In last year’s case of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled, as expected, that affirmative action (the preferential admission of students based on race or ethnicity) was illegal, a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Wikipedia notes:
The majority opinion, written by Roberts, stated that the use of race was not a compelling interest, and the means by which the schools attempted to achieve diversity (tracking bare racial statistics) bore little or no relationship to the purported goals (viewpoint and intellectual diversity and developing a diverse future leadership).
Indeed, the arguments of my own graduate school in this case, angered me: not only did Harvard lie about its own admissions practices, but advanced the argument that Roberts shot down: racial diversity = intellectual and viewpoint diversity. This was the view that propelled the earlier Bakke decision: diversity was seen, sans evidence, as an innate good. Had affirmative action been justified as a form of reparations for people who were still suffering the effects of bigotry, I would have been more in favor of Harvard’s practices. But for years the justification of affirmative action has been rife with dissimulation.
Colleges, determined to keep racial diversity high, perhaps up to the point of equity (representation of racial groups among students equal to their proportion in the population), quietly began working on ways to violate or at least obviate this ruling. Fortunately for colleges, the Supremes had left a loophole. As the Independent notes:
While the ruling says race may not be a conscious factor in admissions, it does not prevent universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected their life “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university”.
After this, you could have predicted the results: colleges and universities would immediately begin to ask students to write essays in which they were asked how they overcame obstacles. And of course every student in a minority group, knowing the scheme, would somehow find a way to argue that their race or ethnicity imposed high obstacles to achievement, but that they had somehow surmounted these obstacles. This would of course tip off admissions offices that the applicant was in a racial or ethnic minority, and give their applications a boost. (Of course in some cases an overcoming-bigotry story would be true and could indeed speak to a candidate’s value, though it would probably say little to help universities increase their ideological or viewpoint diversity.)
Moreover, opponents of affirmative action would find this form of “holistic admissions” hard to detect, and lawsuits like last year’s would be much harder to bring.
I predicted this change in applications, which did take effect, but of course it isn’t rocket science. Universities are wedded for life to increasing racial diversity; the Supreme Court said that this was largely illegal, but left a loophole; and so colleges would exploit this sole loophole in a big way. And that, according to the article from the NYT, has come to pass. Click the headline below to read, or you can find the article archived here. The subtitle tells the tale:
This being the NYT, they begin the article by showing the advantages of this loophole, which enabled some students to “find themselves”. But the overwhelming impression you get is that both universities and students are gaming the system to get an admissions advantage. After all, why do colleges even need to ask students how they overcame adversity?
Have a look, for example, at the essay questions the University of Chicago posed during the last application cycle (as well as some questions from previous years): there’s one mandatory question and seven optional questions from which you pick one to answer. None of them involve “overcoming obstacles,” though question #7 gives you some leeway to sneak in race and ethnicity. Here’s a typical one (questions are often suggested by students):
Essay Option 2
“Where have all the flowers gone?” – Pete Seeger. Pick a question from a song title or lyric and give it your best answer.
– Inspired by Ryan Murphy, AB’21
The clear goal of these questions is to look for creativity and novel viewpoints—in other words, to seek out and harvest viewpoint diversity.
I don’t think this will be the case at Chicago next year, but we shall see. But here are some quotes from the NYT article (indented). The piece begins with the upside:
Astrid Delgado first wrote her college application essay about a death in her family. Then she reshaped it around a Spanish book she read as a way to connect to her Dominican heritage.
Deshayne Curley wanted to leave his Indigenous background out of his essay. But he reworked it to focus on an heirloom necklace that reminded him of his home on the Navajo Reservation.
The first draft of Jyel Hollingsworth’s essay explored her love for chess. The final focused on the prejudice between her Korean and Black American families and the financial hardships she overcame.
WHAAT? The corruption of an essay on chess into one on bigotry, solely to gain a racially-based admissions advantage, is ludicrous. But you can’t blame the student—you have to blame the unnamed university. The piece continues:
All three students said they decided to rethink their essays to emphasize one key element: their racial identities. And they did so after the Supreme Court last year struck down affirmative action in college admissions, leaving essays the only place for applicants to directly indicate their racial and ethnic backgrounds.
