Surprise! (Not): AA Bias in the New York Times

In an otherwise interesting New York Times article discussing how the admissions policies at all of the government service academies “appear to contradict their commander-in-chief” because those policies are not race-neutral, Adam Clymer misstates what the administration actually said in the briefs it filed in the Michigan cases.

Clymer claims that although

the briefs said diversity in higher education was important, they suggested only one specific “race-neutral” way to achieve it, a system of admitting a specific percentage of students from every high school in a state that would not be applicable to national institutions like the academies.

Apparently Clymer didn’t actually read the administration briefs, for they actually suggested a number of race-neutral alternatives. On pp. 9-10 of the Grutter (law school) brief, for example, the administration stated:

Ensuring that public institutions, especially educational institutions, are open and accessible to a broad and diverse array of individuals, including individuals or all races and ethnicities, is an important and entirely legitimate government objective. [10] Measures that ensure diversity, accessibility and opportunity are important components of government’s responsibility to its citizens.

Nothing in the Constitution prevents public universities from achieving these laudable goals because there are a variety of race-neutral alternatives available to achieve the important goals of openness, educational diversity and ensuring that all students of all races have meaningful access to institutions of higher learning. For example, universities may adopt admissions policies that seek to promote experiential, geographical, political or economic diversity; modify or discard facially neutral admissions criteria that tend to skew admissions results in a way that denies minorities meaningful access to public institutions; and open educational instiutions to the best students from throughout State or Nation. (Emphasis added).

The top X% plans of Texas, California, and Florida, in short, were only one of several alternatives mentioned.

I find it curious that the New York Times, nor anyone else, has paid any attention to the administration’s implicitly pointing out here that merit is not a Constitutional imperative. The Constitution does not compel the University of Michigan to require the SAT, the LSAT, high grades, or any other measures that tend to diminish the number of minorities. The fact that Michigan obviously places a high value on merit as traditionally defined does not give it a license to engage in racial discrimination in order to preserve some of it.