5 ms·

Lack of diversity would damage their brand, so how can they legally promote diversity? Well they could promote poor students- affirmative action for lower clas

Lack of diversity would damage their brand, so how can they legally promote diversity? Well they could promote poor students- affirmative action for lower classes. I think allowing legacy while also promoting lower class students is OK. The lower class students benefit from the money of legacy student parents as well as the contact with the well connected legacy students themselves. I could imagine that next there would be a supreme court case against this. A conservative court might then ban consideration of class. But then we are left with a Harvard that really is a just a club for rich kids. Smart kids who are not rich could try to fight against legacy promotion, but I doubt a conservative court would do anything about it.

bee_rider 3y ago
Unfortunately in general, but fortunately in this one particular very specific case race is very correlated to lots of measurable things in America. So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail.
- gettodachoppa 3y ago
  >So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The diversity Harvard wants is the golden calf of American liberals: black Americans. Diversity is almost always code for black people. No other race seems to deserve any attention. See how campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite were propagandized as discrimination against blacks even though the percentage of black actors winning Oscars was nearly identical to their percentage of the population, i.e. Oscars were perfect representational of black people, meanwhile every other race was greatly under-represented. A race-blind policy that factors in class/income will result in more poor asian students dominating placement, likely at the expense of black students. We already know from the discrimination lawsuits how much contempt Harvard has for asian Americans, I assure you Harvard don't want this kind of diversity.
- PathOfEclipse 3y ago
  > The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail. Conservatives aren't stupid enough to think they can and should solve all problems via judicial fiat, which is about as divisive, autocratic, and undemocratic as it gets. But, conservatives also know that there's been decades of terrible jurisprudence to undo, many of it done by activist judges. In particular, yesterday's ruling on affirmative action undid California Board of Regents Versus Bakki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C...). While the ruling actually declared that racial quotas violated the equal protection clause of the constitution, it simultaneously opened a massive back door to enable effective racial quotas in the name of "diversity". All universities had to do was prove a "compelling interest" in having diversity and they could continue factoring race into the admissions process. This ruling, among other things, inspired the "critical mass" argument, stating that to get the diversity benefit you have to have enough of each racial group: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151579503.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151579503.pdf What's the difference between requiring a critical mass and having racial quotes? Well, not much in practice! In another bit of terrible jurisprudence, the court upheld the critical mass argument as late as 2015: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/14-981 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/14-981 Unfortunately, our courts have made a lot of bad rulings in the past, and it's far past time they got undone or reworked.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    What do you think the long-term trajectory is? In the absence of judicial activism I guess schools will be able to set their admissions criteria to whatever they want (other than some protections for individuals in protected classes).
PathOfEclipse 3y ago
> I think allowing legacy while also promoting lower class students is OK. Why are you thinking in terms of class? Class-based conflict was the center of original Marxism. Then the 20th century Marxists, realizing that it wasn't working because capitalism was actually good for people, moved on to identity politics (neo-Marxism), with which they've had far greater success in disrupting and tearing down our society. And, now that there is finally some institutional pushback against neo-Marxism, you want to go back to classic Marxism? I think your worldview needs to be updated to not be centered around group-based dynamics and politics. Individual meritocracy is the least corrupt system we've come up with to determine access to opportunity. How about we gate access to Harvard based on things like ability, and focus instead on making more high quality schools? This would increase the supply of quality education, which would actually make the world a more equitable place! It's amazing how many "equity"-based policies exist that actually make the world a less fair, less equitable place! Part of the reason the above is so difficult is specifically because the institutional elite of our day want a class-based society. They want to be part of an emerging new nobility class, and they like having certain filters and gates like ivy league schools. This is what Marxism has always devolved into, really. Harvard loses it's power when we stop treating it as so special, and that goes hand in hand with fighting against those in power today who want to build a an ever-wider moat around their power.
- jhallenworld 3y ago
  Financially advantageous students enjoy huge benefits. Enough so that they end up in a self-sustaining insular group of their own- an upper class if you will. Do you really want this? I understand what you are saying about meritocracy, and for sure Marxists went too far: it's fascinating looking at the what the early Soviet Union attempted: watch the Asianometry episode where they tried to ban money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWqhsh848E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWqhsh848E So I think the answer is of course a balance. College admissions should mostly be a straight meritocracy based on grades and high school achievement. But some help for disadvantaged classes, plus some random chance, plus some legacy for the money and contacts it brings. Pure meritocracy has problems: an example of this is police departments. Do you really want an all-white police force patrolling all black neighborhoods, even if all of the white applicants have better scores than all of the black applicants? Also you ignore discrimination. Decades of redlining and other similar policies have created many of today's problems.