Notice that all three students didn’t really intend to dwell on their racial identities, but were forced to because a). that’s what the unnamed college asked about, and b). they realized that mentioning their race and heritage would help them get admitted. This is what’s known as “gaming the system.”
There’s more:
[The Supreme Court decision] led many students of color to reframe their essays around their identities, under the advice of college counselors and parents. And several found that the experience of rewriting helped them explore who they are.
Sophie Desmoulins, who is Guatemalan and lives in Sedona, Ariz., wrote her college essay with the court’s ruling in mind. Her personal statement explored, among other things, how her Indigenous features affected her self-esteem and how her experience volunteering with the Kaqchikel Maya people helped her build confidence and embrace her heritage.
For Julia Nguyen, a child of Vietnamese immigrants based in Biloxi, Miss., rewriting her essay made her more aware of how her family’s upbringing shaped her. Julia, 18, said she felt “more proud to have this personal statement because of the affirmative action case.”
In Keteyian’s case, he said he felt “a lot more passionate” about his essay after changing his approach. As a Black student interested in engineering — a field that has struggled to diversify its ranks —Keteyian concluded his personal statement with a mix of fear and hope.
“Coming to terms with the possibility I may be one of the few Black individuals at my workplace is intimidating,” he wrote, “but something to prepare for if the ruling stands, and an opportunity for me to rewrite reality.”
Now of course some of these answers may enable colleges to really increase their viewpoint diversity, ideological diversity, or even socioeconomic diversity, but one gets the impression that this is simply a way to obviate the law and the intent of the Supreme Court’s decision. And there’s another way to accomplish these aims, a way used by the University of Chicago. (I’m not bragging here; it’s just that our school is famous for its quirky and creative application questions.)
These essays on how you surmounted obstacles will spread throughout the country. I doubt, in fact, that more than a handful of colleges won’t have a question about “overcoming adversity” on their applications. But, of course, if you have more than two neurons to rub together, you know what’s going on here: in effect, admissions offices are asking students, in defiance of the Supreme Court ruling, to “tick a box” indicating their race. And then admissions officers can proceed with the same kind of race-based admissions they used before. In fact, some colleges explicitly admit this.
What this will produce is a spate of anodyne admissions questions and answers and, worse, a decrease in viewpoint diversity. Identity politics will become stronger than ever, and every student will absorb a narrative about how their racial identifies were crucial in getting them into college. More than ever, one’s race will become the dominant feature of one’s persona.
But there is the expected pushback, and at least the NYT mentions it. Many authorities and lawyers, as well as most Americans, don’t like it:
The court’s ruling was meant to make college admissions race-blind — answers to the race and ethnicity question on applications are now hidden from admissions committees. A recent Gallup poll found that nearly two-thirds of Americans showed support for the ban on affirmative action. Some strongly believe race should not be considered during the admissions process.
“I think it’s wrong,” said Edward J. Blum, the president of Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the case to the Supreme Court.
But the ruling also allowed admissions officers to consider race in personal essays, as long as decisions were not based on race, but on the personal qualities that grew out of an applicant’s experience with their race, like grit or courage.
Who are they fooling? If you think that mentioning that you’re black or Hispanic isn’t going to ring a bell in the admissions office, I have some land in Florida to sell you. And of course if you mention that you overcame difficulties imposed on you as an Asian or Jew, fuhgeddaboudit!
Further, even some students and parents don’t like it:
While some parents said they were glad their children got to reflect on their identities in their essays, others feared that the court ruling would make it harder for their child to find community while in college.
“Even with affirmative action in place, it’s always a struggle for people in our community to get to college and to succeed in college,” said Deshayne’s mother, Guila Curley, a college counselor on the Navajo Reservation in New Mexico.
