Bogus Term 'White Supremacy' is Just War on the West.  [Scroll down]  Given the near ubiquity of the term "diversity," one would think America was founded for the pursuit of diversity rather than happiness, even though "diversity" appears neither in the Declaration of Independence nor in the Constitution.  In fact, one would be hard-pressed to locate it in political discourse before 1970, a sure sign that those wanting to change America's demographics over the past 50 years started first with changing the language.  Similarly, "white supremacy" was rare even just a decade ago but has now become the insult of choice as the term "racist" has lost its sting from overuse.  What even is a "white supremacist?"  Presumably, it's the belief — held mostly by "whites" or those of European descent — that their people are best or "supreme."  But what people doesn't believe that?  Don't the Japanese care more for their people and seek to preserve their heritage and language?

My two shocking statements.  First, "diversity" in and of itself is not a "value," nor a good thing.  In fact, very often it is destructive.  And it is destroying the formerly United States as we speak.  Second, tolerance is where nations go to die.  Diversity of crime, violence, pain, and injustice is not a good thing.  Nor is diversity of ignorance, prevarication, apathy, or evil.  Truth be told, today's "progressives" claim to worship diversity, but only of skin color, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation.  And, perhaps, depravity.  They themselves have zero tolerance for traditional values, conservative thought and opinion, the freedom for others to disagree with them[,] and anyone or thing that dares to challenge their power.

Eight Primary Forces That Threaten America Today.  The Challenge of Diversity:  There is little if any diversity tolerated in the nations that are our greatest threats — China, Iran, Russia, North Korea.  Diversity works in muti-cultural Singapore where the state tightly controls its citizens, and in Israel where the population is bonded by the common threat of annihilation.  But eroding public allegiance to the Constitution is slipping us into a more fractured culture.  Democrats shamelessly exploit racial and ethnic division and hateful gender wars.  One prominent Kamala Harris supporter, black lesbian Kelley Robinson, denigrates the Bill of Rights as merely "a little piece of paper."  Meanwhile, millions of illegal aliens who have flooded into our country in the past three years are disrupting the security and financial wellbeing of cities and local communities across the country.

Diversity is a False Religion to Destroy America.  This week, the National Association of Scholars ("NAS") and the Heritage Foundation are sponsoring a panel discussion on diversity ideology in higher education.  A number of reports have recently been published on the topic, with most documenting monies spent by state universities on "diversity, equity and inclusion" ("DEI").  The Maryland affiliate of the National Association of Scholars released the most recent such report this summer, but the Virginia affiliate issued one last year, while Idaho, North Carolina, Maine, and Tennessee produced similar documents before that.  The Maryland report reminds state officials that "diversity" is usually a cover for race-based practices that are now likely illegal under the 2023 United States Supreme Court case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (or "SFFA").  That opinion found that racial preferences in university admissions were a violation of federal civil rights laws and also the Constitution's Equal Protection clause. [...] As the Court said, "Eliminating discrimination means eliminating all of it ... distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their nature odious."

10 Lies Leftists Tell You.  Lie #4: Diversity is our strength.  Nope, sorry, uniformity is our strength.  A team that's chosen based on merit alone, and who plays according to one set of values and with a single goal in mind, always wins.  But don't take my word for it; ask any recent champions of the almost three-quarters African-American NBA.  If diversity is strength, then the NBA is arguably one of the weakest b-ball leagues on the planet.

Thoughts in the Clouds of War.  For some reason, "diversity" doesn't include white people.  The only nations being "diversified" are predominately white, European and American nations.  There is no push to proliferate the white race and to push them into predominately black or Muslim nations.  Logic, something foreign to both communists and recently educated, would dictate that since the white population is only about 10% of the whole earth, diversity would require they be proliferated, rather than the opposite.  However, if you are white and feel that your culture and your children are worth fighting for, the governments of Western nations will beat you down, stifle you, criminalize you and imprison you.  If one is from any other culture, they will be accommodated and understood, their culture valued and protected.

DIE Kills American Chip Manufacturing.  If all the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity functionaries and their supporters were a corporation — DIE, Inc. — it might rival Apple's market value.  Its "product" of eviscerating America has been widely successful.  Just look at the universities (think Claudine Gay), falling military enlistments, the prevalence of "woke" marketing for such iconic brands as Bud Lite, the demonization of white male government employees and the like.  Moreover, like all successful corporations, it is constantly innovating to expand market share.  After all, America still thrives, so opportunities remain for further evisceration.  The latest DIE Inc. venture focuses on reducing America's dependence on imported semiconductors.  The significance of this latest DIE venture cannot be exaggerated.  The good news is that Americans finally realized the dangers of this dependency.

BBC staff told not to hire candidates who are 'dismissive' of diversity.  BBC staff are being told not to hire candidates who are "dismissive" of diversity and inclusion, The Telegraph can disclose.  A recruitment policy document says applicants should be asked to "explain what diversity and inclusion means to you and, should you be successful, what opportunities do you see for you to promote, celebrate or encourage diversity and inclusion in your role?"  The guidelines, used in a major non-editorial department of the BBC, tell recruiters:  "Don't hire [candidates who are] unsuited to the organisation" if they are "dismissive or derisory of diversity and inclusion and surrounding topics".  Managers are also directed not to offer jobs to candidates who show a "lack of interest in learning more where no evidence of education and understanding of diversity and inclusion was given".

Diversity is a strength' is just something stupid people say.  What has so often struck me, and irked me, about the embrace of "diversity" dogma is how profoundly unintellectual it is.  A wiseguy might say it's really a simple IQ test, though a wise guy understands it's a soul and sagacity test.  To wit:  To the extent that a person accepts as imperative diversity, DEI, CRT, wokeness in general — or whatever the latest shiny anti-Truth thing is — he is a vacuous know-nothing, not just unqualified, but dangerously ignorant.  Two recent examples are disgraced ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay and Johns Hopkins Hospital's chief diversity officer Sherita Hill Golden, now infamous for disseminating a "privilege hit list."  Affirmative-action hires both, [...]

DEI Can Only Exist in a Noncompetitive Environment.  Harvard President Claudine Gay's recent testimony before the U.S. Congress and subsequent exposure of her academic history have revealed much about the true nature and purpose of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology. [...] The principles of "diversity" and "equity" implicitly assume that entities and organizations will continue along their current trajectory regardless of who's in charge.  DEI discounts merit, ability, and leadership and assumes as a matter of ideological gospel that "diversity" will more than make up for their loss.  And although this might be true in glacial bureaucracies at Harvard University, the U.S. Department of Education, or Los Angeles City Hall where funding rolls in at the start of every fiscal year and there is virtually no accountability for poor performance, DEI cannot survive in competitive environments where outcomes truly matter.

DEI: Degradation, Exclusion, and Intolerance.  DEI proponents do not even consider hiring nonminorities.  They tolerate no exceptions. [...] DEI, while in full vogue in much of corporate America and in the university system, is a toxin in the bloodstream of American excellence, favoring color over competence.  We are left with the kind of mushy mediocrity that contributes to decisions like open borders, a thoroughly corrupt judicial system and universities that graduate those who cannot read, think, or strategize.  DEI is poison in our cultural bloodstream.  "Diversity is our strength" is a damnable lie.  It is not our strength.  It is our weakness.  Merit is our strength because merit allows talent to rise while the sludgy sediment of mediocrity sinks to the bottom.

DEI Comes to Jasper, Indiana.  DEI refers to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  This concept, like many seemingly innocuous-sounding slogans or acronyms, carries with it aspects quite sinister. [...] DEI, furthermore, has no place in any institution that values standards and color-blind meritocracy.  If diversity becomes the driving force behind hiring and promotion, or even a small part of it, rather than skill, accomplishment, and merit, then it necessarily compromises standards.  If the goal is diversity, and to have proportional representation in Memorial Hospital's work force, based on race, sex, sexual orientation, and other such trivialities, even in part, and the hospital does not contemplate the individual and his unique abilities and contributions over all else, then the system collapses and becomes simply one of groups or tribes competing with one another.  Meritocracy necessarily dies in such a system.  You can have DEI or meritocracy, but not both.

Diversity Means Divide and Conquer.  By now, everyone should have noticed how ubiquitous the word "diversity" is, often alongside partner terms such as "equity" and "inclusion," making the acronym "DEI." [...] America has heard for years that "diversity is our strength" and in 1978 the United States Supreme Court began suggesting that "diversity" was a constitutional value on par with the presumption of innocence, due process or free expression.  But the word "diversity" appears neither in the United States Constitution nor in the Declaration of Independence, America's foundational documents.  In fact, the word was rarely uttered until about the 1980s.  That means that the country not only existed for most of its history without hearing about diversity, it also flourished — growing from a fledgling group of states in 1776 to a superpower 200 years later.  Yet now America is supposed to believe that diversity explains its rise?  So the diversity movement doesn't make much sense, suggesting something else is going on.  Could diversity be a euphemism for something bad?  Of course it could.  For those willing to see, diversity malignancy is obvious.  Today the word is used to divide and conquer the American people by placing individuals into fake, warring tribes based on race and sex.

Diversity Is Not Our Strength.  Many immigrants who have moved here in recent years — including many illegal immigrants — have come to the U.S. for the same reasons as in generations past.  They and their families are pursuing the American dream, are upwardly mobile, and their children will become indistinguishable (save skin color in many cases) from the children of families who have been here for generations.  [Tweet]  But it is clear that many people immigrating to the US and Europe these days have no intention of integrating into the larger culture, and even disdain it.  This tendency is reinforced by the prevailing ideology in our public schools and academia that disdains integration.  Ironically these are the people who keep repeating that "Diversity is our strength."  By diversity they mean "non-Western" and even anti-Western.  [Tweet]  The metaphor of the melting pot — a cauldron in which the differences are blended — has been replaced by others such as the "salad bowl" in which the ingredients may or may not mesh, but are very different.

The Editor says...
No, by diversity they mean anti-white.  It's a code word for using minorities for political leverage.

Diversity, Division, Disintegration.  The terms "racist," "racism," and "hate" are now commonplace charges and allegations in political discourse and the sphere of public opinion where whites are called to ceremonially denounce the "white privilege" into which they were born.  The destiny of migrants illegally crossing the southern borders of the U.S. and the European Union is to replace white Americans and Europeans.  As the ongoing invasion continues, native-born white Americans and Europeans have practically stopped reproducing themselves.  Any such voluntary downturn in the birth rate has always been a sign of internal agony, collapse of society, social upheaval, and decaying civilization.

