Affirmative action
February 22, 2015 — Steven Hayward
If you break into admission statistics to elite colleges and universities you discover a pattern of “disparate impact” (as the civil rights term of art goes) against Asians. It appears Asians are being actively discriminated against just as Jews were for decades. The New York Times reported in November: To get into the top schools, they need SAT scores that are about 140 points higher than those of their white
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July 14, 2014 — Scott Johnson
When I set out writing about Philip Hamburger’s Is Administrative Law Unlawful?, I did so for two reasons. First, it’s the most important book I have read in a long time. Second, it’s a forbidding work of legal history that makes few concessions to the general reader. It isn’t easy reading and I thought it was at risk of being widely ignored. I do think the book was at risk
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April 7, 2014 — Steven Hayward
In addition to saluting Gail Heriot here yesterday, we shouldn’t let today get by without taking note of another civil rights hero of our time, Edward Blum. Edward is profiled today in the New York Times. Edward is chiefly responsible for bringing the two successful Supreme Court challenges to the Voting Rights Act last year, and he also helped bring up the Fisher case that curtailed race-conscious admissions in Texas
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March 22, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Preparing to speak at the Federalist Society National Lawyers Convention this past fall, I read 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
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June 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A few months ago I anticipated the somewhat disappointing result produced by the Supreme Court in the Fisher case addressing the issue of “affirmative action.” I thought pessimism was warranted and that the pessimistic view has been vindicated, although that isn’t entirely clear. In his column this morning George Will capably elaborates on the damage the Court has preserved. I’m taking the liberty of reiterating my own observations on the
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April 28, 2013 — Steven Hayward
As we noted here a few weeks ago, The Economist has gone off the reservation on climate change, and in the current issue it has done so again on the issue of affirmation action and race-conscious policy. The issue is featured on the cover, which means it is the subject of the first “leader” (house editorial), “Time to Scrap Affirmative Action,” as well as the focus of a long feature
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February 25, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Politics, it has been said for a while now, is “show business for ugly people.” (The line is said to have originated with either Paul Begala, or Texas political consultant Bill Miller, in a 1991 Dallas Morning News article.) Actually, the ugly part is less and less true; it is slowly becoming a requirement in politics as in Hollywood that you be good looking to succeed. With the appearance at
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December 4, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We continue our Christmas extravaganza previewing the Fall issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here and get immediate access to the issue online). To assess an extraordinary new book on affirmative action in higher education, the editors have called on the great Thomas Sowell. Sowell introduces the subject with a paragraph that could be chiseled in stone: Anyone who follows public policy issues can easily think of policies
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November 4, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The principle of equal treatment without regard to race is one that is close to my heart. Accordingly, one of my favorite books on a legal subject is Andrew Kull’s The Color-Blind Constitution. (I learned of the book at the time of its publication through Judge Alex Kosinski’s 1993 New Republic review/essay.) It is a book that is by turns inspiring and maddening. I recommend it without reservation to readers
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May 9, 2012 — Steven Hayward
By now the Chronicle of Higher Education’s craven capitulation in re: the matter of Naomi Schaffer Riley’s criticism of black studies is widely known, and needs little additional commentary here. But since the subject of identity scholarship is briefly in the news again—where the mongers of identity politics don’t want it to be, except when they do—we might as well include some excerpts from one notable entry in the field:
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March 3, 2012 — Scott Johnson
It’s hard to see stupidity…when you’re liberal. That was my take on the purported Duluth anti-racism campaign covered in the Star Tribune last month. We believe in treating people equally without regard to race. Does any one of the white liberals sponsoring the campaign including the Mayor of Duluth believe in equal treatment without regard to race? Does any one of them oppose racial preferences in educational institutions, public or
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