Not all students appreciated the rewriting experience as much. Some found that the ruling made them feel like they were not writing for themselves, but for someone else.
Indeed! That is precisely the case. They are writing to alert admissions officers to their race, and then embroidering a story around that nucleus.
In her initial essay, Triniti Parker, a 16-year-old who aims to be the first doctor in her family, recalled her late grandmother, who was one of the first Black female bus drivers for the Chicago Transit Authority.
But after the Supreme Court’s decision, a college adviser told her to make clear references to her race, saying it should not “get lost in translation.” So Triniti adjusted a description of her and her grandmother’s physical features to allude to the color of their skin.
The new details made her pause. “It felt like I was abiding by somebody else’s rules,” she said. Triniti added, “Now it feels like people of color have to say something or if we don’t, we are going to get looked over.”
There you go. If this is not “ticking a box”, I don’t know what is. And some students are conflicted, as their guidance counselors force students to explicitly mention race against their wishes.
Some decided to leave out their race entirely. Karelys Andrade, who is Ecuadorean and lives in Brooklyn, kept her essay focused on her family facing eviction during the pandemic and being forced to live in a shelter. “That experience was a story that needed to be told,” said Karelys, 17.
In past years, some Asian American students avoided writing about their heritage, thinking affirmative action was largely unfavorable to them, said Mandi Morales, an adviser with Bottom Line, a nonprofit for first-generation college applicants catering mostly to students of color. But the end of affirmative action in colleges led some to reconsider, counselors said.
Ms. Morales cited one student who added a mention of his “conservative” Chinese family as an example. “The explicit disclosure of his ethnicity would not have made it to the final draft prior to the ruling,” she said.
Some experts argue that the court’s ruling encourages students to write on racial conflict, trauma and adversity.
Of course it does! Again, this is bloody obvious. But even some counselors who don’t push the “adversity” scenario still insist that the students mention their identities as people of color, merely noting that students should say that their race has been a salutary factor. But again, what’s emphasized is not the content of one’s character, but the color of one’s skin.
. . . Joe Latimer, the director of college counseling at Northfield Mount Hermon School in Massachusetts, said he believes it is not necessary for students “to sell their trauma.” Instead, he advises his students to present their identities as “strength based,” showing the positive traits they have built from their experiences as a person of color.
The NYT article begins with a positive nod towards identity applications, but ends with some people speaking truth to power:
Critics of affirmative action say they are worried about essays becoming a loophole for colleges to consider an applicant’s race. “My concern is that the system will be gamed,” said William A. Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University who founded the nonprofit Equal Projection Project.
Since the court ruling, colleges and universities have affirmed their commitment to diversity, and some officials said their institutions will continue to foster it through outreach and tools like Landscape, a database with information about an applicant’s school and neighborhood. And officials have said race can still inform decisions, as long as they are based on the applicant’s character and its connection to the university’s mission.
But some students, including Delphi Lyra, a senior at Northfield who is half-Brazilian, have reservations about the new admissions environment.
“The idea behind the ruling is to not check a box,” said Delphi, 18, referring to the race and ethnicity question on applications. “But I think, in some ways, it has almost even created more of a need to check a box.”
Absolutely!
It’s clear that although I favor some type of affirmative action to increase intellectual and ideological diversity, it has to be done in a way that doesn’t violate the law. After all, diversity of thoughtm does increase the proliferation of opposing viewpoints that’s essential for a good college education. So what do we do? I have two suggestions.
1.) Eliminate all questions on college applications that require you to explain how you overcame adversity. My suggestion would be to use questions that show your creativity or ability to think outside the box—in other words, questions like the University of Chicago used in the past. This increases creativity, quirkiness, and discussion. By concentrating on racial identities and how they held one back, the new system simply strengthens identity politics.
2.) Enforce the law. While it will become harder for authorities to determine if colleges are ticking racial boxes, it’s not impossible. Authorities can simply determine (given that recommendation #1 is followed) whether mentioning race somewhere on your application that you’re a member of an oppressed minority correlates significantly with your chance of admission. Again, you have to be careful, but it’s not hard if you use Chicago-style questions like this—the mandatory question that all applicants had to answer last year.