Diversity Is Not Our Strength — And The Lie Is Deliberate.  "Diversity is our strength."  You've heard it over and over again, and it seems simple enough.  It doesn't matter if it's not true; it's a basic feel-goodism[. ...] The idea is not entirely without merit, and there's a case to be made for the whole thing, even if the case is fatally flawed — which it is. [...] Today, those who preach the gospel of diversity, be it multiculturalism, critical race theory, or any other novel heresy, don't care about what unifies us.  Often, they resent it and instead actively promote what makes us different.  Many times, they work to actively divide us.  And it's working:  In 2004, 74 percent of white Americans and 68 percent of black Americans told Gallup that race relations in America were good.  This year, those numbers are 43 percent and 33 percent, respectively.  It turns out that a decade and a half of relentlessly racializing every issue in American politics just made everyone feel less happy, less trusting, less like they are part of a unified American whole.  Our differences without unifying mores — an anthem, a language, a border, a history, a Constitution, a faith in God — make us weak, and this is deadly.

Affirmative action: Diversity is a sham.  At first, the whole point of affirmative action was not to discriminate against people based on their race.  In 1961, President John F. Kennedy signed an executive order that made federal contractors treat job applicants without regard to race, religion, sex, color, or nationality.  In the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case of 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that racial quotas are unconstitutional but that colleges could still use race as an admissions factor.  In 2003, the Supreme Court allowed colleges to consider race in a "holistic review," which is when colleges look at an applicant personally, through grades, standardized test scores, extracurriculars, etc.  But now, as of 2023, colleges can no longer include race as a factor. [...] Equality is the opposite of affirmative action; it gives equal opportunity and consideration to everybody.  Equity is when everyone is at the same place, but only a small minority actually deserved their spot.  Who cares about diversity if half of the students aren't good enough to be there?  And so what if a group of people faced past discrimination?

Diversity's Fatal Attraction.  Diversity and its cousins, inclusion and equity, are woke America's new guiding principles.  Sports, education, media, government, military, and big business are all in on the "DEI" mantra.  Rearrange the letters from DEI to DIE.  Is that a more fitting acronym for where this recent liberal push may lead?  There is nothing wrong with diversity, as long as that extends to all aspects of humanity.  Why only diversity of skin color and gender?  Are those the only determinants of diversity?

The Truth About Diversity and the Terrifying Reason the Commie Left Is Pushing It.  Anything being pushed by globalists — especially the evil commie clowns at the World Economic Forum (WEF) — requires a closer look.  So, I thought I'd look into their dedication to diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI) which they've been hell-bent on gavaging down our throats.  It wasn't long before I stumbled upon a study from 2000 by a political science professor from Harvard named Robert Putnam.  Putnam, a liberal, has spent much of his career studying the reality of diversity.  What he has found, again and again, doesn't bode well for the apparatchiks, snowflakes, and prairie fairies preaching the supposed benefits of all things DEI.  We've been led to believe that our differences are our strengths, but Putnam's findings tell us quite the opposite.  He interviewed 30,000 people, and the results were staggering.

Anheuser-Busch, Bud Light's Parent Company Pledged to Purge Its White Male Employees in This Promo Video.  Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, has pledged to purge its white, male employees in an effort to have a "more diverse and inclusive environment," according to footage found on the company's website.  The company has seen its sales collapse since the disastrous Dylan Mulvaney advertisement campaign which wiped billions off the firm's value, and chased millions of customers away.  In the video, one employee of Anheuser-Busch explains, "we're still 40 percent women, and 60 percent men, still predominantly white:  so there's still work to be done."  The "work" to be "done" is apparently replacing white male workers with alternatives.  [Video clip]

How Multiculturalism Toppled Rome.  In modern movies, the Roman army is typically depicted as a homogeneous collection of white guys, all presumably originating from Rome or Italy.  This could hardly be further from reality.  Roman soldiers were Roman by virtue of Romanization, not birth.  Most were not from Rome or even Italy.  For example, in the first century, the Legion III Augusta was only 19 percent Italian; by the third century, it had no Italians at all.  Beholding a Roman army during the imperial era, you were more likely to see Spaniards, Africans, and Pannonians than Italians.  Soldiers with exceptional courage and ability could quickly ascend to the highest ranks regardless of their race or ethnic origin.

Diversity Executives — The U.S. Version of Soviet Political Commissars.  Employing significant numbers of diversity executives is all the rage.  The average university, for example, now has 45.1 people dedicated to promoting diversity on campus.  The University of Michigan has a whopping 163 diversity officers.  That's 2.3 diversity officers for every one member of its history faculty.  Is it any wonder that college tuition has skyrocketed?  A political commissar or political officer is responsible for ideological conformity in military units to ensure party control of the unit.  Political commissars were heavily used in the Soviet Red Army, as well as in the armed forces of Nazi Germany.  The U.S. can now be added to the list.  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) executives — our political commissars — are tasked with enforcing leftist policies in corporations, universities, and government agencies.  They do not contribute to the competent functioning of those institutions and in fact may detract from their profitability and efficiency.

The Editor says...
Diversity adds nothing to workplace productivity.  Japan has the least diverse and possibly the most productive workforce in the world.  Diversity and multiculturalism were invented by God himself, who inflicted them upon mankind as punishment at the Tower of Babel, in order to stop production overnight, which it did.

Joe Biden Puts Liberal Theories to the Test.  The diversity industry claims that having a diversified workforce increases creativity and customer service — resulting in improved organizational performance.  Joe gave us a few appointments who check all of the diversity boxes to test this one out.  He appointed Dr. "Rachel" Levine to be the assistant secretary of health.  Levine has a penis but thinks he's a woman — making him a valid diversity test subject.  His department has spent two years promoting a vaccine that doesn't prevent illness from the targeted virus, but does increase one's likelihood of dying from that virus.  Joe appointed Sam Brinton to be the deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition.  Sam claims to be non-binary and is into "puppy play" — which I refuse to look up because it might include pictures.  Sam has been fired because of multiple instances of stealing women's clothing from airports — and then allegedly wearing some of that clothing for a Vanity Fair spread.  Apparently, intelligence doesn't necessarily accompany diversity.  Finally, Joe Appointed Pete Buttigieg, a gay man, to lead the Department of Transportation.  Under Pete's watch, our shipping systems, airline services, and supply chains have all failed.  Pete was also AWOL when the trains literally ran off of the rails in Ohio, Nebraska, Michigan, and South Carolina.

Heather Mac Donald: Diversity Is Not America's Greatest Strength.  On the Sunday Special episode of Human Events Daily, host Jack Posobiec spoke with Heather Mac Donald from the Manhattan Institute, about the effects of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives on the systems of our society, specifically whether the notion of diversity is America's greatest strength.  Posobiec asked, "Is diversity our greatest strength?  Is diversity the greatest virtue of Western civilization?"  Mac Donald replied, "No, it's not.  The greatest virtue of Western civilization is achievement, accomplishment, exploration, the scientific method, and constitutional government.  None of those things have any inherent relationship to diversity."  "If we want to be truly honest about the empirical data, we would draw on Robert Putnam's work that showed that, in fact, local communities become increasingly distrustful of each other," Mac Donald said.  [Video clip]

Diversity Improves Performance — So They Say.  The diversity industry is a collection of consultants and trainers who make wild claims about business practices because they fit the diversity, equity, and inclusion narrative.  They assert that diversity in the workforce is good for business.  According to them, the presence of differing life experiences in the workforce enhances creativity, provides better customer service, and improves the bottom line.  Executive leadership can't go wrong by checking some intersectionality boxes with their employee placement.  It's a path to instant success.  Does that sound like a load of garbage to you, too?  Corporate CEOs have been paying for that baloney sandwich for years.  Businesswire estimates that corporate and government managers spent $9.3 billion on diversity and inclusion "help" in 2022.  The industry is expected to grow to $15.4 billion in the next three years.  Keeping people divided into categories is big business.  Apparently, Ivy League training hasn't taught business leaders that employees with better skills will outperform employees with worse skills but more diversity — every time.  Just look at professional sports.  Are players drafted for their diversity or their skill?

Military's Push for Diversity Harms Warfighting Ability, Defense Analysts Say.  The U.S. military's increased push for diversity and inclusion, as reflected in the far-reaching National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) signed by President Joe Biden on Dec. 23, 2022, aims to remake the military's culture and ethos along the same lines as left-wing policies that have been put to use at elite colleges and other areas of the private sphere, defense experts say.  While efforts to diversify the armed forces along racial and gender lines at the expense of traditional standards, aren't new, the NDAA signals dramatically increased civilian input on and oversight of a culture once deemed to be the domain of professional soldiers, the experts told The Epoch Times.  Provisions of the NDAA that aim to boost diversity are so similar to policies enforced by private institutions, such as Harvard University, that an organization opposing the "woke" agenda in the armed forces, and supporting traditional standards and requirements, has gone so far as to lend its expertise in a lawsuit over Harvard's admissions policies, in the form of an amicus curiae ("friend of the court") filing, obtained by The Epoch Times.  The filing argues that diversity and inclusion policies have harmed the military and aren't a good idea in either the public or private spheres.

Department of Defense Spends Nearly $100K on Diversity Seminars for Air Force Band.  The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) under Joe Biden has spent at least $91,000 on mandatory "diversity and inclusion" seminars for the Air Force Band, awarding a contract to a group that focuses on pushing diversity in music.  According to Fox News, the DOD contract was given to a group called the Black Pearl Chamber Orchestra, based out of Philadelphia, on May 6th, thus putting Black Pearl in charge of arranging and providing the seminars to the 184-member Air Force Band.  Black Pearl describes its mission on its website, saying that it seeks "to take the audience beyond spectatorship to participation in the musical experience by combining artistic excellence with cultural diversity and innovative community engagement."

Campus 'diversity' is a scam used to promote reverse racism.  Democratic politicians and their media toadies are warning that the US Supreme Court is poised to rule against the use of racial preferences in college admissions, putting diversity on college campuses at risk.  Don't buy their alarmist rhetoric.  Campus diversity is being used as a phony excuse to operate a nasty system of reverse racism.  On Oct. 31, the court will hear oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v.  President and Fellows of Harvard College.  That case will show that Harvard and other colleges that discriminate against white and Asian applicants in favor of less-qualified black applicants — under the pretext of promoting student body diversity — offer black students segregated college life.  They have separate dorms, separate student activities and dining halls, courses of study geared to their own ethnicity and even segregated graduation ceremonies.  Black students who benefit from relaxed admissions standards are virtually guaranteed their contact with students of other races at college will be minimal.  There's Harvard and Black Harvard.  The same is true at Yale, which provides an entire parallel campus life for black students, a brief submitted to the court shows.

