I remember how it was -- JR
Punishing students because their parents are too successful is unfair and unwise
Leftist discriminatory practices are truly odious and usually futile. An interesting example is preferential admissions of underqualified blacks to medical schools, where they often drop out anyway. But those who stay the distance graduate regardless of any performance criteria. And other blacks know that -- resulting in some blacks refusing to be seen by a black doctor
If you are a strong student at UC San Diego with middle-class college-educated parents and wish to transfer to a “selective major” (engineering, data science, public health), the university isn’t interested in you. A new directive gives one point each for California residency, first-generation college-student status, low income, and a GPA above 3.0—a low bar for “selective” admissions. This is the latest instance of exclusionary practices in the name of “equity.” Merit takes a back seat to socioeconomic status. Your family tree matters more than your academic performance. California has taken a page from the population-classification schemes of now-defunct Marxist regimes.
Proposition 209 bars California universities from explicitly using race as a criterion, but they have spent 30 years engineering their results through holistic admission criteria, the elimination of SATs, and socioeconomic-class proxies.
But California is not alone. Other states and the federal government responded to earlier court challenges by including class in programs that target underrepresented minorities. The federal McNair program offers funding to minority graduate students and non-minority first-generation low-income students. The GPA requirement is as low as 2.50. Low GPA thresholds are needed to reach a significant number of African-American and Hispanic students, whose high–school GPA averages are 2.68 and 2.83, respectively. Asian and white students have GPA averages well above 3.0.
Some observers interpret the addition of class-based preferences as a response to the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision striking down race-based affirmative action. Yet calls for class-based measures date back to the civil-rights era. In 1964 President Lyndon Johnson signed the explicitly color-blind Civil Rights Act into law. That same year Martin Luther King Jr. proposed a “Bill of Rights for the Disadvantaged,“ which included the “forgotten white poor.” This was a path not taken. Federal agencies soon threatened colleges and employers with legal action and denial of federal funding if they did not produce racially proportionate outcomes. Corporations and colleges got the message and introduced racial preferences. With some exceptions, the courts upheld this bias until last year’s decision signaled a sharp turn to colorblind law.
Is class-based affirmative action better than race preferences? “Affirmative action prophet” Richard Kahlenberg has long agitated for class not race criteria in college admissions. After the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions, he took to the New York Times and other liberal venues to advocate admitting more lower-income students from poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods as exemplars who “overcame obstacles.”
Kahlenberg is right that most minorities admitted to elite colleges—like their white classmates—are well-off. Many are the children of immigrants whose families experienced no history of discrimination in America. Swapping class for race would make elite colleges more economically diverse. He’s also right that class-based affirmative action is safer from legal challenge. The courts have accepted class-based policies for more than a century based, for example, on income or the employer’s size.
Yet class-based affirmative action is an illusion. If America had pursued King’s approach we might have avoided six decades of affirmative-action debate. But current practices and an institutional mindset are ingrained and defended vigorously. There’s a reason why Kahlenberg’s quixotic pleas went unheard.
By prioritizing class over academic performance, the practice is a further assault on the social norm that we ought to treat individuals according to their merit and the “content of their character,” not their skin color or parental status. Kenny Xu makes this case in his passionately argued An Inconvenient Minority: The Harvard Admissions Case and the Attack on Asian American Excellence (2022). The assault on excellence affects all of us and weakens America in its competition with nations that don’t hamper the academically gifted.
The law should protect all individuals regardless of their status. Racial discrimination is odious because we can’t change our skin color and it violates our dignity as individuals. Likewise, we cannot change our parents. It is one thing to tax wealthy Americans more heavily than those with lower incomes, but it is another to exclude their 18-year-old children from high-demand majors because their parents are “too successful.” It is unfair and unwise to disadvantage young people simply because they chose the wrong parents.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14921
***********************************************No, Demonstrations Today Aren’t Like the 1960s
The current demonstrations on college campuses against Israel remind some of the unrest on college campuses during the 1960s.
But the comparison is not a good one.
The unrest of the 1960s was defined by the war in Vietnam and by the Civil Rights Movement. Both had practical, personal impact on young Americans in their own country.
American soldiers were fighting and dying in Vietnam. There was real, life-and-death impact on all Americans, and certainly on young Americans.
The military draft was still operative then. Despite various deferments, including for university attendance, the draft was still a reality and was a looming presence for all college-age Americans. They knew they could be drafted and had friends and friends of friends who were.
