It’s late, and these quotes might not strike me the same way after I go to sleep and wake up, but right now they seem worth sharing.
Charlotte Johnson, assistant dean of students at the University of Michigan law school:
As a woman of color, I can attest to the saliency of race and its power as an experience shaper. Why should this country’s educational institutions, with missions to both educate our children and prepare them to lead, admit students under `race-neutral’ programs? In my experience, race is not a neutral concept.
So, an assistant dean at the Michigan Law School doesn’t know why admissions policies should be free of racial discrimination. Who was it who said this was one of the top law schools?
Mary Sue Coleman, president of the University of Michigan:
What’s at stake is the quality of our American higher education system. Our universities are widely perceived as the best in the world, and their diversity is one of their outstanding strengths….
There is no effective substitute for the consideration of race as one of many factors in our admissions process,” Coleman said. “Other methods do not allow us to recruit a diverse student body while maintaining our consistently high academic standards.
So, the “quality of American higher education” will be destroyed if institutions are forced to abandon “race as one of many factors” in the admissions process? What does that say about the “salience” (to use Dean Johnson’s term) of the other factors? Doesn’t it admit that “diversity” is just another word for race?
A teenager discussing her middle school and high school in Menlo Park, Calif.
The reason that racism does not seem to be a problem is because there is barely any racial diversity at either school.
For some reason that struck me as funny. Maybe it’s too late….
UPDATE – Here’s another one:
Mary Frances Berry, chairhuman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, commenting on the fact abandoning race preferences reduces the number of minorities at flagship schools:
That matters, because people get better opportunities when they graduate from flagship schools.
Perhaps. But then, they also get better opportunities when they have higher grades. Should grading be on a racial curve to insure that minorities get their fair share of the good ones?
Can someone please explain what academic achievement has to do with diversity? Does merit or intellectual curiosity somehow rub off? Have Japan, Finland or Iceland’s educational systems suffered from their lack of diversity? Exactly what are the benefits of diversity. I had the great good fortune to attend an males only school and we were free to concentrate on academic activites rather than being diverted by the other sex. Having seen the slackers in high schools today it seems the vast majority of them are concerned only with dating.