"Diversity" Is a Crock.  In criminal law, the fashionable trend is what the MSM calls "criminal justice reform."  That's an opaque and vaguely appealing name, used to avoid saying what it actually is — shorter sentences and earlier release for criminals, including not a few violent thugs who're going to do some robbing and mugging and killing when they get out.  The reason "criminal justice reform" is deceptively named is, thus, easy to see:  If it were called what it is, only a few quite odd people would buy it.  As public policy, it would go nowhere.  Therein lies the key to analyzing affirmative action's key "diversity" rationale.  What "diversity" actually means is this:  Based squarely on race, colleges will deny admission to whites and Asians  — admission they would get under normal, achievement-oriented criteria — and give it instead to less qualified blacks.  In other words, it's rank racial discrimination.  Without a pleasant-sounding disguise, it too would go nowhere.  There's a reason its defenders relentlessly use "holistic" and other antiseptic (if slightly mysterious) words in talking about it.  So the first among many things wrong with "diversity," and the tip-off to most of the others, is that it's dishonest.

How US Universities Are Watering Down Standards In The Name Of 'Diversity'.  Higher education institutions have implemented diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives to vet students and faculty rather than evaluating them on their merits.  Universities have included different DEI initiatives including axing standardized test requirements, mandating DEI statements in applications and curriculum requirements.  The initiatives aim to raise diversity and social justice awareness, considering mainly the promotion of understanding and consciousness of DEI. [...] Several universities require some sort of DEI statement outlining applicants' competencies of diversity; applicants to the University of Tennessee are required to submit a diversity statement, which they are judged on, telling how they will help contribute to diversity and inclusion at the school.

Education: The End Game of Progressive Dumbing Down.  Some words are in order regarding the "melting pot" idea of Americanism that has affected the thinking of many.  The "melting pot" notion of citizenry is a deconstruction of the motto inscribed on the great seal of the United States:  E pluribus unum — "One from the many."  It refers to a group of equal and independent states, united in a spirit of freedom for mutual benefit.  The United States of America is a federation of states, not a merger of states.  It is in no way a reduction ("melting") of constituents into a conforming citizenry.  Yesterday's "melting pot" idea is today falsely refurbished as "multiculturalism" or "diversity," deceptive buzzwords for conformity to political agenda.  In its new meaning it disables differences instead of allowing them to enrich and improve one another's lives — what the original "One from the many" stands for.  This has nothing to do with "blending" or lumping differences for "better management," an outcome that favors Marxists and wannabe totalitarians of every stripe.  America was established to resist and overcome the domination of its people by any ideological minority.  Uniting in voluntary commonality for mutual benefit in security, industry, and wellbeing is NOT what "Progressives" ever had in mind.

Diversity Isn't Always Good.  Diversity, the integration of people with widely diverging cultures, colors, and persuasions, is not always good.  Nor is diversity always the best idea for a group or nation that wants to cohere in its traditions and remain functionally intact.  It has become a glib aphorism, almost received scripture that "diversity is our strength," but the reality does not bear that out, and I have seen no evidence that it is always true.  Quite the contrary.  Sohrab Ahmari, author of The Unbroken Thread, opines that when a population devoted to specific traditional ideals that emerge from their religious or ethnic heritage gets too diverse, that population fractures and loses cohesion.  Introducing diverse foreign ideologies into a close-knit population can destroy it more easily than enhancing it.  If a group of Mennonites or Amish, for example, were to encourage diversity of faith and practice, it would risk disintegration of their unique culture.

America's unhealthy obsession with diversity.  America is losing its head over diversity.  The dictionary definition of diversity is the political and social policy of encouraging tolerance for people of different backgrounds.  Unfortunately, the Left has distorted its meaning.  To progressives, diversity means that we must give special privileges to certain protected classes of people ... and they never let us forget it.  "Sometimes," said black economist Thomas Sowell, "it seems as if 'diversity' is going to replace 'the' as the most often used word in the English language."  The Left's version of diversity goes far beyond tolerance.  It attempts to divide Americans between alleged oppressors — heterosexual, white, Christian males — and "victimized" minorities and women.  Its purpose is to create division and hatred.  Instead of making everyone feel they are part of a unified American social structure, diversity plays into the leftist strategy of "divide and conquer."  Diversity, says Mark Levin in Ameritopia, is bringing about the "balkanization" of society.

UK's top-paid public sector diversity chief is a Network Rail director on £164,000 taxpayer-funded salary.  The UK's top-paid public sector diversity chief is a Network Rail employee who earns up to £164,999 a year and previously shared an article accusing Boris Johnson of 'white privilege'.  Loraine Martins, the railway company's director of diversity and inclusion, is responsible for ensuring the network is more 'open, diverse and inclusive'.  Data released by the government shows Ms Martins is paid a minimum of £160,000 which can rise to a maximum of £164,999, meaning she could earn more than the Prime Minister whose yearly earning is capped at almost £162,000.

Charlotte Man Wins Major Lawsuit Claiming Wrongful Termination Over 'Diversity' Push.  Every time I hear about efforts to "diversitize" this or that institution or place, whether it be the public school system, universities, the workplace, etc., my first thoughts (after rolling my eyes) are to wonder three things:
  [#1]   What hardworking person is going to get passed over for that promotion in the name of "diversity"?
  [#2]   What hardworking person who has worked [hard] to earn the position they hold is going to lose their job?
  [#3]   What would the person who "won" said position as the result of either scenario one or two above think if they knew they'd been awarded that position based either in part or solely on the color of their skin, their lady parts, sexual orientation, etc.?
Now, the very "coexist" leftists who champion such diversity pushes via quota requirements but who at the same time also say there's no place anywhere in America for discrimination on any basis will tell you that scenarios one and two above never happen.

The Greatest Existential Threat to America.  Our Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin — a leader who presided over the worst, most incompetent, most [humiliating] military defeat in the history of our nation — is black.  Of course, he's black.  He was appointed by Biden to display the wonderful diversity of the most progressive president in history.  He wasn't chosen because he was a brilliant military leader (obviously).  He was chosen because he was a political hack ready and willing to embrace even the most suicidal left-wing policies.  (Note:  Left-wing policies are by their very nature suicidal because the defining characteristic of the left is that it hates America and wants to "dismantle" it and replace it with the left-wing fantasy of a socially just future.)  In February 2021 — with the deadline for withdrawal in Afghanistan a bare three months away — General Austin was not ordering a military alert to prepare for what was going to be a major humanitarian and military reckoning.  Instead, he was ordering a military "stand down" to indoctrinate all America's troops in Black Lives Matter hate white people and hate America propaganda.

A DOD Official Exposes The Intellectual Bankruptcy Of Diversity.  It is rare that U.S. Department of Defense officials, blinded by their zealous pursuit of the latest variant of U.S. military diversity policy, reveal that policy's intellectual vacuousness.  Recent comments by the Navy's top, uniformed personnel officer, however, did just that, exposing the Pentagon diversity policy's intellectual bankruptcy and providing a focus for those who, following their commitment to the Constitution and the rule of law, genuinely believe America's sons and daughters in uniform deserve the best leadership available.

The Diversity Industry Has Turned the Clock Back... to 1960.  When I was young, Americans prided themselves in being part of the "great melting pot" — good times.  People from diverse cultures throughout the world could come here and become full-fledged Americans.  Our constitution provided a framework for anyone to become successful.  All that was required was determination and hard work.  In achieving the American dream, our forefathers shed their ancestral heritages and became enthusiastic Americans — and that was something to be proud of.  But we don't melt anymore.  Now we categorize.  I blame it on the diversity movement.  The diversity movement was initiated by a number of universities in the 1960s.  It was initially conceived as a way to address genuine equal opportunity issues.  It was viewed by many organizations as a way to avoid lawsuits based on discrimination.

The racism racket:  Diversity training in the workplace and beyond is worse than useless.  A review commissioned by the Government Equalities Office to analyse the effectiveness of unconscious-bias training found that 'there is currently no evidence that this training changes behaviour in the long term or improves workplace equality in terms of representation of women, ethnic minorities or other minority groups'.  The Harvard Business Review likewise notes that 'even when the training is beneficial, the effects may not last after the programme ends'.  Worse still, mounting evidence points to workplace diversity training actually having unintended negative consequences.  Yet increasing numbers of employers insist their staff undertake anti-racism training.  A survey conducted for the Guardian suggests that over 80 percent of all UK-based companies run training sessions specifically on unconscious bias.  Virtually all Fortune 500 companies offer some form of diversity training.  The diversity industry has become a global phenomenon, extending its reach to many millions of citizens, with online courses targeting many more.  In many schools, universities and workplaces, attendance at anti-racism workshops is mandatory — or effectively mandatory when non-attendance makes your position untenable.

Big Business Caters to a New Generation of Racist Customers.  There shouldn't be any confusion about what big businesses everywhere mean when they tout "diversity and inclusion."  But to clear up any potential misunderstanding that may exist, consider the following incident, recounted by Stephen R. Soukup in his new book, The Dictatorship of Woke Capital.  In 2019, as Rupert Darwell writes at The Epoch Times, the general counsel for the National Center for Public Policy Research, Justin Danhof, "tabled a shareholder proposal at Amazon's annual meeting."  It read, "Diversity in board composition is best achieved through highly qualified candidates with a wide range of skills, experience, beliefs, and board independence from management."  For his trouble, he was "booed and heckled throughout his presentation" and later accused by a representative for Arjuna Capital of "trying to protect white males."  That's what "diversity and inclusion" really means in the business world today.  The phrase is little more than a euphemism to justify the exclusion of white men.

The BBC tumbles further down the woke rabbit hole.  The BBC has announced yet another diversity initiative.  Under new plans, the BBC wants 95 percent of employees to complete unconscious-bias training by 2022.  Staff will also be given an 'inclusivity toolkit' to help them deal with 'non-inclusive behaviours'.  And they will learn 'how to embed inclusivity into our day-to-day work and management practices, including a framework for anti-racism'.  The new programme also reaffirms previously stated BBC diversity goals:  the broadcaster wants to achieve a 50-50 gender split among employees over the next five years, as well as aiming for 20 percent of staff to be BAME and for 12 percent to be disabled.  Other targets include 80 percent of staff declaring their socio-economic background to their employer.  And, bizarrely, the initiative also aims for half of all 'LGBTQ+' staff to be 'out' at work — defined as 'being open about your LGBTQ+ identity to your manager'.  This news does not bode well for those hoping that the BBC's director general, Tim Davie, would rein in its identitarian excesses.

The Editor says...
BAME means Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic.  No, I had never heard of it either.  It means anybody and everybody other than whites.  But if the BBC (or anybody else) is hiring people, or excluding them, based entirely on their ethnicity or their perverse sexual habits, what's the difference between that and institutional bigotry?

Group pushes to diversify volunteering at Minnesota nonprofits.  Minnesotans have rallied to help nonprofits during the pandemic, but across many organizations, most of those volunteers are white.  A statewide organization is trying to change that with new research calling attention to disparities in volunteerism.

The Editor says...
If you need unpaid help with your charitable organization, and you really care what color the volunteers are, you might be a racist.