How does the University of Chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future? Please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to UChicago.
It’s not an inventive question (you have to answer an inventive one besides this), but neither does it prompt you to concentrate on your ethnic/racial identity. Admissions officers will be tearing their hair out, for now they have to judge solely on thoughtfulness and character.
I would be very interested in reading a comparison with various foreign university admissions processes/expectations/gimmickery from anyone familiar with them. Is this an American phenomenon? Do you see this sort of admissions mindset in the UK, Ireland, Japan, Turkey, France, India, etc?
In the UK admission is pretty much based on grades on standardised exams. There’s a bit more to it than that for the elite, highly-selective universities, but it’s still much more about straightforward academic merit than in the US. (We also don’t have the “legacy” admissions and “athletics” admissions that the US does.)
One of the most pernicious of all the myths surrounding higher education is that of the so-called “student-athlete”, while, in most of our states, the highest-paid public employee is a collegiate coach (usually in football), nor does the corruption of the NCAA receive nearly as much attention from the media as it should.
A few years ago, I (from the US) asked Mathew if UK universities awarded athletic scholarships. His great response was: “No, in the U.K. university
athletics are recreational, not reputational”.
I don’t know the details of college admission in Germany. But the German news magazin Der Spiegel recently (last year if I recall it correctly) reported how some German universities were introducing subject-specific admission tests because of grade inflation (which leads to compression of the grade scale making it difficult to distinguish among students).
In the US, many universities have abolished the SAT, the only piece of information that is almost impossible to game. And we all know why this was done.
in this vein:
Frederick M. Hess: Why Are Elite Colleges Enabling This Dubious Racket? December 19, 2023
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/why-are-elite-colleges-enabling-this-dubious-racket/
The author has a Ph.d. in political science from Harvard. Senior Fellow and Director, Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute
Chetty, Deming & Friedman: Diversifying Society’s Leaders? The Determinants and Consequences of Admission to Highly Selective Colleges. Oct 2023 [non-technical research summary]
https://opportunityinsights.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/CollegeAdmissions_Nontech.pdf
I can’t what it’s like now in Canada but in 1969 it was strictly by your high school marks. No essays at all. It wasn’t much different when my kids applied a generation later.
Bulgaria (Eastern Europe): Standardized tests and/or written works evaluated anonymously, either as an entrance exam or as school-leaving examination that may serve as a base for admission.
The medical faculty where I teach uses a combination of a test with closed questions, short and long open questions. Works are evaluated anonymously.
The university where my son is studying uses a standardized test with 100 closed questions from 10 disciplines.
Some colleges with few (adequate) applicants, e.g. nursing colleges, use grades from secondary school, or an interview. The purpose of the interview is not to select based on racial traits but to verify that the applicant at least has apparently normal behavior.
Our minorities are doing well, except the Roma (Gypsies). Some years ago, a few Roma applicants, after vigorous preparation, were installed as students at our university. Most of them didn’t cope well, and the experiment was discontinued.
I have experience of applying to universities in Russia (about 15 years ago), the Czech Republic (about 5 years ago) and Germany (recently). In almost all cases I had to pass one or more exams on subjects related to my chosen specialisation. Once it was an aptitude test (logical, spatial, verbal reasoning, etc.). I have never had to write an essay as part of a university application.
In Switzerland the only requirement is that you graduate from a Gymnasium. On the other hand, in most Kantons you have to pass a written test to get into Gymnasium, so effectively most of the selection is done in 6th grade, with attrition from 7-12 grade also playing a role.
I’m a UK parent with one daughter already at university and another starting this year. Neither have been privately educated. I always thought the university application and selection process here was meritocratic, and it largely is, although over the last couple of years. I have witnessed several issues that challenge that belief.
