How Boston Colleges Responded to the Death of Affirmative Action
As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurring opinion, “Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism.”
Gone are the days of too-white-to-win! Last week, SCOTUS declared that Asians, Caucasians, and members of every other race under the sun can no longer be discriminated against in college admissions.
You would think the higher-ed social justice warriors would celebrate this major victory for American equality. Think again. They’re punching the air in lamentation.
Affirmative action—a student’s acceptance to an elite institution because he looked a certain way—used to be kept hush-hush, at least for the first thirty-or-so years of the 1978 Bakke judicial precedent. Most colleges kept up the appearance that every student merited his place there.
In the past decade or so, the meritocracy facade faded. It was replaced with overt, Marxist ideology that a once-oppressed class is deserving strictly because he (or in this case, his ancestors) were once oppressed.
But as Justice Clarence Thomas noted in his concurring opinion, “Racialism simply cannot be undone by different or more racialism.”
Exactly. Two wrongs don’t make a right. The affirmative action system promises a never-ending cycle of racial retribution and pent-up vengeance from the current unpreferred classes. Plus, there is no Constitutional basis for it whatsoever.
Boston’s best and brightest have not grasped this. Since Friday’s SCOTUS decision, the elite academic institutions in what was once a Type A city have synchronously prostrated themselves before radical critical race ideology in a series of peculiar—not to mention offensive—statements.
HARVARD UNIVERSITY
Harvard University has not coped well with its devastating loss to Students for Fair Admissions, Inc.
University president-elect (who was quickly installed as president one day after the decision) Claudine Gay posted a video to Twitter following the decision. She claims that while the university plans to comply with the law, Harvard’s race-based value system will remain the same.
Of course, a race-based value system is nothing new for Harvard, having excluded black students for 200 years of operations and barring Jews from attendance in the 1920s (as Justice Thomas noted).
BOSTON UNIVERSITY LAW
An email put forth by Boston University Law’s student government went viral this week after Fox News Digital found the institution was advertising its therapy offerings for any post-decision blues.
AOC’s sheepskin already told us everything we needed to known about BU’s undergraduate economic major, and last week’s letter will make you feel similarly about the Terriers’ Juris Doctor program.
“[The assenting judges] went so far as to say that the race-based admission system uses race as a negative and operates it as a stereotype. They may couch their opinion in legal jargon, but we all know what this opinion aims to do: advocate for a ‘colorblind’ admission process.”
Boston University Law Student Government Association’s Letter to Students
Justice Clarence Thomas’ concurring opinion, which explicitly states the term “colorblind” 21 times, is not “couching” any sneaky, secret motives.
Colorblindness, unity despite diversity, was the end goal of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Civil Rights movement—you know, that whole “I have a dream” thing.
At the bottom of the message, BU Law reminds students of its therapy offerings. In fact, a study date with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would more likely benefit these future lawyers over a chaise-lounge feelings session.
MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Classic! The overachievers at MIT released the school’s opinion three weeks in advance of the Court’s decision. President Sally Kornbluth’s June 7 letter forewarns students that, if equality is to be promised to all, some programs at the school will face “new constraints.”
BOSTON COLLEGE
Boston College may have been born because of Harvard’s discrimination against Irish Catholics, but its gritty, avant-garde heritage is on life support. My dear alma mater has, too, succumbed to the idea that social obstacles cannot be overcome and that your tangible circumstance equals the sum of your identity.
While it appears all hope is lost for the Eagles, there’s a pretty good story about a Hebrew carpenter who overcomes Roman oppression and who, turns out, is more than just a Hebrew carpenter. Maybe BC will get back on track after glancing it over. Until then, alumni will continue to receive emails noting how “deeply disappointing” true equality is.
NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY
Northeastern University regularly experiences backlash for its ties to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), so the claims from school president Joseph Aoun that fostering “belonging” and accepting “every possible background” are “core values of the institution might not sit well with the blue-haired engineers.
EMERSON COLLEGE
At first, I expected the response from ultra-liberal Emerson College president Jay M. Bernhardt to be saturated with the usual mantras of the Woke crowd.
Instead, the letter was quite tame with only brief discussion of inclusivity and “compelling interest.” Of course, Emerson students, alumni, even sane onlookers know where the theater major haven stands on these issues. No reminder is necessary.
However, they promise to “explore every legally permissible option” to continue to discriminate based on race.
It won’t be difficult for universities to continue to admit their preferred categories by employing tried-and-true methods like zip code discrimination—sometimes used to determine how much aid a prospective student will need. Or they can have even more essays with euphemisms about “experience.”
There’s a common thread throughout the whiny student emails and letters of horror from university presidents. All of them —whether explicitly, like MIT, or implicitly, like Northeastern—predict less racial diversity if they are only to accept those who earned, through hard work a slot at the school.
How is this not offensive?
Yes, the letters water down what was once a prized diploma. Yes, they weaken the integrity of the acceptance process and make you second-guess if all those admissions office employees are really necessary. (Hint: they’re not).
But those issues do not compare to the harm these presidents and provosts have caused for current and future generations of students “of color” who didn’t rely on race-based admissions. These tone-deaf letters insinuate that those kids could never do it on their own. How utterly demeaning!
I predict these schools will be embarrassed someday by their “soft bigotry of low expectations”—especially the claim that a non-white, non-Asian senior in high school cannot earn admission to a prestigious institution.
I also predict that the moment the narrative changes—when most Americans realize the systemic racism entrenched in affirmative action—Harvard et. al. will try to backtrack statements and hide today’s stance, just like how they never discuss what they did to Jewish applicants a century ago.
And if that’s the case, we’ve got the receipts.