Forced Denunciations And 'Sensitivity Training' Mimic Communist Brainwashing Tactics.  Agitators for critical race theory have fanned out of academia into mind-hacking workaday Americans, trying to convince them the nation is unredeemably evil.  They doggedly attempted to do this to federal employees as well as all big corporations.  Christopher Rufo, a research fellow with the Discovery Institute, has described how trainers for critical race theory (CRT) in the federal government are defying President Trump's executive order to cancel their race-baiting training.  In the State Department, for example, they are pushing a "'21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge,' in which staff are asked to recite a racial equity 'pledge,' 'select a different minority group daily,' and engage in a '10-15 minute challenge' in 'pursuit of racial equity.'"

Trump's ban on diversity training sends tech companies scrambling.  The country's top tech companies are mobilizing against President Trump's executive order barring federal contractors from offering diversity and inclusion training to their employees.  The executive order could force tech companies with large federal government contracts — including Google, Amazon and Microsoft — to decide between continuing to take hundreds of millions of dollars or pursuing efforts to educate their workforce on issues such as systemic racism and unconscious bias.

Dismal Liberal Diversity.  As several links to maps and indexes herein demonstrate, there is overwhelming evidence of an inverse relationship between divisive diversity mandates and happiness, the pursuit of which is one of our unalienable rights.  As evidenced at the "big tent" RNC, diversity is laudable when there is broad compliance with core convictions — and necessary in our vibrant country.  Some of the most telling testimonials were delivered by minorities who appreciate our munificence and want to keep America — America.  By contrast, radical leftist multiculturalism, adorned with diversity platitudes, eviscerates our foundational principles, erodes trust, and engenders unhappiness. [...] The top five happiest nations, effective 2017-2019, are, in descending order:  Finland, Denmark, Switzerland, Iceland, and Norway.  It's noteworthy that the Nordic nations tend to be more homogenous societies.  Indeed, witness the correspondence between the happiest nations and ethnically/culturally less diverse nations.  Clearly, countries that perennially score high on happiness are all in the bottom quartile of most diverse countries[.]  Conversely, countries that are the most diverse are in happiness reverse.  In most indexes that compile happiness rankings, African despondence is preponderant; coincidentally, they are also the most diverse.

The virus of critical race theory is spreading to all of the national laboratories.  [Thread reader]  In new documents from Argonne National Lab — which handles national security and supercomputing for the federal government — a whistleblower describes a relentless campaign of racial harassment.  Top executives and scientists at the federal lab claim the United States is an "institutionally racist society" and that white lab employees must atone for the "pain and anguish inflicted upon Black people" and "unequivocally assert that Black lives matter."  [Illustration]  They demand that white employees embark on a journey of "becoming anti-racist."  They believe that "striving to be comfortable" and "talk[ing] to others who look and think like me" are expressions of racism — that must be driven out of the workplace.  [Another illustration]  Lab executives tell white employees that they must admit they "benefit from Racism," "yield positions of power to those otherwise marginalized," and push for progressive activism in the workplace — all under the banner of "anti-racism."

Mandated Diversity Training.  Most schools and businesses mandate that their employees take a "Diversity:  Inclusion in the Modern Workplace" (EDU) online training course.  Under the umbrella of compassion for all, it is a well-crafted collection of leftwing radical propaganda. [...] The unsuspecting reader has been subtly led to believe that being white is problematic because she is guilty of having privilege.  Under "Workplace Identity Negotiations," Racial Identity-based Impression Management (RIM) is a process whereby individuals negotiate the way they look, act, and speak 'in order to influence perceptions of racial identity group membership and characteristics.'"  Thus, "in a 2014 study about the work experiences of Asian American journalists, researchers identified four central strategies of RIM: Avoidance, Enhancement, Affiliation, and Racial Humor."  In such vagueness does the Left prosper and become ubiquitous.  Turgid titles and ambiguous meaning rule the day.

They're all minority women.  At least two of them are lesbians.  That's diversity?
Washington State Now Has the Most Diverse Supreme Court In History.  On Monday, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, elevated Grace Helen Whitener to the state Supreme Court.  Whitener is a disabled black lesbian who immigrated from Trinidad.  She joins Inslee's two other appointees:  Raquel Montoya-Lewis, a Jewish Native American who previously served on tribal courts, and Mary Yu, an Asian-American Latina lesbian who officiated the first same-sex marriages in the state.

The Real Reason Why Such Elderly People Run America.  America now has two oppositional and incompatible paradigms of national identity:  the foundational paradigm One nation under God vs. the modern summative Our diversity is our strength.  One nation under God encapsulates America's true, eternal, and viable understanding of identity and purpose.  Though implicitly a statement of theistic faith, the identity "One nation under God" does not involve an individual test of religion or belief.  It does imply an individual responsibility to maintain the unity of the nation as a constitutional republic.  On the other hand, Our diversity is our strength (ODIOS) sounds virtuous, but it is a self-destructive and ultimately suicidal ethos of national identity.  The word diversity comes from the same root as division, divisiveness, divorce.  ODIOS is a godless formulation that literally means that the states and traits dividing us up are the most important thing about us.

Climate Activist Leaves Environmentalist Movement Because it's Too "White".  "The climate movement is overwhelmingly white.  So I walked away," explains Karin Louise Hermes, accusing her fellow tree huggers of exploiting her for 'woke' token diversity points.  "After a while I realized I would only be called upon when climate organizations needed an inspiring story or a "diverse" voice, contacts for a campaign, or to participate in a workshop for "fun" when everyone else on the (all-white) project was getting paid," she complains.

Diversity and Inclusion Insanity.  It's nearly impossible to have even a short conversation with a college administrator, politician or chief executive without the words diversity and inclusion dropping from their lips.  Diversity and inclusion appear to be the end-all and be-all of their existence.  So, I thought I'd begin this discussion by first looking up the definition of diversity.  According to the Oxford Dictionary, diversity is "the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc."  The definition gratuitously adds, "equality and diversity should be supported for their own sake."  The standard definition given for inclusion is involvement and empowerment where the inherent worth and dignity of all people are recognized.  Here's my question to those who are wedded to diversity and inclusion:  Are people better off the less they have in common with one another?

Now N.Y. Law:  Under TV "Diversity Bill," White Men Need Not Apply.  It's not enough that the "browning of America," as NPR put it, has been accompanied by the browning of previously white entertainment characters and "woke" films that wane at the box office.  Now greater political correctness will reign behind the camera, too, with New York's new "TV diversity bill."

Abolish the Diversity Visa Lottery.  Each year, the Diversity Visa Program accepts 50,000 randomly selected people — only from countries that don't send many immigrants to the United States — to obtain permanent residency (commonly called a "green card").  It's a way for individuals and families who otherwise wouldn't have any way to legally immigrate to the United States to get a green card.  The program is often seen as one that should be ended in a shift toward a more merit-based system.  According to Heritage Foundation:  "It does not bolster the skills of the American workforce, nor does it reunite families or serve any humanitarian function.  Its only purpose is to increase ethnic and cultural heterogeneity in the U.S. — a dubious goal that weakens the social ties within communities."

The Editor says...
Workplace diversity adds nothing to productivity.  For example, Japan is one of the most productive countries in the world, and the least diverse.  God himself originated workplace diversity at the Tower of Babel, and inflicted it upon mankind — as punishment! — to stop the entire project overnight.

Pittsburgh Mayor Who Begged for Syrian Migrants Calls for More of Them After Aborted Terror Attack.  Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is undaunted after a Syrian migrant allegedly plotted to bomb a Christian church earlier this week, and continues to call for more so-called refugees to be dumped into his city.  "Pittsburgh has historically been a home for refugees and immigrants and will continue to be one," he said.  Peduto makes clear that diversity is a religious belief of sorts to him, and he will never waver on bringing third-world foreigners to his city no matter what the cost.

Multiculturalism Is a Nation Killer.  Multiculturalism is the great myth of our time.  The cliché is, "Our strength is our diversity." But is it?  Military officers sent to Vietnam learned that the enemy's strength was a homogeneous culture, language, and identity. [...] Switzerland is not a multicultural society.  It has different language groups with one strong, unshakeable identity.  The Swiss know who they are.  Something we seem to be forgetting.  Ask the white farmers who are being hunted in South Africa like animals, with the eager justification of some black political elites, if Nelson Mandela's vision of the rainbow society is working.

Is Diversity a Root Cause of Dual Loyalty?  Did FDR fear dual loyalty?  His internment of 110,000 Japanese, mostly U.S. citizens, for the duration of World War II, suggests that he did.  Did not the prosecution of American Communists under the Smith Act, begun by Truman and continued by Eisenhower, suggest that these first postwar presidents saw peril in a secret party that gave allegiance to a hostile foreign power?  Where Wilson, TR and FDR distrusted ethnic and racial minorities, Truman went after the ideological enemies within — the Communists.  What defines us, said Joe Biden, are the "enduring principles in the Constitution, even though we don't necessarily all know them."  But if these principles, of which many Americans are not even aware, says Joe, are what define us and hold us together, then what is it that is tearing us apart?  Is it not our differences?  Is it not our diversity?

The Game Is Rigged.  Diversity is not our strength.  Unity is.  Our common purpose is the common defense of our nation.

Pigs on Two Legs Turn on Each Other.  What started with affirmative action became "diversity," which in turn during the Obama Administration was redefined not as minority groups with either historical grievances against the majority or accepted claims of ongoing racial victimization.  Instead authentically diverse were all who claimed to be racially or linguistically distinguishable from the white majority.  Then diversity as a revolutionary moment was further expanded by including gays and woke women, which essentially took the initial African-American population whose plight was the aim of affirmative action and expanded it to in theory a majority of about 200 million Americans who were either non-white or women or both.  Now the revolution cannot figure out its own hierarchy of authentic grievance groups.

The 5 Biggest Widely Accepted Lies in Politics.  [#5] Diversity is a strength:  While you might be able to make the argument that diversity of thought is a strength, diversity itself is a weakness.  In fact, much of the political infighting, hatred, and disagreement in modern American politics centers around diversity.  Every disagreement between a liberal minority and non-liberal white American is summed up as racism.  Every failing of a woman or female disagreement with a man is summed up as sexism.  We can't have a sane immigration policy because it's declared as racism against Hispanics.  Accusations of racism and sexism have almost completely replaced arguments and rational thought on the Left because who needs to have good ideas if you can just argue that your opponents' arguments are invalid because they're bad people? [...] All across the planet, the more diversity you see in culture, the more strife, bloodshed and, problems you see.

The Hypocrisy of Multiculturalism.  Before there was "diversity," which is college-speak for people who look different but all think the same, there was "multiculturalism."  In the abstract, "multiculturalism" is entirely sensible.  We ought to learn about other cultures, and even borrow from or imitate them when they have successful or enriching customs and art.  But in practice what multiculturalism meant is active hatred of our culture — the culture of Western European civilization and its outgrowths overseas, like, oh, maybe we should mention parliamentary democracy in India.