I already commented here a couple of weeks ago about my elder daughter who attends a high-ranking UK university. When I was helping her move in, every kid had wealthy parents. Now she has settled in, over 30% of her friends are privately educated and she has yet to meet any working-class students. Coming from a working-class background myself, that doesn’t sit well with me.
There are efforts in the UK to close this gap, but the cure seems worse than the disease. My youngest daughter gets excellent grades and her predicted A level results are A*,A*,A*,A*. These are easily good enough to get her in to Oxford or Cambridge, but the experiences of friends, including the interviews and the other students (mostly from very different backgrounds to our family) were enough to put her off applying. Those institutions remain alien and intimidating to the average kid, and she didn’t want to put herself through it. That’s one problem.
Her first choice was The University of Manchester (Matthew’s institution), from which she has received an offer (at the usual grades). This leads me to the other problem, previously unbeknownst to me. Universities can apparently lower their required grades for people in ‘disadvantaged’ postcodes. We are not at all disadvantaged, but for whatever reason, on that basis, my daughter was offered a place at another excellent (Russell Group) university, requiring only B,B,C grades, which is well below normal requirements.
How does that help the disadvantaged kids who really are struggling to get the grades to go to a top uni? This uni knows her predicted grades and knows she shouldn’t struggle, but still gave her a much more lenient offer that could have been given to someone who can really benefit from it.
Why? I struggle to understand how that offer does anything to fix an unfair system. Alongside other initiatives I have seen, it leaves me thinking that the only way to increase representation is to do so organically, by first providing better school education for all. That is unlikely ever to happen!
I don’t follow your complaint. The low offer to your daughter is their way of saying “we want you, you’re in”. Why is that a problem?
There’s no quota on low offers, that low offer is not then “used up” on your daughter. They likely are indeed also giving such offers to applicants from disadvantaged backgrounds.
(I also think you’re being a bit unfair to Oxbridge these days. Oxford intake is now 2/3rds state school; there’s no need for a state-school kid to feel like an alien.)
Fair point, it is great for my daughter. But I see it as a problem because she doesn’t need it, and they know that. Which to my simple mind means it’s not being used to help those who need it. Or it’s at best a clumsy effort to do so. That bothers me because I care about improving opportunities for working-class kids, not just my own. I was a working-class kid who benefitted from a good university education, and I’m passionate about seeing others benefit too. However, if those low offers aren’t limited in number, I’m a lot happier about it.
You are correct in that Oxbridge has improved concerning accessibility for state school kids. But she has been put off by the experiences of older students she knows who applied previously and are either superstars who failed to get in, or kids who succeeded and are now feeling very out of place and homesick. I really encouraged her to apply but she didn’t want to.
I can’t speak for all UK Unis, but many that use the reduced tariff base it on the difference between the average A level score in a postcode compared to the national average. The assumption is that student talent is equally distributed but school quality (and the ability of schools to prepare students for their exams) varies.
Thanks, Gemma, that makes sense. However, it also shows how daft the system can be. She attends a state school, but it’s very selective, and in terms of A-level results, it’s one of the best in the country. Most of her friends are expecting similar results to her with several going to Oxbridge etc. To me, it seems as though the low offer system isn’t being used (in her case at least) for its intended purpose. I care about opening up opportunities for working-class kids, so maybe I’m just reading too much into it, it’s only one example after all.
Not living in the UK and curious to know What are the criteria to a post code being determined “disadvantaged”?
I’m not actually sure Robert, but I will find out and reply with the answer.
Eliminate the essay altogether. It’s the most gameable part of the application.
It’s hilarious that people complain about the SAT being gameable by studying but they are okay with using an essay that may not even have been written by the applicant. And that can make admissions completely subjective.
Denise, I don’t find it hilarious. Is it reasonable to suppose that the people who made the decision to abolish the SAT don’t know that the SAT cannot be gamed (short of outright cheating) while admission essays and the like can be gamed? I don’t think it’s credible to make this supposition. That leaves only one possibility (as far as I can see): the decision makers are lying.
