America's Universities Are Living a Diversity Lie

Wall Street Journal ^ | 28 June 2008 | PETER SCHMIDT

[shrinkermd]

Thirty years ago this past week, Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. condemned our nation's selective colleges and universities to live a lie. Writing the deciding opinion in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he prompted these institutions to justify their use of racial preferences in admissions with a rationale most had never considered and still do not believe – a desire to offer a better education to all students.

To this day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad educational benefits. The research is so fuzzy and methodologically weak that some strident proponents of affirmative action admit that social science is not on their side.

In reality, colleges profess a deep belief in the educational benefits of their affirmative-action policies mainly to save their necks. They know that, if the truth came out, courts could find them guilty of illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.

...Proponents of race-conscious admissions policies have yet to produce a study of their educational benefits without some limitation or flaw. Many focus only on benefits to minority students. Others define benefits in nakedly ideological terms, declaring the policies successful if they seem correlated with the adoption of liberal views. A large share relies on survey data that substitute subjective opinions for an objective measurement of learning. The University of Michigan's star witness, Patricia Gurin, a professor of psychology and women's studies, presented studies showing the educational benefits of classes and campus programs that promote interracial understanding. Those may exist at colleges that don't consider an applicant's race.

[shrinkermd]

The underlying problem here is the belief there are no real average IQ differences between the races. To even say this, usually results in banning in spite of over a 100 years of research. Indeed discussion of Murray and Hernstein's book The Bell Curve was banned in much of the MSM when it came to racial IQ differences.

Actually, what was more important than their brief, tepid discussion of race was their discussion of dysgenesis. But I digress.

[Apollo 13]

I would like to see solid proof that there actually is a difference between the average IQ between various races (which would amount to having tested very large populations from both sexes and from numerous different races to actually be solid; and even then participants would have to had comparable educations from their very birthday onwards. Otherwise even hundred years of study would add up to zilch. This, by the way, is not leftist propaganda, it’s a matter of decent inquiry.
That said: I am against any pre-ordained percentual admission for white vs. black vs. yellow etc. etc. Only solid qualifications for admission should be the true litmus test, not whether you belong to any minority (or for that matter, majority) group.
Even DNA-Structure-Nobel_Laureate James B. Watson had to find out things the hard way...

[Pablo64]

I’ve never understood how anyone could come up with the idea that diversity of race equals a better education. The goal of learning is to acquire knowledge, and knowledge, in and of itself, has nothing to do with race. One might argue that being exposed to people of different races and cultures is an enriching experience, but it doesn’t automatically equate to more and better learning, especially if the learning is sacrificed on the altar of “diversity”.

[Calvin Locke]

The underlying problem here is the belief there are no real average IQ differences between the races.

The Marxist social engineers' solution is to dumb down the populations to the LCD. With them on the top, of course.

Even a liberal like Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. recognized what was happening in the early 1960s when he penned "Harrison Bergeron".

[AmericanVictory]

The disturbing part is that we spend tax money on advancing this goal that has no provable benefits and create a class of “professionals” whose job is to damage education in pursuit of it.

[shrinkermd]

A good place to start is the Bell Curve. Summary articles are easily found on the La Griffe du Lion Web Site which can be found: here.

[Calvin Locke]

I believe it goes back to the 1954 Brown decision. "Diversity" was unfortunately mentioned in the decision.

That's how racists get their way on "diversity".

The fact that "educators" apply the same principle to schools that require tested ability shows that they are either for equality of outcome, or too wimpy to stand up to challenges of their academic requirements.

[Altura Ct.]

But affirmative-action preferences are not just any education policy; they require some students to suffer racial discrimination for the sake of a perceived common good

But of course. The left in particular but all "color-blind" proponents, even the memes on the right, believe that discrimination is OK depending on who is doing the discriminating. Racism for me but none for thee.

[Apollo 13]

OK cheers for that.
By the way, I forgot to mention the late Allan Bloom’s excellent comments on ‘mandatory diversity’, ‘positive/affirmative action’, etc., at the Universities in ‘The Closing Of The American Mind’. He wrote that he observed student populations of different colors separating themselves off from whites, and being quite shy. Why? Because they just knew that they hadn’t been let in on the grounds of up-to-par past performances, but of their racial backgrounds. Which perfectly illustrates the problem.

[Ratblaster]

Somebody’s going to re-education camp in Obama’s Amerikkka.

[Pablo64]

I think you are probably closer to the truth on "wimpy" educators than even they themselves know. I believe that it stems from a deeply subconscious root of fear that they will be exposed as inadequate. Then, if they can achieve so-called "equality of outcome", as you said, no one can point to any one person as being better served, and so, conversely, no one can point to any one person as being given short shrift in their "education" (so the finger of blame can't be pointed toward the "educators").