The Falsehoods That Drive 'Open Borders' Theory.  [Scroll down]  In fact, the "progressive" view is that the more people from many cultures that come, the better, because "diversity" is somehow "enriching."  All of these arguments in favor of multiculturalism are false.  First, different cultures — different languages, beliefs, values, rewards, and punishments — are incompatible and cannot exist in the same society.  You cannot drive both on the left and on the right; you cannot have both male supremacism and gender equality.  Some immigrants are actively hostile to European, Canadian, and American culture, and some have acted and others will act against their adopted society.  Second, immigrants in North America cannot live in the languages and cultures from their countries of origin.

Equality is unattainable because nature itself discriminates among certain groups of people.
Disparities Galore.  Laotian, Samoan and Vietnamese women have the highest cervical cancer rates in the United States.  The Pima Indians of Arizona have the highest reported prevalence of diabetes of any population in the world.  Tay-Sachs disease favors Ashkenazi Jews.  Cystic fibrosis haunts white people.  Blacks of West African ethnic origin have the highest incidence of sickle-cell anemia.  The prevalence of prostate cancer is lower in men of South Asian ethnicity than in the general population.  Black American men have the highest prostate cancer rates of any racial or ethnic group in the United States.  Black males are also 30 percent likelier to die from heart disease than white men.  There are some highly fatal sex disparities.  An Australian study found that sharks are nine times likelier to attack and kill men than they are women.  Another disturbing sex disparity is that despite the fact that men are 50 percent of the U.S. population and so are women, men are struck by lightning six times as often as women.  Of those killed by lightning, 82 percent are men.

For the West to Live, 'Equality' Must Die.  Equality is the chief faux virtue of our time.  Our obsession with it brings to mind the great G.K. Chesterton's observation, "The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes.  The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected."  Long ago the West erred by exalting "equality" at, ultimately, quality's — and sanity's — expense.  In fact, it's at a point where boys claiming girlhood are allowed in girls' bathrooms and locker areas based on equality dogma.  How do we correct this mistake?  First, stop being connedservative and realize that few people have pondered equality deeply and that, of those who have, few actually believe in it.

Macy's holiday pajama pics prompt backlash for perceived 'racist' photo.  Macy's product images for its holiday pajamas feature a number of families decked out in festive gear, but some on social media are calling one photo in particular racist.  The collected images shared on social media depict a white couple with children twice, an interracial LGBTQ couple with biracial children, and a black mother with three black children.  Naturally, social media users — in particular, a Cincinnati city councilman, Jeff Pastor — wondered why the family that did not feature a father was black.

The Editor says...
The only thing unusual about this ad is that it it NOT an inversion of the truth, as most advertising is.  Most advertising depicts abnormal relationships as normal, good things as bad, bad things as good, chronic illness as inevitable, and $50,000 as a reasonable price for a new car.  In practically all television ads, the criminals are white males, and all blacks are either the heroes, the experts, or the victims of those evil white people.  In the advertisement discussed in the article above, the black family has no father.  That is not an exceptional situation.  Such a depiction is not something to get upset about. 

Elizabeth Warren and Beto O'Rourke, Cultural Appropriators.  Elizabeth Warren wants to be Native American.  Robert Francis O'Rourke wants to be Latino.  But they aren't.  And they're being hoist on the left's own petard.  I'm a fan of cultural appropriation.  I think it's actually healthy for the dominant society to incorporate some aspects of other cultures.  This makes us more diverse, more interesting, and more tolerant.  But many on the left strongly disagree with me on this.  They hate themselves for loving yoga, and don't think two white women should be able to own a burrito cart in Portland.  They are adamant about it.  This leads to what some might call cognitive dissonance, or even hypocrisy.  After all, the people most inclined to frequent yoga studios and burrito carts in the Pacific Northwest are rich white liberals.

Fish and Wildlife Service makes diversity a priority — in its own population of biologists.  The Delmarva fox squirrel, an endangered critter that scampers through the woods and grassland of this pristine island in the Chesapeake Bay, may not care about the race or gender of the wildlife biologists safeguarding its home.  But the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service back in Washington does.  The agency's leaders doubled down on an Obama-era program that made hiring of minorities and women a top priority, and managers are raising red flags about the resulting staffing problems at the more than 500 wildlife refuges across the country.

Diversity vs.  Dignity.  Do identity politics truly represent "the demand for dignity," as centrist political philosopher Francis Fukuyama asserts in the subtitle of his new book, Identity:  The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment?  Personally, "dignity" would strike me as an odd characterization of such recent manifestations of identity politics as your local gay pride parade, Ferguson's bouts of undocumented shopping, Bruce Jenner in a ball gown, or the Asia Argento vs.  Rose McGowan #MeToo spat.  Nor do I expect the upcoming Supreme Court nomination hearing/teen sex comedy to be a high point in the history of American dignity.  If I were looking for an alliterative subtitle, I might try instead "The Demand for Dominance."  Contemporary identity politics seem far less about Jackie Robinson maintaining a stiff upper lip as he demonstrates his right to play baseball than about Serena Williams feeling entitled to go off on the tennis umpire.

A Perfect Storm Threatens America's Survival.  With identity politics cloaked in the guise of diversity, is there room for competence?  Federal and state grants come laden with various demands for diversity.  Businesses and government institutions find themselves saddled with vice presidents and directors of diversity.  Universities have indoctrinated their students with diversity to the point where white males are now under direct assault throughout our society.  The diversity purge is a threat to fundamental excellence in major businesses and institutions. [...] Whatever happened to the notion of the best and most qualified person for the job?  How is identity politics helpful to our country?  It's not.  It's damaging.  It's a Democrat thing.  Any fool can see this.

Tsk, Tsk:  Senate Democrats talk diversity for us, but not for them.  You know how Democrats so often talk about diversity as a goal in itself?  For others anyway.  Now comes a serious problem for some of their candidates seeking to tip the narrow Senate party balance in their party's direction come Nov. 6.  In a survey done by Democrats themselves the figures reveal that some of the most endangered Senate Democratic candidates have the least diverse staffs of all.

13 Ways To Combat Snarky, Mainstream Immigration Arguments.  [#4]  Multi-Cultural Leftist:  Our diversity is our strength!  You:  It wasn't for Yugoslavia or Rwanda or Northern Ireland.  Sometimes, it's a deep source of conflict that leads to bigger and bigger government and fewer freedoms.  Look at how Western European countries are turning into police states to manage all their fresh new "diversity."  There weren't always checkpoints on London Bridge, you know.

Virtue-Signaling Run Amok in America.  The social consensus pushed by the media and the culture at large has placed some sort of practical value on "diversity" in many industries in regard to inconsequential things like race, sex, or sexual preference, and has somehow forced those inconsequential things as viable considerations in the hiring process to create a workforce more "diverse" in those things that shouldn't matter.  It's often viewed as a "progressive," or even "centrist," thing to promote this line of thought.  But hiring someone who is less practically qualified to do a job would hardly be viewed as "progress" in any reasonable sense.  His team that he manages might be made more colorful by his hypothetical decision, but it would not be more productive or competitive for his having done so.

The Pox of Multiculturalism.  What the left calls "multiculturalism" is actually the systematic destruction of cultures and the replacement of these cultures by a synthetic, artificial, and meaningless global culture.  When the left talks about "diversity," it really means the crushing of differences in thought, values, and art into a sort of baby food which neither nourishes the soul or elevates the mind.  This is because cultural differences are based on geography and exist in nations and regions rather than in the nonsensical "global" community.  Indeed, there are cultural differences within most nations of any size that reflect the differences within parts of a nation.

Reject the Diversity Mandate.  Sometimes meritocracy will yield diversity; sometimes it won't.  The point is that it doesn't matter.  Diversity should not be an end in itself; excellence is the goal.  Rejecting the primacy of diversity constitutes a head-on assault on the received wisdom of Washington and elite American culture. [...] Treating people the same way regardless of their race or sex used to be considered the definition of fairness; now it is understood to be vicious and intolerable.

Ontario Bar Requires Lawyer Pledge To "Promote Equality".  The Ontario bar association has adopted a rule under which all lawyers "must prepare and submit a personal 'Statement of Principles' attesting that we value and promote equality, diversity and inclusion," according to Bruce Pardy in the National Post, who says it's a bad idea.

Ontario lawyers resist mandatory promote-equality pledge.  Lakehead University law faculty member Ryan Alford has filed a challenge to the new Ontario bar rule requiring all lawyers to prepare and submit personal "Statement of Principles" avowing their support for equality, diversity, and inclusion.  The rules have drawn fire across Canada as compelled speech, but the bar association turned down a request that individual lawyers be allowed exemptions if they believe the requirement violates their conscience.

The Scourge of Multiculturalism.  The argument made by immigration and refugee enthusiasts, namely that the Western democracies were founded and settled by immigrants and therefore should continue to welcome newcomers, is valid only to a point.  In the course of time the original settlers created a national identity, a sense of communal membership in a common world unified by custom and law.  It is that identity that should be preserved. [...] To say "we are a nation of immigrants," then, is immaterial.  We are now a nation of citizens.  Skilled immigrants, properly screened and taking into account real domestic needs, should be part of the country's future, but not in multiples that threaten to dilute a nation's internal cohesion, not from backward countries whose inhabitants are all too often uneducated, illiterate and functionally unassimilable, and certainly not from parts of the world — in particular, the Islamic world — whose history, culture, theology and politics have ranged it against everything that Western civilization comprises.

The Impending Death of Multiculturalism.  We are all familiar with the Democratic Party gambit of packing the electorate with poor, third-world immigrants, all but guaranteed to vote for the party who offers them a living on the taxpayers' largesse.  While progressives still roll their eyes at the suggestion that this is why third-world immigration has been encouraged — the point is no longer even worth arguing.  The fact that this immigration policy has, for many decades, had the effect of moving the country to the left is uncontestable.

Conformity and Manipulation:  The American Virtues.  "My biggest flaw and strength," says James Damore, "may be that I see things very differently than normal."  This simple sentence reveals the essence of our fraying social fabric.  For Damore's "strength" — his rare ability to think for himself and exercise independent judgment — naturally leads to conflict with the majority, who, in their stupidity and weakness, must deem his virtue a "flaw," a sign that he is not "normal."  For most people — those bundles of herd affect — "truth," as they can understand it, is nothing but a means for their personal interests, which are mostly material and, beyond that, trivial.  Hence their utter inability to understand a man like James Damore and their natural disdain for any principled truth-teller.  The former chess prodigy is now blacklisted from the big tech companies, despite having, in the language of the corporate rabble, a proven track record of success as a software engineer.  In the Guardian article from which I have quoted, we learn that Damore was diagnosed with a mild form of autism in his mid-20s.  Paul Lewis, the liberal author of this subtle hatchet job, based — where else — in San Francisco, describes Damore's first failure to submit to the diversity idol.