The SAT was abolished to make the admission process more opaque. The decision makers are obsessed with cosmetic diversity. The obsession goes so far as claiming in a “guest essay” in the New York Times that ethnic groups are not in a zero-sum competition for admission! See here:
If the Supreme Court Abolishes Affirmative Action, Here’s What Women Need to Do
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/11/opinion/affirmative-action-supreme-court.html
Shira A. Scheindlin is a former federal judge in the Southern District of New York and was a co-chair of the board of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
An ungated version of Scheindlin’s NY Times essay containing the astonishing, indeed mind-boggling, claim that ethnic groups are not in a zero-sum competition for admission to highly selective colleges is here:
https://archive.is/YQGW4
“And so the dialectic progresses.”
-Delgado and Stefancic
Critical Race Theory – An Introduction
2017
As above, so below
-Hermes Trismegistus, The Emerald Tablet – the origin of Hermetic alchemy
Prof Coyne writes about Affirmative Action and “Diversity” as if these are virtually identical policies, but there are significant differences, including differences that the Supreme Court recognized.
I’d say that affirmative action relates to “diversity” as ordinary pathogens relate to pathogens that have evolved antibiotic resistance.
That reproduces the misunderstanding.
I meant that in both cases, a harmful entity finds a way to change its features and persist in the face of measures specifically introduced to eliminate it.
I know what you meant. Your comment is based on a flawed understanding of the difference between affirmative action and “diversity”, and focuses instead on a problematic and questionable similarity.
I’m sensing a disagreement over whether “diversity” is a good thing or a bad thing in itself, to be consciously cultivated or actively eradicated. In a second-order analysis, is diversity an acceptable or tolerable (but unintended) consequence of some otherwise desirable policy? Or is it sufficiently bad on its own demerits that policies that cause it as even an unintended outcome should be suppressed for that reason alone?
https://www.aporiamagazine.com/p/diversity-is-good-actually
I’ll complete the gist of the title by adding, ” . . . for the planet but not for individual societies.” “Diversity is our strength,” is fatuous nonsense. Of course importing diversity is a different kettle of fish from managing diversity that one has been stuck with for centuries and can’t do very much about now.
Clearly the Supreme Court left that loophole deliberately. This must mean that they don’t think the law rules race completely out of consideration, and that they deem that fact important enough to make a statement explicitly.
But indeed, it’s a loophole one can drive a truck through, and colleges and students and counselors and parents will take advantage of it. It will probably take lawsuits to probe the boundaries of what falls within the law and what does not. The matter of race-based preference is far from over. Litigants are gathering…
I don’t think the Supreme Court had a choice in the matter. The loophole is a consequence of freedom of speech. Not even the Supreme Court is able to tell you you’re not allowed to write about your race. And if the admission offices are not directly asking the students to write about their race, and apparently they aren’t, then there’s not much more the Supreme Court can do. We’re back at the point where the burden of proof is on our side to show that admissions are judging the essays in a biased way, and it’s gonna be harder to prove than a having a race checkbox to tick.
I don’t think the solution to this lies in the courts. It will have to come from culture. When people in mass numbers refuse to apply to the likes of Harvard, Yale, MIT, all the universities that have led the way to these practices, that’s when we might start seeing changes. Until then, no matter what lawsuits they face, no matter what bans you put on them, Universities will keep looking for new loopholes.
“The loophole is a consequence of freedom of speech. Not even the Supreme Court is able to tell you you’re not allowed to write about your race. And if the admission offices are not directly asking the students to write about their race, and apparently they aren’t, then there’s not much more the Supreme Court can do.”