Once again, liberalism is shown to be the cowardly, gutless, path of least resistance, where the only thing that matters is your "good intentions" and "feelings". It never requires making the hard choices and never allows for the reality that not everyone is the same.

[Neoliberalnot]

Here is another paradox. There are actually some breeds of dogs that are more intelligent than other breeds according to the non-PC, radical right-wing, nazi zealots.

[sasafras]

Diversity is another way for leftist to push their radical racism and division bump.

[CGTRWK]

I would like to see solid proof that there actually is a difference between the average IQ ... which would amount to having tested very large populations from both sexes and from numerous different races to actually be solid; and even then participants would have to had comparable educations from their very birthday onwards

Don't worry about standardized paper testing of a few people. Too narrow a focus, too narrow a sample group, too easy to argue with.

Look at merit accomplishments of millions.

The names on peer reviewed papers in the journals of any hard science. The Nobel science winners - and the science judges, and the audiences at the award. The faces in the electrical engineering department. The finalists in spelling bees. The Intel Science Talent Search contestants. The chess masters. Any mentally challenging field you can think of.

Either some people can't compete. Or else they can compete, yet have unanimously chosen not to at any point in recorded history.

Now look at the merit admissions for correctional institutes...

[rdb3]

Indeed discussion of Murray and Hernstein's book The Bell Curve was banned in much of the MSM when it came to racial IQ differences.

I got a kick out that book, knowing that my IQ was/is 127.

[fightinJAG]

I recently read Murray and Hernstein's The Bell Curve and found it extremely profound in its analysis and its relevance to public policy.

I wholeheartedly recommend and urge anyone even slightly interested in having public policy that actually relates to doable and worthy social goals read this book.

I will add as well that the book is marvelously written and, therefore, a joy to read just for its succinct and exact prose.

In fact, if any freepers are interested in a chapter by chapter discussion of The Bell Curve, (believe me, there is SO much to discuss relevant to the news of the day), I would be more than willing to start a sort of "book club" thread and post chapter summations for those who might not always have time to read the book itself. FM me if interested!

[fightinJAG]

Read The Bell Curve and review its documentation. It's not quite as simple or as stark as the conclusion that "there are IQ differences among the races."

IOW, no conclusion such as this can be taken out of context, mainly that such conclusions relate to aggregate differences, not so much individual differences, and that, as such, it is legitimate to base policy on such conclusions only at the aggregate level.

Also it's very important to realize that, in talking about IQ differences between the races, The Bell Curve leads to the conclusion that social stratification does not (and should not) occur along racial lines, but inevitably occurs along cognitive ability lines. And no amount of trying to force "equal outcomes," rather than "equal opportunity," can overcome that reality. (In fact, trying to force equal outcomes for people of unequal ability only WIDENS the gap.)

In any event, I really encourage you to read The Bell Curve and see what you think. Upthread I threw out the possibility of starting a book discussion thread, going chapter by chapter, if you're interested.

[fightinJAG]

In The Bell Curve the authors discuss the fact that when people of less cognitive ability are admitted to a university, for example, they have a greater chance of being in the bottom of the class and a greater chance of washing out altogether. And that's predictable: if they didn't meet the true standards for admission, of course they will have a much harder time achieving even average success.

(Just like if I somehow got admitted to the NFL even though I didn't meet its true standards, just being admitted would not cause me to meet the league's standards for play on the field.)

So affirmative action actually sets up those who don't actually meet true admission standards for failure. Then who is that the rest of the student body is being "enriched" by being exposed to, when often they see people who are not succeeding in the true academic environment and even dropping out?

[fightinJAG]

You beat me to it! I didn’t read ahead and posted the same thing to Apollo.

[fightinJAG]

Your post also is echoed in the comments made by Mrs. Obambi.

She states quite clearly and often that she was admitted to Princeton even though she didn't have the test scores for it. IOW, she was admitted on the basis of a racial set aside.

Then she goes on about how alienated she felt there and so on, even writing her (horribly written and even worse thought-out) thesis on the plight of being black at Princeton. She apparently never once, then or now, caught the irony that the "plight" was not of being "black" at Princeton, but rather the plight of being admitted to an institution at which from the very get-go one was ill-equipped to compete.

Thanks for mentioning Bloom's book. Having just finished The Bell Curve, I was interested in pursuing some related analyses.

What I did pick up next was Arthur Herman's How the Scots Invented the Modern World (The true story of how Western Europe's poorest nation created our world and everything in it).

You might be tempted to think this is a cheeky text, but it's not at all. And while it doesn't bear directly on public policy issues (I'm only about halfway through, though), reading it after reading The Bell Curve has been fascinating for its detail of social and cognitive stratification in the unfolding of the Scottish Renaissance. In particular, how higher education developed.

