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Schmidt: Universities Living ?A Diversity Lie?

Regular readers (and even irregular readers who?ve visited here more than a few times) know that I have a high regard for the work of Peter Schmidt, who covers affirmative action and other mind-numbing topics for the Chronicle of Higher Education (sorry for that endorsement, Peter; I know it?ll get you in trouble with most of your readers). Of course, all that means is that I feel the need to give him a hard time for only about half the things he writes. A few days ago, however, he had a must-read column in the Wall Street Journal, ?American Universities Are Living A Diversity Lie,? that passes all the severe DISCRIMINATIONS tests and emerges unscathed.

Schmidt begins:

Thirty years ago this past week, Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. condemned our nation's selective colleges and universities to live a lie. Writing the deciding opinion in the case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, he prompted these institutions to justify their use of racial preferences in admissions with a rationale most had never considered and still do not believe ? a desire to offer a better education to all students.

To this day, few colleges have even tried to establish that their race-conscious admissions policies yield broad educational benefits. The research is so fuzzy and methodologically weak that some strident proponents of affirmative action admit that social science is not on their side.

In reality, colleges profess a deep belief in the educational benefits of their affirmative-action policies mainly to save their necks. They know that, if the truth came out, courts could find them guilty of illegal discrimination against white and Asian Americans.

This is strong stuff indeed, and I wouldn?t be surprised if the Chronicle received heated demands to take Schmidt off the affirmative action beat. Thus maybe it will help if I backtrack a little and say even this fine article stubs its toe on the high hurdle that must be jumped to pass DISCRIMINATIONS muster entirely unscathed.

Most of Schmidt?s piece is devoted to pointing out the insincerity of and the lack of any substantial social science support for the mantra that pigmentary ?diversity? is essential to a good education. I think his argument is entirely persuasive, but I also don?t think it?s as important as he does. ?Fortunately for affirmative action advocates,? he writes,

the Center for Individual Rights, which coordinated the legal assault on race-conscious admissions, made a tactical decision not to seriously challenge such research ? out of a belief it could win on legal principle. When the Supreme Court waded back into the controversy, it reaffirmed Justice Powell's diversity rationale in a 2003 decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, involving the University of Michigan law school. The opinions revealed that the majority of justices had been swayed by a barrage of friend-of-the-court briefs spinning and exaggerating what the research said about the alleged educational benefits of diversity.

In my view, and in the Center for Individual Rights? view as well, constitutional rights should not rest on the ever-shifting sands of social science findings. Should racial segregation suddenly become constitutional again, for example, if new social evidence ?proved? that it helped learning? As I wrote here,

One of the few still-controversial aspects of the Brown decision was its reliance on the psychological evidence presented by Dr. Kenneth Clark in its conclusion that enforced racial segregation ?generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect the childrens? hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.?

The risk of this sort of reliance on social science is that judicial opinions that do so become hostage to the reputation of the studies they use, a reputation in the case of Dr. Clark?s doll studies that hasn?t fared very well. A good but far from unique example of this sort of criticism is Ed Whelan?s:

What if research a few years later showed that integrated schools increased black children?s ?feeling of inferiority?? Are we to suppose that the Supreme Court might have overturned the decision in Brown? If so, should we respect a methodology that yields results that are so flimsy? And, if (as seems surely the case) differing social-science data would never result in the overturning of Brown, doesn't that show that the purported reasoning is entirely makeshift?

In short, even if some blockbuster new study did demonstrate that white and Asian students received a significant educational boost from being exposed to a ?critical mass? of black and Hispanic students, that would not justify the racial discrimination against the excluded whites and Asians necessary to make room for the preferentially admitted minorities.

Full post as published by Discriminations on July 01, 2008 (boomark / email).