"Over-representation" Is Not Racism
There's this weird thing happening where college deans and presidents keep admitting to racism where there is no meaningful evidence of it, and coming up with "solutions" to solve the racism that isn't.
Princeton is the latest.
Sergiu Klainerman, a mathematician at Princeton, has a terrific opinion piece about this in Newsweek:
In his most recent letter addressed to the Princeton community, our president, Christopher Eisgruber '83, uses the terms "racism," "structural racism" and "racial justice" at least 15 times to describe both American society as a whole and Princeton University in particular. By contrast, "academic freedom" and "academic excellence," once the hallmarks of this and every other major U.S. educational institution, barely register: The first appears once as an afterthought, or rather as an excuse for not having done enough to promote diversity and inclusion, while the second is nowhere to be found.The letter is the first response by the president to the 48 race-related demands contained in the now-infamous "Faculty Letter" of July 4th. Though he does not accede to many of the most egregious demands, what the president writes is a major betrayal of the University over which he presides. By yielding to the manifest falsehood that Princeton is a racist institution, he makes it impossible for him to defend Princeton's values; for racism is, as we all know, no simple blemish on our reputation, but rather the cardinal sin of our times, requiring a major overhaul of the University in which both academic freedom and the quest for excellence will have to be sacrificed.
How did we get here? In the usual definition of the word, Princeton is not in the least racist. Most people know this. Certainly the president does, and I suspect most of the signatories of the July 4th letter do as well. It is true, as the president reminds us, that Princeton was in the past closed to women and various minority groups, such as Blacks, Jews and Catholics. What he does not say is that prejudice and exclusion were the norm at all major institutions of higher learning everywhere in the world. He also fails to point out that what is truly remarkable about Princeton and many other American universities is an extraordinary modern story of redemption.
Take Jews, who were once among the most excluded religious and ethnic groups the world over. In 1920, an unofficial quota artificially limited Jewish enrollment at Princeton to 3 percent--far lower than the quotas at other Ivy League institutions (at Harvard, it was 25 percent). In the 1930s, however, Princeton took the national lead in welcoming Jewish and other refugee scientists from Nazi Europe. The presence of Einstein, Gödel, von Neumann, Wigner, Lefschetz, Weyl and many others put Princeton, New Jersey at the pinnacle of worldwide research in the mathematical sciences. Both informal and explicit quotas were dropped in the 1960s, which has led to an unprecedented flourishing of Jews at Princeton and other U.S. campuses.
Now there's an "over-representation" of Jews and Asians at universities, in terms of their numbers in the population, and for good reason: out of universities having to develop "policies that are blind to considerations of race, ethnicity, religion, sex, socio-economic class and any other factor not relevant to intellectual achievement."
The problem with this approach, as has now become painfully clear, is that over-representation of certain groups necessarily implies under-representation of others. This is certainly a problem, but not one of racism; rather, it stems from the opposite of racism--namely, a policy that rewards people based on their individual achievements and promise of future achievement, and not by the color of their skin or their ethnic or socioeconomic background.
And consider where Princeton's calls for "diversity" over merit leads -- the very ugly places it leads:
Among the measures the president proposes is to "assemble a faculty that more closely reflects both the diverse make-up of the students we educate and the national pool of candidates." So we must ask: Are there "too many Jews?" "Too many Asians?" Members of which groups, exactly, must give up seats they earned on merit for members of the "under-represented" groups to take them? Is anyone seriously prepared to claim that the "over-representation" of, say, Jews and Asians on the Princeton faculty is the result of prejudice at Princeton in favor of Jews and Asians? Did Jewish and Asian members of the Princeton faculty gain their positions on the basis of racial or religious favoritism? Moreover, which under-represented groups should we take into account? One can justifiably argue that the nation and the University do owe descendants of slaves and Native Americans special attention, due to our past history, but what about all other minority groups?The ultimate logic of measuring racism by discrepancies of outcome implies that all types of groups, whether based on race, ethnicity, sex, sexual preferences etc., should be equally represented at Princeton in all activities of the University, academic and nonacademic, according to their proportion in the population. How many more diversity and inclusion administrators will be needed to carry this out? Should Princeton, for example, make serious outreach efforts to bring more Asian football or baseball players on campus in the name of proportional equity? And what about the rest of the world? Since Princeton claims to be strongly opposed to nativist policies, should we also extend these equality of outcome principles beyond our borders? Has anybody in the leadership of Princeton thought through the full scope and consequences of such an enterprise?
Has anybody in the leadership of Princeton thought through the full scope and consequences of such an enterprise?
Ha ha. Such leadership just mouths pieties that get them through the day, hoping they'll be the last that get eaten.
doombuggy at September 11, 2020 4:52 AM
Believing that is how things got this bad, Doombuggy. The leadership isn't mouthing pieties or hoping to go along, get along. They are fully complicit and often originate these protests.
On another note, I keep being told that while all the segregationists were Democrats that was in the past. Today all those evil racists are supposed to be right wing Republicans. But it is left wing groups at the University of Michigan that opened whites only/blacks only cafes. The CHAZ had whites only and blacks only areas. And as we see here left wing groups at Princeton are demanding more racism, more segregation. I guess George Wallace's recipe for the Democrat party is just as accurate today as it was back in 1963, "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever".
Ben at September 11, 2020 5:43 AM
A university? Heh.
An Introduction to the Blindingly Obvious
In another vein, companies who cannot find employees that can actually do things are about to upset the academic applecart.
Radwaste at September 11, 2020 2:30 PM
Every organization should be forced to reflect the same percentages of race as society, and government should lead the way - it only makes sense!
Blacks make up about 18% of Federal civil employees but 12% of the country's overall population, so we'll need to reduce the number of blacks in civil service by a third to make this right.
Equality: it's just equal! Now, who's the first to get the axe?
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at September 11, 2020 3:05 PM
"Every organization should be forced to reflect the same percentages of race as society, and government should lead the way - it only makes sense!"
A Facebook post by a "Public Figure" - amazing how many of those are scantily-clad sirens, and Bless Them For Their Immodesty - says that the Kansas City Chiefs are "against racism".
So, I helpfully celebrated the fact that their team will now represent the demographic of Kansas City!
I do not anticipate anything substantive.
Radwaste at September 11, 2020 4:13 PM
If they want quotas everywhere, how many height-challenged Asian women should be playing for major league baseball?
markm at September 14, 2020 6:56 AM
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