This isn’t really true, there’s all sort of restrictions on speech that have been imposed so as to prevent racial discrimination. If you’re a business, and you put up a sign saying “No blacks, gays, or women allowed”, but then you do nothing to actually enforce it, you’re still going to get hit with a civil rights lawsuit even though that sign is pure speech. Likewise if you don’t discipline employees who go around spouting racial slurs or asking women to sleep with them, you’re going to get hit with a hostile environment discrimination claim, even though what those employees were doing is pure speech. And then as part of its diversity push, the Obama admin required prospective federal contractors to make affirmations as to what they were doing to increase minority representation among their workforce; as a matter of fact, you *can* compel speech when it comes to race-related issues. The Supreme Court famously ruled IQ tests out as a valid basis for hiring decisions, and you’d think that both employers and applicants would have a free speech interest in saying “He’s smart, we should hire him/I’m smart, you should hire me”. So it’s not legally out of the question that the federal government could require schools to, as part of their admissions process, tell prospective applicants that they CANNOT mention their race (or other relevant anti-discrimination category) as part of their application. There’s rafts of legislation and court decisions carving out free speech and free association exceptions when it comes to race and job/school applications.
If you want to say that that shouldn’t be the law, that’s fine, but the problem is that it is currently the law. But then we’re back where the law stood in the 60s.
Your argument/approach has many problems.
The easiest first one is that while yes, you have cases where you suppress or compel speech, either to stop racial discrimination or other crimes, this is done on a small scale. You’re limiting the freedom of a few individuals to potentially protect many more people. In the case of Universities, and DEI in general, you’re effectively advocating for limiting the speech of the entire country. Anyone of any age can apply to an University or a job, and you’re asking that everyone is denied their speech. The scale at which this would have to apply is too big to be viewed as anything other than just blatant tyranny.
The second easy to see issue is that it is NOT the applicants who are committing a crime. It is the admission officer who is discriminating. You CANNOT punish individuals and limit their speech as a way to prevent someone else from committing a crime. It’s akin to Biden eradicating everyone’s right to vote, this very second, as a way to prevent Trump from getting into office and him making himself dictator. The right way is to punish the people committing a crime, not innocent people (who might also be victims of the very same crime) just because their human rights allows someone else to find a loophole by which to commit a crime. You find a way to punish the admission officer or the University, not everyone else.
Third problem is that you’re telling people they have to hide a core part of their identity. Might not be the most important part for most people, but there are still plenty who respect (and should do so) their ancestors and take pride in their lineage. Last I checked you can’t force someone in USA to stay in the closet about their sexuality, and we celebrate when people take pride in it. I don’t think you want to open this can of worms.
You start with collage admissions and job applications, but eventually you’d have to enforce this when it comes to day to day work, to prevent DEI based promotions or grades. Meaning that every single day, you’re asking every single american to deny their heritage and pretend they’re the same cookie cutter american. You know where this is happening this very second? Communist China, where they’re actively trying to eradicate any minority ethnicity that isn’t the majority Han, with the first step being forcing people to not mention any other ethnicity. Do you know what we call it when China does it?
The forth problem I already alluded to it previously, Universities will just find another loophole. They’ll find other ways to identify people’s ethnicity, sexuality etc.
For now I see only two options to deal with this affirmative action headache in Universities. First one I mentioned earlier, changing culture, which is really the only permanent solution I can think of. When both the political left and right can agree that DEI is wrong, Universities would go out of business if their radical leadership continue on the path they’re on. Whether they change their ways and eradicate DEI, or the Universities do go bankrupt, it doesn’t matter, because the problem gets solved.
A second, temporary, solution is to find a way to ban essays from the admission process. But this goes back to what I stated here as the forth problem, Universities will find another loophole.
There might be other solutions I’m not seeing of course. But denying people the right to identify with their ethnicity, their lineage, is not one of them in a free and open society. If on the other hand, you want USA to turn into a tyrannical state, that’s a different matter altogether. I’m sure solutions are plentiful in such a case.