I'm looking forward to taking a look at Bloom's book now, too.

[Old Professer]

Here in Nashville we just got a brand new position filled as director of gifted student education; the first order of business according to her is that all of the advanced classes be made available to all students.

Soon they will all be gifted, I guess.

[Pablo64]

Exactly, but we're not supposed to notice something as patently obvious as that. That's why you can skyrocket a lib's blood pressure simply by mentioning The Bell Curve. It's the old "head-in-the-sand" position that liberals (especially those in academia) love to take. Kind of like that old t-shirt slogan, "My mind's made up. Don't confuse me with facts."

[VOA]

about the article’s author:
“
Mr. Schmidt is a senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education and
the author of “Color and Money: How Rich White Kids Are Winning the
War over College Affirmative Action” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
“

I got to see a short interview with Mr. Schmidt on BookTV (C-Span2;
weekends)a week or two ago.

Simply put, he does make a case that a lot of rich white kids are
short-circuiting the admission system via donations/legacy strategies.

From his comments, I’d conclude that if you aren’t rich or have a certain
victim status (usually from gender and/or accident of birth),
good luck in getting into elite universities.

[shrinkermd]

Yes, please do a chapter by chapter summary of Murray and Hernstein’s book. We can all chime in with more recent data including that by Murray on the “Flynn effect.”

It might garner only a limited audience, but those reading would be ready to extend the knowledge over an ever widening audience.

[fightinJAG]

Yes, a “limited audience” indeed. I found a kind of irony in that, under all the circumstances. ;)

I’ll try to have something up by the end of the week. The whole time I was reading the book I was thinking, man, it would be so great to sit around hashing out these ideas with a bunch of smart people.

A thread such as this one we’re proposing-—a sort of a “come as you are, when you can” book club-—would be an “evergreen,” meaning, here, it would remain relevant to current events over time. I could see a ping list inviting people from a particular news thread over to the book club thread to talk about it in that context.

Anyway, I’ll see what I come up with and we’ll take it from there. Thank you very much for your interest.

[fightinJAG]

Exactly, but we're not supposed to notice something as patently obvious as that. That's why you can skyrocket a lib's blood pressure simply by mentioning The Bell Curve. It's the old "head-in-the-sand" position that liberals (especially those in academia) love to take.

Don't know if you've read The Bell Curve, but taking its explanation of the cognitive elite, I have to wonder how to explain liberals.

They often appear smart and certainly they are treated as smart by society. But it's no joke to say that their ability to reason is very poor. So where is the stereotypical liberal, say in academia, actually fall on the IQ scale? If they are above average, why is their logic less than intelligent?

This is not about political differences, it's about differences in the ability to reason. I sure would like to know the real data on this point.

[fightinJAG]

P.S.

I wonder if true liberals gravitate in numbers to and have success in the occupations that reward those who actually are most intelligent.

IOW, I see liberals making it big in academia-—big deal. In Hollywood-—big deal. But what’s the overall picture here? I don’t know, but would like to.

(I also think there are smart people in liberal industries/corporations who go along to get along. They may spout liberalism, but they aren’t actually liberal. They’re actually smart (though misguided).)

[fightinJAG]

The “elite” universities, therefore, no longer are. Much has changed even in the last decade. Except in very rarified circumstances, not many care that someone went to, say, the Ivy League.

There’s a reason for that.

[Pablo64]

I would venture to guess that the average liberal is just that: average. At least as concerns where they fall on the IQ scale. I don't believe that most positions in academia require any great skill at reasoning or logic, but rather the ability to work with fundamental information. Most any person can study hard enough to regurgitate the knowledge required to pass an exam, or obtain a degree if that is their goal.

Liberalism is all about "feelings" and (in their minds) altruism, and it never demands of them to apply logic or critical thinking. I believe there is also a passion behind those feelings that often gets in the way of thinking things all the way through or applying logic.

[shrinkermd]

Yes, all your points are excellent. Don't forget, when you do this you are taking on academe' since the reigning belief is egalitarian in both opportunity and ability.

Thinking about this leaves me with the idea this may be the only way to popularize and proselytize empirical findings in this matter since academe' and the courts seem determined to continue with their beliefs regardless of findings.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. recently wrote an article on James Watson's fall from academic grace. To be noted is Gates is a Harvard professor and his words are the words of the average academic in that and other trophy colleges. In any case here is a brief quote:

"...On Oct. 14, 2007, one of Watson's former assistants, Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe, wrote an article about him in London's Sunday Times that quoted him making racist comments about black people by suggesting there are inherent, unalterable biological differences in intelligence between black people and everyone else. The response was swift and impressively devastating. The father of DNA had spoken the unspeakable. Echoing racist remarks that have been used to justify the enslavement and colonization of black people since the Enlightenment (think Hume, Kant, Jefferson, Hegel), Watson's comments implied that he believed that nature had created a primal distinction in intelligence and innate mental capacity between blacks and whites, which no amount of social intervention could ever change.

