Listen to Thorne Dreyer‘s interview with Lamar Hankins on Rag Radio at 2 p.m., Friday, July 28, 2023, on KOOP 91.7 in Austin or stream at KOOP.org.
Six members of the Supreme Court clearly demonstrated their lack of understanding of the purposes of higher education in their recent decision about affirmative action in colleges and universities, specifically at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. (See Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, two cases decided together.)
While it is shameful that Harvard, the intellectual prototype for university education, discriminated against Jews, African-Americans, and now Asians (an offensively broad and unspecific category) in admission, doing nothing about such discrimination should not be acceptable to anyone. Yet the Supreme Court majority leaves little room for remedies. Indeed, the Court majority has no interest in such matters, ignoring that the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted to end discrimination against slaves and their progeny by prohibiting the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law” and from denying anyone within a state equal protection under the law
Many universities have followed practices that create the opposite of fairness and equality.
But many universities have followed practices that create the opposite of fairness and equality. So long as universities and other institutions practice legacy admissions, we will have discrimination in favor of whites. So long as athletic skill is placed above academic achievement in awarding admission to a university, the lie of academic excellence will be exposed. Further, there are preferences for the children of high-dollar donors and faculty. Perhaps, as some have suggested, diversity can be achieved by using the demographic data of income, family wealth, and neighborhood impoverishment, along with academic competence. If so, this remedy has yet to be demonstrated.