bee_rider 3y ago

Unfortunately in general, but fortunately in this one particular very specific case race is very correlated to lots of measurable things in America. So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail.

gettodachoppa 3y ago
>So, I think colleges will easily succeed in promoting diversity while having ostensibly race-blind admissions policies. The diversity Harvard wants is the golden calf of American liberals: black Americans. Diversity is almost always code for black people. No other race seems to deserve any attention. See how campaigns like #OscarsSoWhite were propagandized as discrimination against blacks even though the percentage of black actors winning Oscars was nearly identical to their percentage of the population, i.e. Oscars were perfect representational of black people, meanwhile every other race was greatly under-represented. A race-blind policy that factors in class/income will result in more poor asian students dominating placement, likely at the expense of black students. We already know from the discrimination lawsuits how much contempt Harvard has for asian Americans, I assure you Harvard don't want this kind of diversity.
PathOfEclipse 3y ago
> The Supreme Court can I guess try to go case-by-case banning metrics. This stupid whack-a-mole game will look pathetic on their part and burn up whatever tiny bit of institutional legitimacy they have left, but at least they’ll probably fail. Conservatives aren't stupid enough to think they can and should solve all problems via judicial fiat, which is about as divisive, autocratic, and undemocratic as it gets. But, conservatives also know that there's been decades of terrible jurisprudence to undo, many of it done by activist judges. In particular, yesterday's ruling on affirmative action undid California Board of Regents Versus Bakki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_California_v._Bakke https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C...). While the ruling actually declared that racial quotas violated the equal protection clause of the constitution, it simultaneously opened a massive back door to enable effective racial quotas in the name of "diversity". All universities had to do was prove a "compelling interest" in having diversity and they could continue factoring race into the admissions process. This ruling, among other things, inspired the "critical mass" argument, stating that to get the diversity benefit you have to have enough of each racial group: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151579503.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151579503.pdf What's the difference between requiring a critical mass and having racial quotes? Well, not much in practice! In another bit of terrible jurisprudence, the court upheld the critical mass argument as late as 2015: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/14-981 https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/14-981 Unfortunately, our courts have made a lot of bad rulings in the past, and it's far past time they got undone or reworked.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  What do you think the long-term trajectory is? In the absence of judicial activism I guess schools will be able to set their admissions criteria to whatever they want (other than some protections for individuals in protected classes).

PathOfEclipse 3y ago

> I think allowing legacy while also promoting lower class students is OK. Why are you thinking in terms of class? Class-based conflict was the center of original Marxism. Then the 20th century Marxists, realizing that it wasn't working because capitalism was actually good for people, moved on to identity politics (neo-Marxism), with which they've had far greater success in disrupting and tearing down our society. And, now that there is finally some institutional pushback against neo-Marxism, you want to go back to classic Marxism? I think your worldview needs to be updated to not be centered around group-based dynamics and politics. Individual meritocracy is the least corrupt system we've come up with to determine access to opportunity. How about we gate access to Harvard based on things like ability, and focus instead on making more high quality schools? This would increase the supply of quality education, which would actually make the world a more equitable place! It's amazing how many "equity"-based policies exist that actually make the world a less fair, less equitable place! Part of the reason the above is so difficult is specifically because the institutional elite of our day want a class-based society. They want to be part of an emerging new nobility class, and they like having certain filters and gates like ivy league schools. This is what Marxism has always devolved into, really. Harvard loses it's power when we stop treating it as so special, and that goes hand in hand with fighting against those in power today who want to build a an ever-wider moat around their power.

jhallenworld 3y ago
Financially advantageous students enjoy huge benefits. Enough so that they end up in a self-sustaining insular group of their own- an upper class if you will. Do you really want this? I understand what you are saying about meritocracy, and for sure Marxists went too far: it's fascinating looking at the what the early Soviet Union attempted: watch the Asianometry episode where they tried to ban money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWqhsh848E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWWqhsh848E So I think the answer is of course a balance. College admissions should mostly be a straight meritocracy based on grades and high school achievement. But some help for disadvantaged classes, plus some random chance, plus some legacy for the money and contacts it brings. Pure meritocracy has problems: an example of this is police departments. Do you really want an all-white police force patrolling all black neighborhoods, even if all of the white applicants have better scores than all of the black applicants? Also you ignore discrimination. Decades of redlining and other similar policies have created many of today's problems.