Shooting The Messenger

According to an article in today’s Chronicle of Higher Education,

President Bush’s nominee to become the Education Department’s statistics-gathering chief faces a likely confirmation battle in the U.S. Senate, partly as a result of his past studies criticizing multiculturalism on campuses and accusing colleges of discriminating against white students.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a Massachusetts Democrat, registered opposition to the nomination of Robert Lerner as commissioner of education statistics on Wednesday, in response to concerns raised about Mr. Lerner by minority-advocacy groups and the American Educational Research Association.

Mr. Lerner, a University of Chicago Ph.D. in Sociology who has written or co-authored over 100 scholarly books and articles, is opposed primarily because he and his wife, Althea Nagai,

have produced 15 reports on race-conscious admissions policies, covering a total of 56 colleges, since 1996. Their reports have accused about two-thirds of the institutions studied of preferring black or Hispanic applicants over white or Asian ones with better grades and standardized-test scores.

The reviewed institutions, of course, disagree, claiming that these reports are “misleading and simplistic in their reliance solely on grades and test scores to compare applicants.”

It is understandable why the studied universities, Sen. Kennedy, and civil rights advocacy groups would be upset at the findings of these studies. As I reported here about a Lerner/Nagai 2002 study of the University of Virginia, they found that “the relative odds of admission of a black over a white applicant for UVa, controlling for other factors, was almost 650 to 1 in 1998 and 730 to 1 in 1999 (the highest in any CEO study).” Continuing to quote from my earlier post:

According to an earlier CEO study [by Lerner/Nagai], the story of undergraduate admissions at UVa is similar. Summarizing the study in a Wall Street Journal OpEd (2/22/2001), Linda Chavez noted:

The relative odds ratio favoring black over white students with the same grades and test scores at North Carolina State, for example, was 177 to 1; at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the odds ratio was 174 to 1; and at the University of Virginia, it was 111 to 1. To put this in some perspective, the relative odds that a smoker compared to a non-smoker will develop lung cancer are 14 to 1. (This study can also be found on CEO’s web site.)

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, a coalition of 180 groups who believe civil rights require preferences, wrote to Sen. Kennedy (who else?) expressing their “deep concern” over the fact that Dr. Lerner “has been an enthusiastic activist for ideological causes.” I suppose they are right in regarding a principled committment to non-discriminatory equal opportunity as an “ideological cause,” but it is sad that such an ideology has become so suspect among groups who see themselves as defending civil rights.

In any event the opposition of Sen. Kennedy, he LCCR, et. al. to anyone who capably points out the results of “diversity” admissions policies is to be expected. What is somewhat surprising is the opposition from top officials of the American Educational Research Association, who wrote:

“Our staff members have reviewed much of Dr. Lerner’s writing and have found it to be sound methodologically,” the association’s letter said. “However, in a number of works, he has drawn strong ideological conclusions where other inferences are as plausible from the same data.” While acknowledging that Mr. Lerner can be objective, the letter said “it is important to clarify Dr. Lerner’s perspectives on the uses of statistical data” by the national center, to ensure that he will embrace neutrality in his new role.

In other words, Dr. Lerner’s work is sound methodologically, and he has drawn plausible conclusions from it. But since his data can support other plausible conclusions as well, he doesn’t deserve the Association’s support.

What a curious, even weird, standard to apply to a scholarly researcher being considered for a federal position that involves gathering and analyzing statistics.