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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Jewish quotas are making comeback in college |
Current rating: 0 |
by Harold Green
(No verified email address) |
22 May 2002
Modified: 06:05:04 PM |
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Affirmative action undermines education in more than one way. Read on... |
John Leo
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/johnleo/jl20020520.shtml
May 20, 2002
What's new in ethnic finagling on our campuses? Well, we just learned that Jews are being favored at Vanderbilt University (aggressively recruited for the first time) and will keep being disfavored at the University of Michigan Law School (passed over for less qualified blacks and Hispanics), at least until the U.S. Supreme Court steps in.
It's hard to decide which of these two stories is more excruciating. Vanderbilt, a Bible Belt university located in Nashville, is targeting Jewish students in an "elite strategy" to boost itself toward Ivy League status. Chancellor Gordon Gee announced this plan along with a series of relentlessly pro-Semitic compliments guaranteed to set every Jewish tooth on edge: Jews are lively, interesting and hardworking, and come from a rich culture. All well meant, no doubt, but close to conventional stereotypes.
Then there is the problem of leaving the word "Jewish" hovering in the air within 10 paces of the word "elite." Our campuses are addicted to ethnic and racial tinkering, so problems like this are common. Vanderbilt wants to pep up its image (and presumably its ranking in U.S. News & World Report's college guide) by importing some bright Jews. But the university doesn't seem to have a clue about how offensive this is, and not just to Jews. Christian students will now understand that their university views them as unimpressive bumpkins in need of non-Christian help.
The College Board has fueled the new market in religious identity groups by asking college-bound test-takers to list their faith. Jews came in second in the testing sweepstakes (1161 average board scores), exceeded only by Unitarians (1209). According to The Wall Street Journal, some colleges now buy the names of Jewish students from the College Board. This has overtones of the scramble for free agents in all major sports. The unspoken premise is that if the Jewish free agents are attractive enough, they will be granted an edge over equally qualified gentile candidates.
Here we go again. Although Vanderbilt claims that it's just marketing to a new group of students, this looks like yet another identity-group preference scheme by college officials who seem constitutionally unable to hold all candidates for admission to a common standard.
Jewish students are also at the heart of a controversy over the University of Michigan Law School's preference system. Ruled unconstitutional last year by a federal district judge, the system was upheld last week in a 5-to-4 decision by the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals. The case is likely to go to the Supreme Court.
In dissent, Judge Danny Boggs noted that "a significant proportion" of the Michigan law school applicants who lose out because of "diversity" preferences are Jewish. Though the plan is pro-minority, not antiSemitic, he says it reduces the number of Jews much the same way anti-Semitic Ivy League admissions policies did in the 1930s (not to mention the 1920s, '40s and '50s). In those days, as one writer put it, "If you were a Jew with an A average and 1600 on the boards, you wouldn't get into Yale as fast as a South Dakota farm boy with a gentleman's C."
It's a grave charge that Jewish quotas are making a comeback of sorts as a byproduct of "diversity" preferences. "Diversity" people are committed to the rhetoric of "underrepresentation": Every aggrieved group is entitled to the same proportion of university slots as its percentage of the population. But where will these slots come from? The so-called white ethnics are already "underrepresented." A few years ago, the head of the National Italian-American Foundation said Americans of Italian ancestry account for 8 percent or 9 percent of the American population and only 3 percent of Ivy League students. The slots can come only from the two groups that have dramatically exceeded expectations: Jews and Asian-Americans.
Jews are only 2 percent of the population, but at Ivy League schools they account for 23 percent of students. In diversity-speak, a language with no word for merit, this means that Jews are "overrepresented" and logically headed back toward quotas. Boggs writes: "The law school and the court will certainly deny this, but that is where the figures unavoidably lead us."
Affirmative action started out as a mild and temporary tie-breaking plan applied to equally qualified candidates. It mutated into a huge boost for low-scoring minority candidates. At the University of Michigan Law School, race is worth more than one full grade point of college average. And now it seems headed for "representation" quotas for all racial and ethnic groups. Is this any way to run a university? |
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Did You Take a Wrong Turn? |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 May 2002
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You must have been looking for the News-Gazette open Newswire when you posted this here.
Oh, what's that?
The News-Gazette doesn't have an open Newswire?
But they do have John Leo.
Which makes posting this here rather pointless, because it's darn close to being nothing but flamebait, which may end up being placed in the Hidden files area. We'll get back to you on that. |
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Oh Dear... |
by Harold Green
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 May 2002
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Your comments are fascist, ML. I thought this site boasts diversity and "tolerance" for its array of perspectives.
That said, there has been a surgence of "diverse" opinions lately. Why are such posts considered, as you say, "flaimbait"? Instead of putting forth reasonable objections to this post and others, you seem to be a platformist who cannot defend their position.
Try again, ML |
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An Easy Position to Defend |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 May 2002
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I find it rather pointless that space is wasted on this Newswire for something easily available to tens of thousands of people all over this county. As a regular News-Gazette columnist, John Leo hardly qualifies as part of the population that is ill-served by traditional dominant media. People underserved or miserved by the dominant media are our target audience and our reason for being here. So you are likely to hear me and others complain about this reposting of yours pushing news of interest to the underserved public off the Newswire.
If you genuinely felt strongly about this issue, you could have easily written your own article. Part of our mission is also to encourage people to do citizen journalism, but you couldn't be troubled with that, preferring to parrot the party line to thinking on your own.
It could also have been posted as a comment to something you disgareed with. Instead, its fly-blown carcass is laying in the middle of our Newswire.
As for the merits of Mr. Leo's argument, there aren't any.
But that's just my opinion and at least I'm not taking up a slot on the Newswire with it. |
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Interesting Contrast in Headlines |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
22 May 2002
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The same column appeared in the News-Gazette today. Only, in a judicious nod to the sensibilities of its readers, the N-G headlined it "Quotas penalize one minority to help another". How should I interpret the difference in headlines between the N-G version and the Harold Green version? Given that the piece itself fairly oozes latent anti-semitism:
#1 Harold Green felt the message wasn't anti-semitic enough, so he "pumped up" the headline a little.
#2 The N-G toned it down so it wouldn't offend their conservative, Jewish readership (Sharon hasn't made a move yet that has upset the N-G editorial board), yet still felt the necessity to attack affirmative action enough to take the risk of offending that portion of the readership.
#3 Both, and Green's headline tells us pretty much where HE is coming from. |