Yale college removes portraits of white men to promote diversity, then re-installs them.  The head of one of Yale University's residential colleges said this week that he was misinterpreted when he announced that portraits of his white male predecessors would be taken down.  In a Nov. 1 email to students, Pierson College head Stephen Davis wrote that the portraits, which were initially removed to make space for the college's annual Halloween dance, would not immediately be put back up as customary.

A Foundation of Nonsense.  It seems today that Western societies are painfully re-learning things that were common knowledge a few generations ago.  The old axiom, fences make good neighbors, was replaced with "diversity is our strength."  Every time a swarthy fellow blows up in the public square, we inch a bit closer to the realization that diversity is a nightmare.  That's the part we see.  The part we don't see, at least not yet, is the crumbling of the foundation stones of the modern West.

Diversity Is Our Terror.  New York City is an incredibly diverse place.  Here, an Uzbek Muslim immigrant in on a visa diversity lottery can run over Argentinian tourists, an Egyptian-Palestinian Muslim can shoot a Danish musician on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Saudi Muslims can fly planes into the World Trade Center killing people from 77 countries, an Afghan Muslim can plant pressure cooker bombs in Chelsea, a Lebanese Muslim can open fire on a van of Jewish students and a Pakistani-Kuwaiti and Iraqi Muslim can bomb the World Trade Center.  Truly, diversity is our terror.  Nationally, the perpetrators and plotters of Islamic terrorism in just the last ten years have included Pakistanis (San Bernardino, Garland, UC Merced), Chechens (Boston Marathon bombing), Afghans (Orlando shootings), Somalis (Portland Christmas Tree bomb plot, Minnesota mall stabbing, Ohio State Car Ramming, Columbus Machete Attack), Palestinians (Fort Hood, Chattanooga recruitment shootings) and Iraqis (Bowling Green plot).  That's a whole lot of diversity.  And it's killing us.

Democrats need to turn Japanese.  Japan is an island.  The people do not believe in nor want cultural diversity.  I greatly respect that.  It is a survival mechanism that thus far has avoided a 9/11 or being overrun by hordes of rapists.  The Japanese look at the rest of the world and double down.

How to Destroy a Nation.  If you want to destroy a nation, you find a way to denigrate its belief in itself.  Smear its founders.  Belittle its accomplishments.  Pillory it for failing to live up to its ideals.  Mock its most sacred traditions.  Deride its heroes.  In the end, you will no longer have a nation, but only a collection of tribes, who occupy the same space but share no common concepts.  There is nothing to unify them.  In other words, you will be able to pinpoint that country with geographical data, but you will not find a national people.

Former Agent:  Secret Service Lowered Standards In Pursuit Of Diversity.  As the U.S. Secret Service sought greater diversity in its ranks, the agency lowered its standards, former agent Dan Bongino says in a new book on the inner workings of the government agency assigned to protect the President of the United States.  This accusation has led to a war of words between the former agent and the agency he used to work for.  The lowering of standards has been ongoing since at least "the early 2000s," according to the book.

Professor who called diversity training a 'waste' resigns after dean punishes him.  A Duke University Divinity School professor who called diversity training a "waste" of time has resigned after disciplinary proceedings were launched against him and he was barred by his dean from faculty meetings.  At issue is a February email in which Professor Paul Griffiths advised his colleagues not to bother with a proffered volunteer diversity training, called "Racial Equity Institute Phase I Training."  Slated for March, it would work to ensure the divinity school is "equitable and anti-racist in its practices and culture," according to the invite.  "I exhort you not to attend this training," Griffiths stated in his Feb. 6 listserv reply to his peers.  "Don't lay waste your time by doing so.  It'll be, I predict with confidence, intellectually flaccid:  there'll be bromides, clichés, and amen-corner rah-rahs in plenty."

This Professor Resigned Rather Than Go to Diversity Training.  Uh-oh, a "training" session.  Anyone who's ever worked for an entity with a human resources department knows what that's going to be like:  two very, very long days of "workshops" in which overpaid "training" hucksters — sorry, I meant consultants — haul out the PowerPoint slides and waste your time with yada-yada about multiculturalism, structural racism, microagressions, and whatever else is in the social-justice-warrior weapons cache these days. [...] So this is what you're being strongly urged to attend.  And we all know what "strongly urged" means:  Show up or you will pay the price.

The End of Diversity.  [Scroll down]  Eventually, of course, the Progs figured out that this was a loser so they moved onto celebrating diversity.  Unlike tolerance or sensitivity, diversity has the benefit of putting everyone on the same level.  One race is as good as another.  Men and women can do all the same things.  All cultures are the same.  Modern life was going to be a celebration of the beauty and variety of life!  Well, except the white parts. [...] The internal incoherence of multiculturalism means that they will forever have to be dashing about in an effort to keep the plates spinning.  One day we're celebrating diversity and the next day we're stoning a heretic for noting that people are different.

Diversity: where every type of person is accepted but one.
Mother Kicked Out of 'Multicultural Playgroup' Because She's Caucasian.  Tara Coverdale took her two small children — an 8-month-old and a 4-year-old — to an inner city park in Sydney, Australia to play recently, only to be told she's not welcomed there.  "I'm sorry you can't come here," a worker from Alexandria Park Community Centre told her.  "It's a multicultural playgroup.  Can I ask what your cultural background is?"  Well, Coverdale is white, Australian, has blonde hair, and freckles.  This didn't help her cause with the "multicultural police."

The King of Hatefacts.  [Scroll down]  Even the sane elements of the backlash were wrong.  The Federalist claimed he should have focused on culture and not race because it's not more white people we need, it's more Westerners.  This is a beautiful notion and I fully agree with it, but here on earth, we're not taking in immigrants who want to assimilate.  In fact, we are openly encouraging immigrants not to assimilate.  Public school teachers have dedicated their careers to eradicating patriotism and teaching our children how cruel and unusual we have been throughout history.  Politicians are knowingly avoiding immigrants who assimilate and focusing on ones who will antagonize the native population.  This is especially true in Britain, where Tony Blair's speechwriter conceded as much.  Look at the London bombings.  They were all radicalized in Britain.  One of them was a Jamaican who grew up in Bradford, where the Muslim population is booming.  Since the bombings, London has elected a Muslim mayor who proudly exclaims, "Immigrants shouldn't have to assimilate."  Here in America we have the Tsarnaev brothers, who grew up reading comic books and watching sports; but after years of being told America [is bad], they began to believe their relatives back in Chechnya.  Then they blew us up.

Rescind the Executive Order — And Replace It With Many Tougher Ones.  The president cannot lose here.  We must protect our borders; keep out the terrorists and rein in out-of-control immigration.  It is the signal issue that got him elected.  It is also the signal action needed to save this country from the Left's malevolent intentions.  The Left is attempting to subvert our country by simply replacing its population with a more malleable, sympathetic one.  Unlike the immigrants of yesteryear, today's are largely illiterate, welfare-dependent, unwilling to learn our language and definitely hostile to American culture and traditions.  And while they are in many cases fleeing conditions created by their countries' socialist policies, they nonetheless bring socialist ideas with them.  As our country has become more "multi-cultural", it has drifted ever leftward.

Justifying Exclusion through 'Diversity'.  It is common, at colleges and universities across the country, for the test scores of Asian-American students who have been admitted to a given college to be higher than the test scores of whites or of blacks or of Hispanics. [...] But what justifies diversity?  Nothing but unsupported assertions, repeated endlessly, piously, and loudly.  Today, as in the past, diversity is essentially a fancy word for group quotas.  It is one of a number of wholly subjective criteria — such as "leadership" — used to admit students to colleges and universities according to their group membership, rather than according to their individual qualifications.  This is not something new.  Nor is it something confined to the United States.

The 'Diversity' Fraud.  Nothing so epitomizes the politically correct gullibility of our times as the magic word "diversity."  The wonders of diversity are proclaimed from the media, extolled in the academy and confirmed in the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States.  But have you ever seen one speck of hard evidence to support the lofty claims?  Although diversity has become one of the leading buzzwords of our time, it has a history that goes back several generations.

Ending Multicultural Madness.  Judging from the actions of Democrat politicians, immigrants who come here from Third World cultures and with Third World mindsets are not expected to blend in.  Heaven forbid, as that would be an affront to their "dignity" and go against the grain of multiculturalism.  As a result, separate enclaves are popping up across the country, even in the heartland.  The Democratic Party celebrates Balkanization as this enlarges their constituency base, never caring how it weakens overall American culture and strength.  In a commencement address, Secretary of State John Kerry echoed this theme.  He lectured Americans that we must be prepared to live in a borderless world, a world that he and his fellow globalists are busily trying to construct.  And here, Kerry did not mean borderless in terms of only goods and services and capital.  He meant people, too.  And John Kerry's position is in full accord with the agenda of the globalist elite.

U.S. Workplace English Rules Discriminatory, Foreign Language Demands Aren't.  Requiring employees in the United States to speak a foreign language is not discriminatory but forcing them to speak English violates federal law under a sweeping order issued by the Obama administration to crack down on "national origin discrimination" in the workplace.  The government's new enforcement guidelines state that bilingual requirements don't meet discrimination claims under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act but English-only rules do because they're restrictive language policies.  The administration asserts that the new rules, which cover a broad range of scenarios that could get employers in trouble, were created because the American workforce is "increasingly ethnically diverse."

FDNY hires nine ex-felons amid effort to boost diversity.  The newly-minted class of FDNY probationary firefighters includes an unprecedented nine rookie Bravest with felony convictions, including one who did jail time for gun possession, insiders told The [New York] Post.  The nine ex-felons, all minorities, were among 295 probies who graduated from the Fire Academy on Nov. 2, as critics charge the FDNY has loosened hiring standards to diversify its ranks.  One of the nine, a black 32-year-old who joined the city as an EMT in 2012, served more than a year in the Nassau County Correctional Center after two 2005 convictions for carrying loaded guns.

Feds Order Law Enforcement Agencies to Ignore Drug Use, Criminal Records to Hire Minorities.  In a push to hire minority police officers, the Obama administration is asking the nation's 18,000 law enforcement agencies to forgive drug use, disregard the criminal records of candidates from "underrepresented communities" and lower standards on written and physical exams.  It's part of the administration's Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement initiative following a string of officer-involved shootings involving African Americans.  Key to the mission is the racial diversification of local law enforcement agencies so that they "better reflect the diversity of the communities they serve."