The official number of American soldiers killed in Vietnam stands at 58,220.
Although there were legitimate moral concerns about American involvement in this war, the moral concerns were accompanied by young Americans having real skin in this game.
The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s also had real personal moral impact on all Americans. And youth are always highly sensitive to the moral failings around them.
The reality of segregation and Jim Crow started getting national attention with the Civil Rights Movement, the activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and other, sometimes violent groups.
In contrast to the woke activism of today, which is totally political in character, the movement was led by a charismatic and articulate black pastor and had a religious, moral tone rooted in the Christian church.
Anyone that questions this should read, or reread, King’s “I Have a Dream” speech from 1963.
But King’s moral appeal was to an America very different than today.
In 1965, per Gallup, 70% of Americans said religion was personally “very important” to them. In 2023, by contrast, only 45% of Americans say religion is “very important.”
In 1962, per Gallup, 46% of Americans said they attended religious services over the last seven days. In 2023, this was down to 32%.
During this period there were two major wars involving Israel and the surrounding Arab states.
In 1967, Israel prevailed in the Six-Day War, which began with preemptive action by Israel against the Egyptian army mobilized for attack, and subsequent aggression by Syria in the North and Jordan in the East. In 1973, Israel again prevailed against attacks on these same fronts.
In 1967, per Gallup, 45% of Americans supported Israel against 4% who supported the Arab states, with 26% with no opinion. In 1973, 48% of Americans expressed support for Israel versus 6% expressing support for the Arab states and 24% with no opinion.
Support for Israel among Americans during this period was one-sided and clear.
But, again, America today is very, very different.
Our young people in the 1960s understood what personal responsibility is about.
On a national level, in the 1960s, all young Americans faced the reality of military conscription. Today, regarding national obligation and service, there are virtually no demands on our youth.
Now President Joe Biden is even erasing their student loan obligations.
On a religious, moral level, religion then had a much stronger hold on the nation. Religion teaches and inspires a culture where individuals have a sense they belong to and have obligation to something beyond their own egotistical inclinations.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and as religion has weakened and disappeared from our culture, it has been replaced by politics and the welfare state.
The end of it all is we now have a generation of youth insulated from all sense of national and religious and moral personal responsibility.
So now they demonstrate in support of terrorists and against the only free country in the Middle East that shares the very values that made our own country great.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/05/04/no-demonstrations-today-arent-like-the-1960s/
***********************************************Where are the university vice chancellors?
"Vice Chancellor" is the Australian term for a university CEO. They appear to have no principles other than their own survival in their jobs. They are utter cowards. JANET ALBRECHTSEN below outlines what men of principle would be saying
Australian vice-chancellors have been speaking in platitudes, desperate not to upset anyone. Here is a speech they should give.
We, vice-chancellors who are now trying to manage the pro-Palestinian protests on our university campuses, had this coming. For many years, when it mattered, we squibbed the importance of free speech.
Now, when students side with Hamas, when little children are encouraged and orchestrated to shout “intifada” and “From the river to sea”– both phrases used by terrorists to signal the destruction of the state of Israel – when Jewish students no longer feel safe on campus, we talk a lot about free speech. The chickens are coming home to roost. Chickens is the operative word.
We haven’t taken free speech seriously in the past. We’ve shut down events for apparently controversial speakers for “safety” reasons. Peter Ridd, a celebrated marine biologist, was famously sacked for breaching a code of conduct after he publicly challenged the work of colleagues. Free speech, academic freedom? They didn’t get a look-in then.
Even Malcolm Turnbull couldn’t get through a speech at a university without it being shut down by shouty protesters. We ramble under our breath about free speech when it suits, instead of giving this foundational principle of democracy the full-throttled defence it deserves.
Students who want to be educated, not to mention parents who pay for their kids to get educated at our universities, and taxpayers who fund us, expect us to take free speech seriously always – not just now when we university leaders find ourselves in a bind.
As a vice-chancellor at an Australian university, I am inspired to speak out after reading the weekend address by University of Florida president Ben Sasse. I make no apologies for quoting from his address. When a university leader stands out, it emboldens others to do the same. We need now to speak up for the sake of students who come to university to learn, not to use campus lawns as a platform for performance art.
The more violent American experience is not yet here. Before things get worse, I want our students to understand a few salient points about university life.
But first, I say to other university vice-chancellors, the reason Australians can and do lump Australia’s biggest universities together is that together we have turned our great sandstone universities into homogenous, anti-intellectual blobs. When things have gone wrong, and they have, it’s treated, rightly, as failure across the board.
