Woe to Bowdoin | Center for Equal Opportunity

The much-anticipated National Association of Scholars report on political correctness at Bowdoin College was released last week and can be viewed on the NAS website here. You can read some of my earlier pieces on the project, the prime mover for which was Center for Equal Opportunity board member Tom Klingenstein, here and here. And you should already have received Linda Chavez’s column on the report, here.

In this post, I just want to flag the release of the report, and make one lawyerly point. Much of what universities like Bowdoin do these days is not illegal but merely foolish; some of it is foolish and possibly illegal; and some of it is not only definitely foolish but also definitely illegal. In the latter category I would place making any faculty hiring decisions on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex. So see the discussion of “Faculty Recruitment” in Peter Wood’s preface and of “Faculty Diversity” in the report itself, and my discussion of the legal distinctions between weighing “diversity” in student admissions versus faculty hiring here.

But all of this foolishness, whether illegal or not, ought to be of interest to Bowdoin alumni and to anyone who cares about higher education.

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Speaking of academia, the cover story in the spring issue of The American Scholar is an interesting essay by W. Ralph Eubanks, “Color Lines.” The theme of it is the increasing, and welcome, impossibility of relegating individuals to racially defined boxes, literal and figurative. I would add that it follows from this, of course, that schools ought not to be admitting students based on such boxes.

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That’s what the people of Michigan voted for, by the way, and the Supreme Court is likely to vindicate their wishes. The Court, that is, has granted review in an important affirmative-action case, involving a bizarre 8–7 en banc ruling by the Sixth Circuit that it is a denial of equal protection for the people of the state of Michigan to pass a ballot initiative that, well, requires equal protection — by banning, among other discrimination, racial preferences in university admissions.

You can’t make this stuff up, folks! Here are my earlier thoughts on the case, in which the Center for Equal Opportunity has been actively involved — we opposed the Sixth Circuit’s ruling and urged the Supreme Court to take the case — and will remain so in the months ahead.

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Life (if you can call it that) imitates art (if you can call it that): I am referring to a news item from last week here reporting on the City of Phoenix’s efforts to recruit more black and Latino lifeguards — even if they aren’t strong swimmers — with my 2010 item here that ridiculed a politically correct (but entirely fictional) policy in training lifeguards. In this instance, truth is much stranger than fiction.

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In addition to education and employment, the other big area for preferences based on race, ethnicity, and sex is government contracting. So let’s finish with this item: The current Small Business Administration certification form for EDWOSBs — that’s “economically disadvantaged women-owned small businesses,” for those of you lucky enough not to know — states that an owner-applicant can have quite a bit of money and still be eligible:

(xviii) The economically disadvantaged woman upon whom eligibility is based has read the SBA’s regulations defining economic disadvantage and can demonstrate that her personal net worth is less than $750,000, excluding her ownership interest in the concern and her equity interest in her primary personal residence. . . .

(xx) The adjusted gross income of the woman claiming economic disadvantage averaged over the three years preceding the certification does not exceed $350,000.

(xxi) The adjusted gross income of the woman claiming economic disadvantage averaged over the three years preceding the certification exceeds $350,000; however, the woman can show that this income level was unusual and not likely to occur in the future, that losses commensurate with and directly related to the earnings were suffered, or that the income is not indicative of lack of economic disadvantage.

(xxii) The fair market value of all the assets (including her primary residence and the value of the business concern but excluding funds invested in an Individual Retirement Account or other official retirement account that are unavailable until retirement age without a significant penalty) of the woman claiming economic disadvantage does not exceed $6 million.

Whether it’s education, employment, or contracting, the Center for Equal Opportunity believes the time is long overdue for treating all Americans equally, without regard to skin color, national origin, or gender. That’s what we’re fighting for!

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