Heather Mac Donald has an article up at The New Criterion about racial preferences in college admissions, with particular attention to a case making its way to the Supreme Court that cites Harvard’s discrimination against Asians. Ms. Mac Donald argues that current SCOTUS jurisprudence on racial preferences is an incoherent mess, and that when the Court takes up this case it should simply chuck out its precedents and start over.
The article begins:
On September 30, a federal district court judge in Boston upheld Harvard’s use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions against the challenge that they discriminate against Asian-Americans. The case — Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College — will likely be appealed to the Supreme Court, the fifth time since 1978 that the Court has been asked to rule on racial admissions preferences. The Court should accept the appeal and, for the sake of its own institutional integrity, throw out its entire jurisprudence regarding college admissions. Pro-preference jurisprudence is an abomination, filled with patent fictions, logical contradictions, and vast gusts of rhetorical vapidity that should make any self-respecting jurist weep with despair. Its only purpose has been to paper over the vast academic skills gap between black students, on the one hand, and white and Asian students, on the other. In so doing, court doctrine has perpetuated the very problems it purports to solve.
You should read the whole thing, here. As usual, Ms. Mac Donald’s analysis is comprehensive, richly supported by data, and witheringly critical of the vaporous idealism, missionary zeal, and patronizing pieties of our prevailing secular religion.
One Comment
The Kakistocracy had an excellent article about this case titled “Diversity’s Dilemma”, but WordPress deleted it and I can’t find a snapshot anywhere.
I only remember fragments like, “In a Federal courtroom, the only venue where policy questions are now decided…”