He had uttered the unutterable, the most ardent fantasy of white racists (David Duke would wax poetic on his Web site that the truth had at last been revealed, and by no less than the discoverer of the structure of DNA). His words caused a ripple effect of shock, dismay and disgust among those of us who embrace the range of biological diversity and potential within the human community. It was as if one of the smartest white men in the world had confirmed what so many racists believe already: that the gap between blacks and whites in, say, IQ test scores and SAT results has a biological basis and that environmental factors such as centuries of slavery, colonization, Jim Crow segregation and race-based discrimination—all contributing to uneven economic development—don't amount to a hill of beans. Nature has given us an extra basketball gene, as it were, in lieu of native intelligence.

Note that Gates conflates racial prejudice with the finding of group, average racial differences in intelligence. He does not use any empirical data and uses the rhetoric of politics.

Link for Gates article: HERE.

[fightinJAG]

Thinking about this leaves me with the idea this may be the only way to popularize and proselytize empirical findings in this matter since academe' and the courts seem determined to continue with their beliefs regardless of findings.

Wow, are we ever on the same page. This important book came out when---over a decade ago?---and even though I heard about it and read the articles about it, I only got around to reading it last week.

I do think that as with any bit of information, anything that facilitates people talking about that information creates the possibility that it will bubble up in what used to be called the "marketplace of ideas."

You are exactly right that this type of effort to discuss these ideas in public (however humble our particular attempt turns out to be)---on the internet, for anyone to join in on, with the result out there for anyone to stumble upon and perhaps elaborate on---this is the only way there is a chance that this information will not get buried permanently.

So let's go for it. There are plenty of people right here on FR who could contribute a lot to such a discussion.

[fightinJAG]

Note that Gates conflates racial prejudice with the finding of group, average racial differences in intelligence. He does not use any empirical data and uses the rhetoric of politics.

Yep.

This is exactly the type of inflammatory talk that scares off the people who truly are NOT racist. They hear about a book such as The Bell Curve (TBC) and it makes them uncomfortable; they think "I'm not a social scientist, how would I sort this out, so I'm not even going to go there." Thus, they continue on in ignorance of how well-meaning policies increase social pathologies and unhappiness, *at all levels.*

I have several things I'd like to say in response to Gates' commentary, but I think I'll wait until they come up in the context of what's set out in TBC.

For now: Not only are Gates' comments not based on empirical data, his comments seem to indicate that he has never even heard that some social scientists have indeed made data-based findings that refute his entire premise. It's one thing to express disagreement, but quite another to be shocked at a conclusion that is not exactly unknown in the social science community.

[Apollo 13]

Nice reply, cheers for that -
originally, I got hugely interested in Bloom’s book (around 1988, if memory serves) because I saw standards decrease at Dutch universities. Language capability, the total demise of fluent German (which was surely present in Holland two decades before), and most of all: a devastating decrease in general knowledge issues. See: I myself am a biochemist. Still, I felt alienated many times. Why? Because no one was interested in general knowledge issues. No one knew the names of eminent philosophers of science, nor those of the most famous literature writers, nor those of classical composers. For all I knew, I could have landed in a secondary school class, in between kids just interested in a good night out, and in trivial pop music. Which was all the more difficult for me, inasmuch when I studied, we students had fiery political discussions, in which any opinion was welcome, if properly argued. We sought to educate ourselves in other fields than our own, literature being the most prominent. One or two decades later: everything had changed.
If I interpret Bloom correctly, factors responsible for this are:
- major changes in society. He was so courageous to name divorce as an essential bad influence;
- a growing urge to ‘narrow down’ the curriculum to what is only needed in a strictly utilitarian sense (and thereby depriving students of what is equally important: spiritual nourishment, those immaterial topics that can help one through the worst times in one’s life);
- the overwhelming need to ‘do good’ in terms of political correctness, even if this implies ignoring all evidence to the contrary of one’s brave intentions.
I think this neatly sums up Bloom’s mindset in the book. And what is most intriguing about Bloom’s deserved bestseller: it was the only book of its kind (as far as I know) that was given as a present by young students to their parents, with some shame, and discreetly packaged. Imagine: kids, led by the good hand of a Cornell professor, trying to teach their own parents about life...
Oh yes, if ‘The Closing...’ appeals to you, don’t miss out on its successor: ‘Giants And Dwarfs’, a collection of essays with which Bloom attempted to honour great writers by whom he himself was influenced and inspired.
Since both books were printed and sold on a large scale, they should be easy to come by second hand, even the hardback issues.

[fightinJAG]

In light of our discussion of TBC, the article in this post might interest you greatly.

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