Obama's 'Diversity' Mandates Put 'Progressive' Agenda over National Security.  "President Obama released a Memorandum to promote diversity in the national security workforce," National Security Advisor Susan Rice announced Wednesday.  "This is why that makes us safer and stronger."  Rice's "why" is long on self-serving blather and short on "how."  She touches on "building an international order" with the UN, fighting Ebola in West Africa and pushing the transfer of wealth via "climate change" treaty (that has not been ratified by the Senate).  But the talking point to accept and repeat without question is that "our diversity" is "what makes us truly exceptional."  If you're an Opposite Day "progressive" dependent on "divide and conquer" tactics to rally favored demographics and marginalize others, what better way to do it than with a reverse "E Unum Pluribus" motto?

Diversity will be the death of America, yes, literally.  Well, well this is just a natural extension to the Left's war on cops isn't it?  And it goes so well along with the Left's sick devotion to "equality".

Department of Social Justice:  LEOs Can Be Criminals or Non-Citizens, So Long As They Aren't White Guys.  If you want a job in law enforcement, not being a criminal is okay, but the important thing is not to be a white man: [...] Since the only real criterion is not to be a white male, and white males are less likely to have criminal records, then obviously checking into the criminal histories of potential law enforcement officers would be counterproductive.  If being a criminal doesn't count against you, why should not being an American citizen?

DOJ: Diversity Trumps Ability to Pass Criminal Background Checks.  On Wednesday [10/5/2016], the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the "Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement" report, which highlights hiring practices in the law enforcement community.  In the report.  the DOJ discusses problems associated with diversifying police forces, claiming racial diversity is more important than being a law-abiding citizen.

Obama's DOJ blames criminal, citizenship checks of job seekers for lack of police diversity.  Local police departments' use of criminal background checks and citizenship requirements to vet job applicants are among the barriers limiting diversity in law enforcement, a new Justice Department report finds.  The report, released Wednesday in conjunction with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, critiques several widely used police-hiring practices — noting that over-reliance on such criteria "may limit certain underrepresented communities' representation in law enforcement agencies."  "Ensuring that law enforcement agencies represent the diversity of the communities they serve can help restore trust and improve policing," said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta.

DOJ: Criminal Background Checks, Citizenship Requirements Barriers to Police-Force Diversity.  The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) released a comprehensive report Wednesday [10/5/2016] examining law enforcement hiring, recruitment, and retention policies with the aim of increasing diversity in police departments.  The report — "Advancing Diversity in Law Enforcement" — highlighted barriers to diversity within police departments, such as "the use of criminal background checks" which the researchers found "is likely to disproportionately impact racial minority applicants."  The report also found that U.S. citizenship requirements "may prevent a considerable number of racial and ethnic minorities — many of whom have valuable foreign language skills — from being hired by law enforcement agencies."

Air Force Announces It Will Mandate Diversity Quotas In Candidate Pools For Key Positions.  The Air Force announced a new set of 13 inclusion initiatives Friday [9/30/2016] with the goal of ensuring the force isn't as white, male and heterosexual as it is now.  Air Force officials are intent on building upon a foundation of nine initiatives from 2015, in order to boost diversity.  Those nine initiatives weren't enough to make the Air Force as diverse as desired, which is why it is taking more intensive steps in 2016.

Evil Twins - Why Multiculturalism Is As Wicked As Nazism.  Few people who believe in multiculturalism will have the slightest inkling of its origins.  Brainwashed by a tsunami of state propaganda, most people in the West believe multiculturalism is a benign, progressive ideology.  They hold this belief because core to this ideology is the assertion that all races and all cultures are equal.  All people no matter their race or creed share the same desire to live alongside each other in peaceful coexistence.  Establishing such a vibrant mix of races and cultures will bring enrichment and diversity — but only to the West.  Enriched and diverse multicultural societies will spawn a kaleidoscopic utopia where all join hands and sing "Kumbaya", and intolerance, violence and hatred will have been overcome forever.  Not only is this is a childish fantasy that ignores centuries of human evolution and interracial/inter-tribal conflicts, it's also a completely false understanding of what multiculturalism is and why it came into being.

Whites are the new Indians.  [Scroll down]  A Japanese city is Japanese.  A Mexican city is Mexican.  An Indian city is Indian.  A Chinese city is Chinese.  It is only in Europe and the Anglo satellites where you have this phenomenon of cities being not just slightly divergent from the general population but foreign to it.  New York, for example, is not an Anglo-American city, but an Israeli-Puerto Rican-Chinese-Pakistani-Ecuadorian-Mexican-Filipino-Dominican-African-Korean city.  Paris is not a French city, but an Algerian-Moroccan-Portuguese-Senegalese-Vietnamese-Malian city.  London is not a British city, but an Indian-Pakistani-Jamaican-Polish-Bengali-Arab-Chinese-Nigerian city.  It will pose a geopolitical problem in the future, that metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties in the same country are different races from one another.

Is American Multiculturalism a Failure?  Has the great American experiment in diversity ended in failure?  That's the impression you might get from an array of recent developments — Black Lives Matter protests, anti-Muslim sentiment, resentment of undocumented immigrants and, last but not least, Donald Trump.  We seem to be loudly fracturing and separating, not coming together.  We're all pluribus and no unum.

Ugly Minority Girls Are Winning Beauty Pageants To Satisfy The Diversity Agenda.  Toxic SJW notions of "beauty" (think awful role model and alleged scammer Tess Munster) are well-known.  Sadly, it appears that the need to appease certain groups has now filtered down to giving beauty pageant titles to girls based on their race or ethnicity.  Two recent "winners" of state-based national beauty pageants, Magnolia Maymuru (Miss World, Northern Territory, Australia) and Arianna Quan (Miss America, Michigan), are so unbelievably plain and even ugly that the "beauty" in beauty pageant should have been removed from the contests they each entered.  In the case of Quan, the biggest criticisms came from her ancestral homeland of China.  Chinese netizens need not fear the kind of racism accusations that would be leveled at white Americans questioning whether she deserved the Miss America title for one of America's most populous states (Miss America's national event will be in September).  Media coverage of Maymuru's crowning was ecstatic, namely because, in the words of many racial quota-leaning commenters, "it was about time" that an Aboriginal Australian won such a title.  Few online respondents dared to call her unattractive due to the near certainty of them being labeled as racist bigots.  She eventually placed in the top 10 for the Miss World Australia final, "beating" much more attractive competition.

A World Without Western Civ.  [Scroll down]  Most uncomfortable for egalitarians and their ilk is that there are vast landmasses — sometimes entire continents — where the indigenous inhabitants have invented virtually nothing.  Sub-Saharan Africans are not known for contributing much to rocket science, and black Americans are so underrepresented as inventors that everyone has heard a gazillion times about the mulatto who improved blood-storage methods and George Washington Carver's wondrous dalliances with the magical peanut.  The so-called "Native Americans" are credited with inventing the spinning top, which somehow proved incapable of defending them against the white man and his guns.

Diversity vs.  Meritocracy.  Some believe that the notion of meritocracy arose in Great Britain at the end of the nineteenth century.  Apparently, it was offered as an antidote to aristocratic privilege.  Instead of choosing government servants by their breeding, the British decided to use an examination.  It was the only way to ensure that the best and the brightest were running the country. [...] Britain's sister republic, America, has long since sacrificed mush of its own meritocracy on the bonfire of diversity.  Of course, there are still islands of merit, but, for the most part, we are more worried about how diverse we are than about how good we are.

Fundamentally Transformed.  The only hope for history's rare multiracial, multiethnic, and multireligious nations is to adopt a common culture, one that artificially suppresses the natural instinct of humans to identify first with their particular tribe.  America, in the logical spirit of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, was exceptional among modern societies in slowly evolving from its original, largely European immigrant population to a 21st-century assimilated, integrated, and intermarried multiracial society, in which religious and racial affiliations were incidental, not essential, to one's public character and identity.

America In Free Fall.  President Obama has largely ignored the old ideal of the melting pot and in its place preferred a salad-bowl multiculturalism of competing ethnicities, tribes, and races, whose activism wins concessions from local, state and federal governments.  Casual comments and references by Obama-like "bring a gun" to a knife fight, the "bitter clingers" of Pennsylvania, and "typical white person"-stoked racial tensions.  So did Attorney General Eric Holder's crude referrals to "my people" and a "nation of cowards." [...] Apparently, the Obama administration never considered that a multiracial America united by one culture was an historical exception.  Everywhere else, multiculturalism and tribalism without assimilation, integration, and intermarriage have proved to be an abject and usually violent catastrophe:  most recently, in the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Middle East.  Europe's attempt to emulate a multiracial United States is ending in utter failure with unchecked immigration, multicultural incoherence, and rising Islamism.

Is Diversity Our Strength?  However great the shock of the massacre in Orlando, it is only a matter of time before we start hearing again the fact-free dogma that "diversity is our strength."  If there is any place in the Guinness Book of World Records for words repeated the most often, over the most years, without one speck of evidence, "diversity" should be a prime candidate.  Is diversity our strength?  Or anybody's strength, anywhere in the world?  Does Japan's homogeneous population cause the Japanese to suffer?  Have the Balkans been blessed by their heterogeneity — or does the very word "Balkanization" remind us of centuries of strife, bloodshed and unspeakable atrocities, extending into our own times?  Has Europe become a safer place after importing vast numbers of people from the Middle East, with cultures hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization?

Study: Changes in racial composition lead to decline in church attendance.  The more mixed the Sunday morning pews are, the fewer people are likely to be in them.  That's the primary finding of a new study from Baylor University published in the current Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion.  Researchers studied the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, where racial diversity doubled from 1993 to 2012, and found that, at the same time, churches with the greatest diversity growth also had the steepest declines in attendance.

Being black or female or talented or intelligent isn't enough.
One in six BBC stars 'must be gay or lesbian or disabled' by 2020 says new staff-hiring guidelines at the corporation.  One in six of all on-screen BBC roles must go to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender or disabled people by 2020, the corporation's new diversity targets state.  In a bid to deter criticism that it has been failing to reflect its audience, the BBC has pledged that LGBT and disabled people will each make up eight percent of all on-air and on-screen roles.

Whereas the Founders prized unity, 21st-century America has embraced diversity.
The Contradictions of Diversity.  [Scroll down]  Appearance and accent are no longer reliable indicators of race.  If Ted Cruz did not self-identify as half Cuban-American, he might easily be tagged with almost any ethnicity.  Barack Obama — middle-class, Hawaiian-raised, prep-schooled, and of half Kenyan ancestry — had no early experience with the African-American underclass; Barack Hussein Obama massaged that fact in a way Barry Soetero might not have been able to.  The current career move of ethnicizing names, along with highlights of hyphenation and accent marks, reflects an unspoken reality:  Ethnic heritage is now often so impossible to verify that bumper-sticker linguistic aids are vital.  Professor Joseph Smith is not so likely an affirmative-action candidate as he most certainly would be if he chose to identify with his mother's line and became José López-Smith[.]