You’re missing the fundamental point: the current state of the law provides, and in many cases requires, quite a lot of leeway to private actors to suppress speech, including speech which is a “core part of a person’s identity”, or to compel speech (like how you must identify race/ethnicity for Form EEO-1 purposes) in the name of preventing discrimination. If you think that’s tyrannical, then fine, but forcing universities to prohibit people from talking about their race or ethnicity or sexuality in their admissions essay isn’t a drastic break from the current state of the law. There’s plenty of free and open societies, like France and the country in Africa that is generally recognized as the most liberal and open (Rwanda), that strongly discourage or even prohibit expressions of ethnic or religious identification for official purposes like the census, job applications, etc. Maybe those are tyrannies, since they force people to pretend that they are the same cookie cutter Frenchman or Rwandan; I don’t know that that’s tyranny so much as it is small-r republican or small-d democratic spirit. But even if it is, for higher education, why should your background be relevant anyway? Neither “Where I come from…” nor “As a gay man…” are much of an academic argument. And aren’t universities supposed to transform people, rather than do little to nothing to change them?
And if you think banning essays (a good idea realistically) is pointless, because they’ll just find another way to discriminate, then why are we even bothering with defending higher ed if at this point their core mission is DEI? Shouldn’t we just destroy (i.e., mass firings, defund, revoke accreditations, prohibit college degrees as valid occupational qualifications the same way we do IQ tests, etc) it if it’s so thoroughly corrupted? I can see that you kind of think that this is what we should do, but what do we do in the intervening decades, while colleges are rebuilt, to educate people after high school? I’ll take incremental reform over revolutionary destruction.
I wonder, what if an applicant writes an essay about her experiences as a person of color, gets in, and turns out to look like Elizabeth Warren at 19?
I guess it depends on who blinks first.
But really, would anyone ever need know, though? If I say I’m black, get admitted, pay my tuition, and take my seat at my first lecture, who is ever going to tie me to the essay I wrote? The university might get suspicious if it thought it was admitting 30% of the class as black but a quick glance at the lecture theatres showed only a handful of visibly black faces. But what could they do? Think of the fury they’d attract if they picked a student out of the crowd and accused her of dissembling who really was black, just not “visibly” so.
It seems that many students were already admitting that they outright lied about their race on application forms as it was, when it was an explicit criterion. With it all nudge-nudge, wink-wink, who is ever going to know?
This could solve a lot of trouble for the colleges if they took it a step further. They could do away with essays, admit on the basis of SAT or football prowess or whatever, and simply announce that 30% of the incoming class was coloured. They could say how thrilled they were that racial educational disparities had been erased and here’s the proof: minorities were making up twice the fraction of the class as their proportion in society. Problem solved.
The “one drop” rule could be very useful here. After all, if we go back far enough, we can all claim descent from black Africans.
Pick a question from a song title and give it your best answer:
“What Does the Fox Say?”
He says “Who Let the Dogs Out?”
When it comes to the current SCOTUS who thought they “got rid” of American Affirmative Action, I’d just say it’s another hail Mary getting rid of some “liberal” ideal, like abortion, and they didn’t think it through. They “got rid” of abortion, but it didn’t do shit but stir the pot, and there are more abortions now than pre-Roe Wade…explain that to the “geniuses” on the court’s majority. Like they didn’t think Citizens United would flood and corrupt American politics with money, money, money. Again, FOOLS. I see this as another reactionary “try to put a lid” on Pandora’s box. Hate to say it, ’cause it’s a bit scary, but this Conservative SCOTUS is out of their depth. Just like the House under Johnson. I’m convinced that a couple of American institutions don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Don’t even know where they are. They are running on pure fanatic sycophantic faith in service to a corrupt asshole of the first order. Pathetic. I guess I can say I now understand how fascists can take over a government. Not a very good consolation. Knowing is not fixing.
I don’t think this is something you can fix with the law, or with banning this or that. This needs to be fixed through culture. The first thing that needs to happen is for the University system to basically collapse. When people refuse to go to Harvard, MIT, etc. because of their practices, that’s when you can hope to see real changes, instead of this masquarade. Until then, Universities will continue pretending to follow the law, while at the same time finding new and creative ways to implement racist admission policies.
I thought the same – that current US universities may be beyond salvage, but why doesn’t anyone found new ones? Except the University of Austin, I hope that it turns out to be a success.