastructure that they have never really paid for, because as the water situation in Jackson indicates, they can’t even keep normal operations going.
So then, to be clear: Let’s say X% of current US wealth exists now directly as a result of slave labor. X% can’t be accurately quantified but let’s agree it’s a positive # and it exists.
Is it your opinion that only non-protected class persons benefit today right now from that X% of wealth? IOW is it your opinion that protected class US citizens and visitors thereto absolutely positively never ever receive any tangible benefit from past slave labor?
Is it your opinion that there’s never been white slave labor in the US and other nations?
If yes: no one could ever prove such ridiculous beliefs.
Let’s not agree that slave labor was a positive. Nobody has ever talked about the costs of slave labor, such as maintaining the workforce.
Listening to the oral arguments today, I got the sense that the Court majority is willing to uphold Grutter INCLUDING the 25-year sunsetting of allowable race-conscious affirmative action in college admissions.
This would be a win for both sides, since the Asian-American Student plaintiffs are looking to end the practice entirely, and the 2 defendant colleges who want Grutter upheld (but not the 25-year endpoint).
My sense is that the Justices will give both sides partial wins. By upholding Grutter’s 25-year phaseout.
That would impact the 2028 college applicants.
Something is constitutional or not.
You can not make a decisions constitutional by phasing it out over time.
“DIWORSEIFICATION”
__________________
“Distrust diversifications, which usually turn out to be diworseifications.”
– Peter Lynch, One Up Wall Street, 1989
Affirmative Action harms Asian applicants and other high achievers.
Affirmative Action lowers the bar, stealing some of the accomplishment of black people who go to college. I knew a professor years ago who complained that Affirmative Action brought in a lot of students who were completely unprepared for university coursework. They ended up flunking out, but before that, they took spots of students who WERE prepared, and who would have graduated.
Applications should be a meritocracy, only, although there are other factors besides grades that also indicate a student’s success in college. Race should never have anything to do with the university application process, or hiring process. That would, ironically, be racist, because other deserving applicants would be passed over because they were the “wrong” race.
We’ve already witnessed the negative consequences of policies that stem from Affirmative Action. As soon as Thomas Jefferson abandoned its meritorious application process, and went to a straight lottery, it’s academic standing plummeted. It will continue to plummet, because its student body will no longer be among the highest academic achievers.
Stop racially discriminating against Asians in universities. Stop sending the message that an Asian has to work 10 times as hard as a black person to earn the same spot, or that slacking off in school will be rewarded.
YOU COULDN’T KEEP THE REPUBLIC OF THE FOUNDERS
“…THE RECONSTRUCTION OF A SOCIAL WORLD.”
Your point is moot. Asians et al. were and are not allowed by the immigration law of the Founders. Nothing Lincoln did was constitutional, starting with fully constitutional secession. Lincoln prosecuted a brutal and unconstitutional “Reign of Terror” to change everything, including immigration law and the Constitution, specifically the improperly ratified and unconstitutional “RECONSTRUCTION Amendments” of Lincoln’s successors, which were prescribed by Karl Marx.
What you see is not America and, as the Supreme Court acted retroactively by 50 years to strike down unconstitutional Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court must now act retroactively by 150 years to strike down all of the unconstitutional acts of Lincoln and the unconstitutional and improperly ratified “RECONSTRUCTION Amendments.” Lincoln espoused the pejoratives of Karl Marx, “capitalism” and “fleece the people,” early on in 1837. Lincoln received a letter or congratulation and commendation from Karl Marx for Lincoln’s efforts as “the earnest of the epoch” leading America toward the “RECONSTRUCTION of a social world” in Marx’s own words.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm
_______________________________________________________________
“[We gave you] a [restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it.”
– Ben Franklin
___________
“These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people.”
– Abraham Lincoln, from his first speech as an Illinois state legislator, 1837
__________________________________________________________
“Everyone now is more or less a Socialist.”
– Charles Dana, managing editor of the New York Tribune, and Lincoln’s assistant secretary of war, 1848
__________________________________________________________________________________
“The goal of Socialism is Communism.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
_________________
“The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.”
– Karl Marx and the First International Workingmen’s Association to Lincoln, 1864
Will someone PLEASE invent a time machine so George can be sent back to, say, 1789? George and all of the rest of us would be so much happier…
IF YOU CAN KEEP IT
So what you’re saying is that you don’t like the fundamental law of the Founders or perspective in general, right?
Wasn’t it Ben Franklin who said, “[We gave you] a [de facto restricted-vote] republic, if you can keep it?”
Sounds like he meant for the Constitution and Bill of Rights to stand in perpetuity sans “injurious” amendment.
Sounds like he wanted “ourselves and OUR posterity” to KEEP it, Al.
Oh, wait, excuse me, thank you very much for reading, “my bad” oversight.
I suppose one could surmise that the Supreme Court obtained the services of a time machine and sent itself back to, say, 1973, and pursued its collective happiness by striking down the non-existent constitutional right to abortion.
Interestingly, the very Supreme Court itself acted 50 years retroactively to correct that egregious unconstitutionality, Roe v. Wade.