The University of Sydney is no different to the University of Melbourne. The Australian National University is indistinguishable from the University of NSW. The University of Western Australia is a carbon copy of the University of Adelaide. No university leader of the so-called Group of Eight has had the courage to speak up about the ignorance that has flourished on our campuses, right under our noses.
We won’t fall into the trap of using slogans for either side. We won’t tar all student protesters with the same brush by describing these as encampments of hatred.
To be sure, there is extremism and hatred, in pockets, but the deeper problem is the ignorance that we, as CEOs charged with running these once great institutions, have allowed to flourish.
We have stood silent for years while our lecture rooms became breeding grounds for teaching kids – and they are just kids, with minds not yet fully formed – that the whole world must be divided into two camps: Oppressors and The Oppressed. I have used capital letters deliberately.These categories are now fully formed political projects. No nuance is welcome when considering who are the oppressed and who are oppressors. Whether you call this postmodernism, critical race theory, Marxist class struggle or some variant, our universities have become infested, and infected, by academics and students who view the world through prisms of power relationships.
For some the world is a giant mass of racist power structures. Others say the world can be understood only as organised male oppression. Others point to colonialism as the root of all evil.
There is much overlap. And adherents of this share the common belief that shutting down their opponents is an end that justifies more or less any means. They also believe that once you have identified your oppressed group of choice, you can ignore logic and reason in pursuit of their liberation.
You want evidence? Pro-Palestinian protesters on campus have every right to protest against a brutal war in Gaza. But if facts matter, they should also be the biggest critics of Hamas. This terrorist organisation understood, indeed intended, that invading Israel, killing innocent civilians, raping women at a music festival and beheading babies, would lead to a war in Gaza where innocent Palestinians would die, as innocent civilians have done in every war. Hamas uses its own people as human shields. Hamas steals foreign aid intended for Palestinians to enrich its leaders. Hamas keeps its people in a state of poverty as part of its project to call for the destruction of Israel. If students can’t identify Hamas as terrorists, then something has gone terribly wrong with their education – under our watch.
And ask yourself how those who believe in the equality of women, or the rights of LGBTQ people, can demonstrate in support of Hamas? Living in a tent on the university lawn may address the rental crisis temporarily, but what will it do for the poor Palestinians, let alone the Israelis who live with terrorists on their doorstep?
Instead, too many of our students have been trained in ignorance. Those copying Gaza Solidarity encampments on US campuses should be reading what we are reading: students are being manipulated by extremists who are sharing instruction manuals encouraging militancy and violence. At New York universities last week, almost half of those arrested by the NYPD were not university students.
I want our students to think for themselves, to test what they have heard, what they have read, what they think they believe, to read widely and to listen to people they think they disagree with. If academics at our university don’t encourage students to do that, these teachers need to find another job.
Living in a democracy means rights come with responsibilities. The American student, draped in a keffiyeh for cameras, who demanded food and water for protesters who had taken over a building at Columbia University clearly has not studied history. If you are going to be a revolutionary, remember to pack your lunch. We will not facilitate criminal behaviour by sending in Uber Eats.
Members of the Australian Palestinian community shout slogans at the Palestinian Protest Campsite at University of Sydney.
Members of the Australian Palestinian community shout slogans at the Palestinian Protest Campsite at University of Sydney.
While curing the disease of illiberalism infecting our universities will take time, we will start by treating the symptoms. We have spent too much time worrying about gendered language and other slight offences, and lost sight of what really matters.
As Sasse said, “We’re a university, not a daycare. We don’t coddle emotions, we wrestle with ideas.” As adults, you shouldn’t need written codes of conduct to govern your behaviour on campus. You must now weigh the costs of your decisions and own the consequences. We will defend your rights to free speech and free assembly – but if you cross the line, damage property, hijack buildings or take part in any other prohibited activities, you will be suspended. Those who incite violence will be reported to the police, immediately. We will not tolerate mob rule.
We say this to be clear with you. We mean it. We will hold you responsible for your actions.
We shouldn’t need a written code to explain that a university is committed to free speech and to academic freedom. Yet we do because that’s how far we have lost our way. Students of all backgrounds, cultures and religions should expect to hear things at university that may make them uncomfortable. We must equip students for the real world, where slogans and tent protests won’t get you very far. We need to teach students how to listen, reason, challenge and persuade. These skills will enrich them and the society they step into with their degrees and doctorates. Otherwise, what is the purpose of university?
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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