Bias in the air: Two footnotes

I want to add two footnotes to my talk at the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention last week. I posted the text of the talk here. The Federalist Society has posted the video of the panel on which I spoke here.

Footnote 1: I refer at the outset to “the ideology of diversity.” We are all familiar with it. As a wholly owned subsidiary of “multiculturalism,” these seem to me a few of the tenets at its core: (a) outcomes must be equal among racial and ethnic groups, except when they accrue to the advantage of a racial or ethnic “minority” (including women); (b) disparate outcomes among racial and ethnic groups represent some form of institutional bias to be rectified by government action; (c) all cultures are equal, except for that of the United States, which is eternally guilty of racism under (a) and (b) above; (d) the expression of views disagreeing with (a) through (c) must be suppressed or, if it cannot be suppressed, must be stigmatized as “racist.”

Footnote 2: In the text of my remarks I cite the astounding book Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended to Help, and Why Universities Won’t Admit It by Richard H. Sander and Stuart Taylor, Jr. The book came out to wide acclaim in October 2012. Amazon does not indicate that a paperback edition is forthcoming. You might want to pick up a copy of the book before it becomes a collector’s item.

Sander is a professor of law at UCLA. In the preface to the book Sander (Sander and Taylor contribute individual prefaces to the book) refers to “the culture of secrecy and double-talk” with which the subject of the book is enshrouded in academia.

Sander describes himself as a former community organizer. He became interested in the subject of affirmative action in law schools when he joined the UCLA Law School faculty.

Sander himself wrote chapters 4 and 5 of the book. Chapter 4 discusses Sander’s research on the effects of “affirmative action” (racial preferences) in law schools. Sander’s pioneering account of this research was originally published in the 2005 Stanford Law Review as “A systemic analysis of affirmative action in American law schools.”

Chapter 5 of the book is Sander’s extraordinary account of the lengths to which supporters of law school “affirmative action” went to suppress the publication of his law review article. It is worth the price of admission to the book. Why would the supporters of “affirmative action” seek to suppress the publication of Sander’s law review article? See footnote 1 supra, as they say.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses