Diversity and Merit

The current official justification for "affirmative action"--that is, racial discrimination--in university admissions in the US is that it is needed in order to create "diversity." "Diversity" in turn is held to be an important learning goal. There is no justification in terms of righting past wrongs--first, such past wrongs were done to other people, not the ones now advantaged; and second, such programs do not discriminate between more recent immigrants, whose ancestors were never discriminated against and/or whose ancestors never discriminated, and those whose ancestors genuinely were or did. There is no justification in terms of ending poverty or preventing the development of an elite class: studies show that, on balance, racial preferences hurt the poor and help the rich, systematically excluding poor whites while mostly aiding upper-class minorities. If income level were the criterion instead of race, black participation in the best colleges would fall from 8 to 4 percent, Hispanic from 8 to 6.

But at least there's "diversity." Or is there? Granted that "diversity" in itself is a good thing--something that could easily be debated--a study by Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Radford, calculating the effects of "affirmative action" at eight elite US colleges, suggests that the current practices actually reduce ethnic diversity at said campuses. (Robert VerBruggen, "Racial Preferences by the Numbers," National Review Online, November 30, 2009).

This is not a conclusion of the study; and this fact itself makes the data presented seem more reliable. There is no axe honing here. But it is clear in the figures. Stay with me here.

If racial preferences were eliminated at the private colleges studied, Espenshade and Radford calculate that the number of "white" students would not go up--it would go down. "Whites" would drop from 60 to 53 percent of the student body at the most prestigious colleges. So would the number of "black" students: from 8 to 3 percent. "Hispanics" would drop from 8 to 5 percent. But "Asians" would jump from 24 to 39 percent.

Look at those numbers, and one fact is clear: the major effect of current racial preferences is not to help blacks or Hispanics--the numbers there are trivial--but to harm Asians. These quotas, whatever the official justification, work exactly like the earlier quotas against Jews.

Taking "whites" as the mainstream, the raw "diversity" without racial preferences is seven percent greater--the difference between 40 percent and 47 percent "other." But that is only a partial picture: for the categories traditionally used are themselves fairly arbitrary. In America, there is a great deal more cultural diversity within the category "Asian" than within "black." With all due respect, as Martin Luther King insisted, most American blacks differ from most American whites in little more than skin colour. They speak the same language, belong to the same religion, eat the same foods, play the same sports, listen to the same music, and watch the same TV.

But "Asians" are fairly likely to be fresh-off-the-airplane immigrants, or first or second-generation immigrants, with genuinely different attitudes and life experiences. Different religions, different mother tongues, different foods, different sports, different cultures. And within this group is a-near-infinity of further differences: an "Asian" might be Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, Sri Lankan, Bengali, Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Pakistani, Iranian, Central Asian, Burmese, Arabian; a wide variety of very different countries and cultures, covering half the world's population and three of the four traditional world civilizations.

Really, trust me, guys: all foreigners are not the same.

That's what we are blocking out with racial preferences. Given their international reputation, if America's most exclusive colleges stayed strictly with merit, they would draw the best and the brightest from the entire world, and be about as diverse. By cheapening their degrees with racial preferences, they prevent this.

The same is true for less-well-known institutions: if you want real diversity, the surest path is to concentrate on merit and merit alone as your entrance criterion.

Fox University

Does Fox News (of all places) have lessons for higher education?

Lecturing is out of vogue among educationists. The rule I hear is that no "chalk and talk" (as it is disparagingly called) should ever last more than twenty minutes, or it outlasts everyone's patience attention span.

This seems wrong. Firstly, the lecture has been standard educational practice in just about every culture for the past two or three thousand years; it seems unlikely that all the smartest of our ancestors could have been so wrong. Secondly, this surely has to vary with the skill of the lecturer--some people are a lot more interesting to listen to than others. Thirdly, Glenn Beck.

Like him or not, Beck currently has the highest rating on American all-news TV. And what he usually does is nothing but a good old fashioned traditional lecture, generally about history or civics, complete with chalk and blackboard--and yes, also with some nice audiovisuals, just as are currently available to anyone in any classroom with a computer and projector.

Beck is as aware of this as anyone--he's recently launched "Beck University," where avid viewers can get more of the same, from other lecturers.

Imagine that--attending university lectures not just as a purely profit-making venture, sans state subsidies, but a media sensation. Try that with your own undergraduates.

Perhaps Beck overdramatizes; perhaps he employs a lot of rhetorical tricks. But so should any good lecturer. There is no virtue in being dry.

Ironically, Beck himself claims to suffer from attention deficit disorder. That may have been his best teacher.

In an important way, this is a return to the origins of the university itself. In ancient Athens, teachers won their students by lecturing in the public square--just as Beck is doing. In the Medieval university, public lectures were still public entertainment, and professors built their reputations on how many listeners they could draw.

There was one other component to the Medieval university: disputation. Public debates were commonly held, widely subscribed, and holding forth competently in one was the test for graduation. This tradition remained important into the nineteenth century, in, for example, the Oxford Union.

