Dissenting Thomas

Terry EastlandEducation

Here at the Center for Equal Opportunity we followed as we usually do this year’s March Madness, which meant keeping up with Texas Tech’s excellent basketball team, which battled into the Final Four and then into Overtime in the championship game before losing to Virginia. Texas Tech also won our attention for its worthy decision to end the use of race in admissions, a position we had urged the university to take some years ago, and which the Trump administration has pressed through the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights. Even Justice O’Connor has been sympathetic to ending affirmative action …

CEO’s Successful Challenge to Racial Preferences in Admission at Texas Tech

CEO StaffEducation

In 2004, the Center for Equal Opportunity filed a complaint with the U. S. Department of Education against Texas Tech for its use of racial and ethnic preferences in admission.  This resulted in a long investigation of the school by DoEd’s Office for Civil Rights and, ultimately, an end to the use of preferences in undergraduate and medical school/health sciences admission.  The key documents related to this matter are posted here.  Related posts: Congratulations to Texas Tech! Ending the Use of Race in Admissions . . . Now Second Thoughts About Texas Tech Termination at Texas Tech

Divided We Stand

Terry EastlandRacial Preferences

Writers said to inhabit the political center (usually means they are liberal] are reporting some interesting news, which is, as Eric Kaufmann says in the New York Times, that “the country is not divided by racial conflict but by conflict over racial ideology.” As he also says, “America isn’t racially divided, it’s divided by racial ideology.” Seems right to me.  “Race pertains to communities defined by ancestry and physical appearance,” says Kaufmann, while “racial ideology turns instead on race as a political idea.” Kaufmann says that white is “a description of a person’s race whereas feelings about whether whites are …

The College Admissions Scandal and Racial Preferences

Roger CleggEducation

The Left is trying hard to let no scandal go to waste by asserting that last week’s college-admission indictments prove that we need to continue racial preferences. White people cheat and bribe to get in, you see, so we have to this counterbalance to give nonwhites a boost. Of course this is silly. It requires, for starters, that we equate being white with being wealthy and corrupt. But the overwhelming majority of whites are neither, needless to say, and one suspects that most of the students who were cheated out of a slot here were themselves white. Conversely, it is …

About Grutter . . . 

Terry EastlandEducation

Some thoughts & observations The  Grutter case decided in 2003 is best (though infamously) known for holding that the attainment of a racially diverse student body is “a compelling government interest.” Otherwise, the admissions preferences under challenge in Grutter could not have been justified. These issues are back in the federal courts, and may well rise to the Supreme Court by 2020-21. There is yet more to observe about Grutter—in particular a sentence early in the Court’s opinion in the case by Justice O’Connor: “As part of its goal of ‘assembling a class that is both exceptionally academically qualified and …

Americans Overwhelmingly Reject Racial Preferences in Admissions

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

My colleague Terry Eastland wrote about this last week, but in case you missed it: Accordingly to a new Pew Research Center survey, 73 percent of Americans believe that race and ethnicity should play no role in university admissions. All racial and ethnic groups reject this discrimination: 78 percent of whites, 62 percent of blacks, 65 percent of Hispanics, and 59 percent of Asian Americans. This result is no outlier, by the way, and is line with other surveys over the years. *** And for the same reason — which can be summed up as E Pluribus Unum — reparations …

Our Constitution Is Colorblind

Terry EastlandRacial Preferences

Comes now notice of a new survey by the Pew Research Center. It finds that most Americans–73%–say that colleges and universities should not consider race or ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions; that 7% say that race should be a major factor in college admissions; and that 19% say it should be a minor factor. The survey does not explain what it means to “consider” race or ethnicity when deciding who gets in. But it would seem to mean using race in ways that favor the chances of getting in for “underrepresented minorities” when there are a limited number …

Pocahontas or Pioneer?

Roger CleggEducation

Here’s an interesting case: A medical school has been sued for racial discrimination because an admissions officer there advised a (white) applicant that her chances of admission would be better if she took a DNA test and could point to some African American or Native American blood. Now, surely, this has to be filed in the category of “appalling but not surprising.” That is, under the lamentable current state of the law, schools can weigh race and ethnicity in admissions, and this helps you if you belong to some groups and hurts you if you belong to other groups, so …

Looking Back at Bakke: Are Racial Preferences in Admissions Permanent?

Terry EastlandRacial Preferences

Harvard was not a party in Bakke, but it was the most important opinion in that landmark case. It deserves to be read together with the filings in the ongoing Harvard racial admissions discrimination case, which was argued in October and the decision in which could come any time. It’s remarkable that one school could figure so prominently in two major cases raising many of the same issues, but that is what we have here. The 1978 Bakke case included an opinion that sanctioned use of the diversity rationale by which applicants lacking the race necessary for a sufficiently racial …

20 Bad Arguments

Roger CleggEducation

Earlier this month, the trial ended in the lawsuit brought against Harvard University, challenging the school’s racially preferential admission system as illegally discriminating against Asian Americans.  The Center for Equal Opportunity has followed the matter closely, issuing two studies documenting Harvard’s discrimination that you can read here and here, and helping to write and joining an amicus brief in the case that you can read here.  And earlier this month, John S. Rosenberg — who edits the blogsite www.discriminations.us — and I wrote the piece below that appeared (slightly revised) in The Weekly Standard. The 20 Arguments for Discriminating Against …