To overturn the treasonous, heinous outrages of “Crazy Abe,” it would need go a mere 100 additional years.
Will wonders never cease.
_____________________
AS WILL NOT INJURE THE CONSTITUTION
“And if there are amendments desired, of such a nature as will not injure the constitution, and they can be ingrafted so as to give satisfaction to the doubting part of our fellow citizens; the friends of the federal government will evince that spirit of deference and concession for which they have hitherto been distinguished.”
– James Madison, Proposed Amendments to the Constitution, June 8, 1789
Professor Turley is correct when he says diversity in the classroom is important. A good place to start would be allowing a diversity of opinion. We need more affirmative action for the diversity of expression. The left is all for diversity of race and so am I. However, they fall short when it comes to affirmative action to allow you to say what you want to say without losing your position. They are what they have always been.
“The only diversity universities need is the hiring of conservatives on their faculties.”
– Joe diGenova
_____________
Affirmative action is impolite, illogical, incoherent, counterintuitive, contraindicated, antithetical and unconstitutional.
Equity is the absence of bias or favoritism.
What should happen instead is to identify promising students (who otherwise do not have a fighting chance) at a young age and point them in the right direction and nurture them, encourage them to shoot for the stars and guide them. No dumbing down the standards.
Many parents start their children to academic camps every summer, begin college entrance prep at a very early age and prep for college entrance exams.
If students who possess the raw potential (no matter their background) and the drive to succeed have an equal opportunity to compete, just like the years of coaching and work required to get a sports scholarship then they either enter or fail on their own merit for the competitive schools.
Here’s the response from Twitter concerning the increase of the N word. While Roth confirmed that in the last two days Twitter has seen an uptick in hateful conduct from users, he attributed what’s happening to “a small number of accounts” that have posted “a ton of Tweets that include slurs and other derogatory terms.” Offering up an example, he wrote that “more than 50,000 Tweets repeatedly” using a specific slur “came from just 300 accounts.” He did not clarify what the slur was. Our leftist friends here are trying to spin it like it’s rampant among Twitter users. 300 out of 238,000,000. The MSM stirred up the pablum and they gobbled it up like all crying babies do. The only right thing to do is feed them some chess with their whine.
I find Jonathan Turley to always be unbiased and principled by the law.
“Bakke to the future”. Brilliant!
When did we stop capitalizing to the “Court”when writing about the Supremes?
A major controversy now brewing in American colleges is the longstanding practice of legacy admissions, in which the children of alumni, who are disproportionately white, are given preference. If the Supreme Court ends race-based affirmative action during admissions process, it will become impossible, at least morally and politically, for colleges to maintain affirmative action for the children of alumni during the admissions process.
On private property, direction by owners prevails, excepting cases of bodily injury or property damage.
On public property, merit matters.
Equity is the absence of bias or favoritism.
_________________________________
Merriam-Webster
equity noun
eq·ui·ty | \ ˈe-kwə-tē
\
plural equities
Definition of equity
1a : justice according to natural law or right specifically : freedom from bias or favoritism
You are correct, except when they (the collages) take federal money…. that money comes with strings attached. SO there may be some Federal requirements that override the private equity of the University that have to be taken into account.
There is no constitutional such thing as “federal money” to collages (sic erat scriptum), and what the —- is “the private equity of the University?”
If Congress cannot tax for it, Congress cannot fund it.
Article 1, Section 8, denies Congress any power to tax for “federal money” whatever the —- that is, and restricts Congress to taxation for ONLY debt, defense and infrastructure, or “general Welfare” (general literally meaning, in 1789 and now, ALL or the WHOLE, things like water, roads, electricity, sewer, post office, trash collection, etc. to facilitate welfare, or ALL WELL PROCEED).
There exists NO enumerated power of Congress to regulate schools, universities or education in the same article.
Congratulations, Sergeant! Since you publicized it, what the heck is a “combat line NCO” and what was your branch and MOS? Presumably, you were awarded and CIB, Bronze Star and a Purple Heart? Which campaign ribbons do you hold from which theaters?
To be clear, many unconstitutional situations exist now in the U.S. and must be corrected.
Roe v. Wade was unconstitutional for 50 years and was finally struck down and corrected retroactively.
The singular American failure has been and continues to be the Supreme Court and its complete failure to fulfill its sworn-oath duty to support the literal manifest tenor of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
I would add Reynolds v.Sims (1964) mandate that states apportion State Senate seats by Population to the list of unconstitutional SCOTUS decisions that need to be addressed.
Intelligent Asians look more white than brown that’s all you need to know. These white Asians have never experienced any discrimination in the past and they should just move over and make room for those with a more ebony shade of skin. It’s the only right thing to do in a land of equal opportunity. How is it that the court can’t see it to be so?
The courts have been handing blacks reperations since 1964 . Don’t you think it’s time now it should be based on merit not the color of your skin .
Since 1863, when contemporary immigration law required compassionate repatriation because the status of slaves changed from that of “property” to de facto “illegal alien.”