Interestingly enough, this too is something Fox News has revived: having representatives for both points of view on camera at once, presenting point and rebuttal live. And this too audiences clearly still love: it is Bill O'Reilly's standard formula, and he ranks number two in ratings for all of American all-news TV.

So, put aside all political considerations: I propose Fox News as a model for making university good fun, and for forcing all academic ideas to be tested dirctly in the crucible of the marketplace. It would end the odd and ever-growing separation between the gown and the town, which ill-serves both. And the Internet, above all, makes it possible.

All lecturers should and probably soon will attract students by posting sample lectures online for free. The best will prosper.

Students will choose courses lecturer by lecturer, rather than signing up for one college and taking what they get. They will then combine credits as they go to achieve a certification.

Live debates among major figures in each field, with live questions from the audience, could and should be held regularly; students and the interested public could track the developments without the superimposition of any distorting lens.

True, all this is only half of the equation, or less: there is no interactivity in any of it. True learning is not just a spectator sport. But for dealing with the spectator part, all this seems pretty ideal. And the Internet's ability to generate interactivity and constructivism, the other part, is already pretty well understood.

Trinity Western's Statement of Faith

As far as I know, the blacklisting of Trinity Western University is still on. The Canadian Association of University Teachers became alarmed last fall about the private Christian campus' longstanding requirement for a statement of faith from all professors, running more or less along the lines of the Apostles' Creed. This, says CAUT, is a violation of academic freedom.

Maybe so; it certainly does restrict faculty membership to those with specific beliefs. On the other hand, it is hard to see how a university could ensure a "Christian" character without something like this. Can't universities differentiate themselves in such ways? What about a college that, as my own does, advertises a "student-centred approach" in the classroom? Does it have no right to ask faculty to be, in fact, "student-centred"? What about any college that has any kind of mission statement?

Prohibiting such statements would, firstly, force a homogeneity on higher education which would kill diversity--a stated goal of higher education currently in the US. It would also take all educational choices out of the hands of students, paying parents, taxpayers, or the public, and pool them entirely in the hands of the priesthood of university professors. This seems a poor choice for a democracy.

In fact, the CAUT's claims seem to have no legal merit. So far as I know, Canada has no statute law on academic freedom; hence, the authority becomes other major English-speaking jurisdictions: Britain and the US. In the US, the precise terms of academic freedom are set out in an agreement between professors and institutions, the "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure." This document expressly permits "limitations of academic freedom because of religious or other aims," so long as they are "clearly stated in writing at the time of the appointment." Trinity Western is in clear compliance. In Britain, academic freedom is understood to reside with the institution, not the individual professor. Again, Trinity Western is in clear compliance--and, in fact, CAUT is in violation of its academic freedom.

It is also hard to see, as a practical matter, how one can get or give an education without some agreement on what education, and education's purpose, is. You can't take a trip without going somewhere. There has to be _some_ shared core of values; it is only a question of what it is, and whether all colleges and universities should or must have the same values, or whether they can or should differ from institution to institution.

That, and the fact that we should be aware, honest, and up-front about our values, as Trinity Western is, and should give other views a fair hearing.

Just this, CAUT itself apparently does not do. For there are other "faith statements" floating around that apparently do not trouble the CAUT. The following example is from a US campus--but, given the overall political climate in Canada, and our generally lesser protections for free speech, there are surely worse Canadian examples to be found. At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Diversity [sic] asks search committees to ask all faculty applicants questions like the following:

"How have you demonstrated your commitment to women?"

"Which of your achievements in the area of equity for women gives you the most satisfaction?"

"How would you demonstrate your concern for equity for women if you were hired?"

"In your opinion, what are the three major problems for women on your campus?"

"How are general issues in higher education related to women's issues? What is the link?"

And so on, for something like a page.

The point of these questions, the document explains, is to determine "if a candidate is aware of and responsive to minority and women's issues.... When prospective employees are asked 'are you concerned about and supportive of these issues?' they will invariably give an affirmative reply. Unfortunately, that gives little indication of their level of concern or commitment. ... These questions will, therefore, be useful in drawing out the candidate's opinions rather than the 'correct answer.'"

In other words, this goes far beyond requiring a statement of faith--and well into inquisition.

My source for this document is "Want to Teach? Then Tell Us Your Politics," at Minding the Campus (www.mindingthecampus.com).

There's lots more where this came from, though. Consider the University of Minnesota, which requires all graduating Education majors--and hence, all faculty-- must be able to "discuss their own histories and current thinking drawing on notions of white privilege, hegemonic masculinity, hetero-normativity, and internalized oppression." (Foxnews.com, December 10, 2009).

And consider this: unlike Trinity Western, these are public universities, funded with tax dollars, not just by those who agree with the opinions required.

CAUT, are you listening? Where are your principles now? Can we have an investigation into such hiring practices, please?