September 2011
The campus at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison erupted this week after the release of two studies documenting
the heavy use of race in deciding which students to admit to the undergraduate
and law schools. The evidence of discrimination is undeniable, and the reaction
by critics was undeniably dishonest and thuggish.
The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), which I
founded in 1995 to expose and challenge misguided race-based public policies,
conducted the studies based on an analysis of the university’s own admissions
data. But the university was none too keen on releasing the data, which CEO
obtained through filing Freedom of Information Act requests only after a
successful legal challenge went all the way to the state supreme court.
It’s no wonder the university wanted to keep the
information secret. The studies show that a black or Hispanic undergraduate
applicant was more than 500 times likelier to be admitted to Wisconsin-Madison
than a similarly qualified white or Asian applicant. The odds ratio favoring
black law school applicants over similarly qualified white applicants was 61 to
1.
The median SAT scores of black undergraduates
who were admitted were 150 points lower than whites or Asians, while the median
Hispanic scores were roughly 100 points lower. And median high school rankings
for both blacks and Hispanics were also lower than for either whites or
Asians.
CEO has published studies of racial double
standards in admissions at scores of public colleges and universities across the
country with similar findings, but none has caused such a violent
reaction.
Instead of addressing the findings of the study,
the university’s vice provost for diversity, Damon A. Williams, dishonestly told
students that "CEO has one mission and one mission only: dismantle the gains
that were achieved by the civil rights movement." In fact, CEO’s only mission is
to promote color-blind equal opportunity so that, in Martin Luther King’s
vision, no one will be judged by the color of his or her skin.
Egged on by inflammatory comments by university
officials, student groups organized a flashmob via a Facebook page that was
filled with propaganda and outright lies about CEO wanting to dismantle their
student groups. More than a hundred angry students stormed the press conference
at the Doubletree Hotel in Madison, where CEO president Roger Clegg was
releasing the study.
The hotel management described what took place
in a press statement afterward: "Unfortunately, when escorting meeting attendees
out of the hotel through a private entrance, staff were then rushed by a mob of
protestors, throwing employees to the ground. The mob became increasingly
physically violent when forcing themselves into the meeting room where the press
conference had already ended, filling it over fire-code capacity. Madison police
arrived on the scene after the protestors had stormed the hotel."
But the outrageous behavior didn’t end there —
and it wasn’t just students but also faculty who engaged in disgraceful conduct.
Later the same day of the press conference, Clegg debated UW law professor Larry
Church on campus. The crowd booed, hissed, and shouted insults, continuously
interrupting Clegg during the debate.
Having used Facebook to organize the flashmob,
students and some faculty extended their use of social media and tweeted the
debate live. Even with Twitter’s 140-character limit, you’d think participants
would be able to come up with something more substantive than the repeated use
of the label "racist" to describe Clegg and his arguments against racial double
standards, but hundreds of tweets exhibited little more than hysterical rants
and personal attacks.
Perhaps the most offensive tweet was posted by
Sara Goldrick-Rab, an associate professor of educational policy studies and
sociology. After announcing that she was "Getting set to live blog this debate
between a racist and a scholar," she tweeted that Clegg sounded "like the
whitest white boy I’ve ever heard." The only racism in evidence came from the
defenders of the university’s race-based admissions policies, such as Professor
Goldrick-Rab.
You’d think that a responsible university would
denounce the intimidation and lack of civility by its students and faculty.
Instead, Vice Provost Williams told the student newspaper, "I’m most excited
about how well the students represented themselves, the passion with which they
engaged, the respectful tone in how they did it and the thoughtfulness of their
questions and interactions."
It appears that not only are the university’s
admissions policies deeply discriminatory, but also that university officials
applaud name-calling, distortion and outright physical assault.
Townhall, September 16, 2011.
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