Magic Honky Theory.  For as long as most people reading this have been alive, the cult in charge of America has preached the need for full integration.  This has led to endless campaigns to "desegregate" the schools, housing, jobs, sports clubs, etc. [...] The way around this has been to argue that "diversity" makes everyone better somehow.  This proximity effect only works in your neighborhood, of course.  The bunkered enclaves where our betters live are almost all white.  Like so much of what these people say in public, it is intended to obscure, not explain.  Ask these people why diversity is good and they start mumbling about their favorite Ethiopian restaurant.  Western civilization did OK without having a single Ethiopian restaurant for a few millennia, but we're to believe it is now a necessity.

The Fruits of Multiculturalism, Abroad and at Home.  Once upon a time there were people who naively fantasized about how all the incompatible cultures of the world were going to magically blend, weaving a beautiful tapestry of colors and variations.  They called this "Multiculturalism". [...] The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive.  Multiculturalism is entirely subversive.  It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them.  Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent.

America's Toxic Brew: "Diversity".  The PC crowd preaches constantly that "diversity" is our "strength".  Horse hockey!  There is no strength whatsoever when everyone is part of a group rather than being an individual.  Strength comes from a common language and culture — all of these "hyphenated" appellations are doing nothing to bring people together and doing everything to divide us.  This is why we are fracturing as a society and devolving into a balkanized country.

How to Make Sense of an Incoherent America.  Sometime in the 1990s the growing contradictions of affirmative action in a multiracial society became problematic.  Ethnic ancestry was often neither easily identifiable nor readily commensurate with class status, and so gave way to a more popular term:  "diversity."  Under diversity, it no longer mattered so much how wealthy or poor one was.  Nor was it a concern exactly who one's grandparents had been — at long as, in some vague way, one was non-"white."  If so, one was diverse.  That was deemed in and of itself a good thing.  We no longer worried as much whether someone enjoying affirmative action status was upper middle-class or the child of a surgeon.  Nor did it matter that one was only one-quarter "Latino" or, in fact, took the rarer Elizabeth Warren or Ward Churchill route of fabricating ethnic ancestry out of whole cloth.

How to Destroy a People Through Immigration.  Multiculturalism is simply a tool for divide and conquer.  Is there then any point in trying to comprehend its logic at all?  Maybe it was just a convenient excuse used for disrupting the established order of nation states by flooding them with mass immigration under the cover of "cultural diversity" or historical inevitability.  If that is the case, there never was any coherent logic behind it, so we shouldn't waste our time looking for one.  Many of those promulgating it never believed a word of it themselves.  Multiculturalism is the new Allah:  Don't understand, just obey.

Multiculturalism: What the Left Would Prefer You Didn't Know.  Multiculturalism is a very specific political philosophy which could scarcely be further removed from the idea that we should live in one big, happy, multi-ethnic melting pot and all just get along.  That's because it means the exact opposite.  It's about separatism, not integration.

Multiculturalism is a Failure.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel declared that in Germany, multiculturalism has "utterly failed."  Both Australia's ex-prime minister John Howard and Spain's ex-prime minister Jose Maria Aznar reached the same conclusion about multiculturalism in their countries.  British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that multiculturalism is fostering extremist ideology and directly contributing to homegrown Islamic terrorism.  UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage said the United Kingdom's push for multiculturalism has not united Britons but pushed them apart.  It has allowed for Islam to emerge despite Britain's Judeo-Christian culture.

Multiculturalism's Leftist Threat to the American Story.  Is multiculturalism a decent if banal posture that basically boils down to respecting other cultures and getting sloshed on St. Patrick's Day and Cinco de Mayo?  Or is it a much darker social model used as a Trojan horse to transform Western society fundamentally, especially this one?  I think both can be true, but I worry only about the fundamental transformation part.

Court tells TUSD to improve teachers' racial diversity.  The Tucson Unified School District has been ordered to improve racial diversity among its teachers.  In a district that has spent years under federal oversight for desegregation efforts, U.S.  District Judge David Bury has told it to reduce by half the number of schools where racial disparities exist among the teaching staff — affecting more than one-third of TUSD schools.

The 'Diversity' Hustle.  If a family of Mexican immigrants opens a taco stand, should they be required to hire a Korean assistant manager for the sake of "diversity"?  Does anyone complain there are "too many" Italians working at the pizza restaurant?  Businesses exist for exactly one reason, to make profit.  Anything that contributes to the goal of making profit is good, and anything that distracts from that goal is bad.  Period.

Diversity compels society give up its traditions, its sacred rights, and even its basic decency.  We can now add Halloween parties to the list of things we can't do because we live in a diverse society notes one Benny Huang, who knows a thing or two about racial diversity.

Diversity: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.  Advocates of diversity ought to familiarize themselves with a little thing called "truth in advertising."  Like all ideas, diversity is "sold," in a manner of speaking. Great efforts are made to get the public to buy into the concept that the optimal model for society is a heterogeneous jumble of people who share nothing in common.  The fewer commonalities we have, the better!  That's what diversity means — differentness.  It's enough to make you wonder what the benefits of diversity are; besides the race riots and lack of social cohesion, I mean. [...] They never do.  Diversity is promoted as an unqualified good, something that only a crazy person wouldn't like.  It's all roses, no thorns.

Proof that diversity adds nothing to productivity:
Outrage as Twitter reveals just 49 of its 3,000 US employees are black.  Twitter only has 49 black employees — out of 2,910 staff members in America.  The 35 men and 14 women account for just 1.7 percent of the firm's US operation, which is 93.8 percent white or Asian.  Slamming the figures, released in a compulsory Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) report, Rev Jesse Jackson said people are 'becoming intolerant' of the stilted progress.

The Editor says:
That's right, Jesse.  If only some of those 3,000 employees were black, the company might be successful!

Colonization and Cultural Genocide — and They Call it 'Immigration'.  Remember the old Stanford University chant, led by Jesse Jackson, "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Culture's got to go!"?  Well, it's going, going... and will be gone unless we make some profoundly radical changes.  It's cultural and demographic genocide, generally lamented except in the one case in which, labeled diversity, it's trumpeted.  That would be the case of the one civilization leftists hate with every fiber of their being.

School Districts Spending Millions on 'White Privilege' Training for Employees.  The Pacific Educational Group (PEG) espouses a lot of controversial and stereotypical concepts regarding minority students in K-12 schools.  For instance, the organization teaches that black kids are less likely to respond to fundamental ideas like working hard to achieve success, or being on time for school or work, because those ideas are supposedly foreign to African-American culture.  PEG is literally selling notions like that to American public schools, and the schools are buying them, at a cost of millions of tax dollars every year.

The Most Diverse Cities Are Often the Most Segregated.  When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again:  Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park.  Do not go north of 47th Street.  Do not go south of 61st Street.  Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue.

Farage: The 'Dramatic Failure' Of Multiculturalism Drives Radical Islam.  Why are thousands of European Muslims flocking to radical Islam? According to UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, "state sponsored multiculturalism" deserves much of the blame for why extremism has found a home in Europe.  "We [the U.K.] have pursued a policy for nearly four decades now of multiculturalism," Farage told The Daily Caller Thursday [2/26/2015].  "We have encouraged division.  Rather than having different communities coming together, under one law, we have encouraged division."  "That policy I think has been a dramatic failure," the Member of European Parliament (MEP) added.

'Diversity' in action.  Islamic terrorist attacks in Europe, and European governments' counter-attacks are more than just a passing news story.  Europe is currently in the process of paying the price for years of importing millions of people from a culture hostile to the fundamental values of Western culture.  And this is by no means the last of the installments of that price, to be paid in blood and lives, for smug elites' Utopian self-indulgences in moral preening and gushing with the magic word "diversity."

UKIP's Farage: Multiculturalism Creating 'Fifth Column' in West.  In the wake of Wednesday's massacre of twelve people at a satirical French newspaper by suspected Islamic fundamentalists, UK Independence Party head Nigel Farage warned that the obsession with fostering a multicultural society has created a "fifth column" in the West.  As leader of the UK's fastest-growing political party, Farage has pushed a British exit from the European Union and a reform of Britain's liberal immigration laws, which his party believes limits economic opportunity for UK citizens and threatens the nation's social fabric — even its physical safety.

Diversity set Ferguson on fire.  Commentators offer different reasons why Ferguson is burning.  They blame racial injustice or militarized police or the police officer who shot an unarmed teenager.  Some even blame Michael Brown.  But all these explanations miss the truth:  Ferguson is symptom, not cause, and the cause is diversity.

POLL: 95 Percent of BBC Viewers Think Multiculturalism Has Failed.  [G]rowing evidence suggests that multiculturalism itself is responsible for increasing segregation in Britain.  Last year the Daily Mail reported on the phenomenon of 'White flight' — that is, white British people moving out of London in vast numbers.  Between 2001 and 2011 some 620,000 white British people left London, tipping the ethnic makeup of London into majority non-British heritage.

Is Black History Month still needed?  How valuable, knowledge-wise, is a single month for youth who have practically the whole of human knowledge at their fingertips on their phones?  Furthermore, these African-American Millennials say they never really learned anything useful during Black History Month activities at school, and they fret that having a formal, month-long observance gives the nation a pass to ignore black history the rest of the year.  Despite all that, they'd keep it.

The downside of diversity.  Diversity can bring risks as well as benefits and perils as well as perks.  There are trade-offs to be made, for example between the trust that comes from sharing a common background and the cultural sensitivity that comes from employing people from different parts of the word.

Why Obama is Uneducated.  A few years ago I participated in a radio debate on "white privilege" with a certain man, whose name is unimportant, who had a Ph.D. in "ethnic studies."  At one point he introduced an argument by saying, "If whites are 80 percent of the population...," which prompted me to interject and point out that whites (non-Hispanic) are now only 63 percent of America.  Of course, you might think that someone with a doctorate in "ethnic studies" would know what the ethnic and racial composition of the country is.

Homosexuals Get Duck Dy-Nasty.  "Tolerance," as it has been marketed, was always a con. [...] For one thing, tolerance always implies a negative, real or perceived; you wouldn't have to tolerate a beautiful car or a delectable meal — you relish those things.  But you might have to tolerate a cold or bad weather.  Thus, tolerance is only noble in two situations:  One is when dealing with something objectively negative that cannot be eliminated, such as irremediable pain.  The other is when confronted with something you don't happen to like and could avoid, but that is objectively good or neutral; an example would be tolerating a food you detest in order to avoid offending your hosts.

Blacks and Obama.  Obama's electoral success further confirms what I've often held:  The civil rights struggle in America is over, and it's won.  At one time, black Americans did not have the constitutional guarantees enjoyed by white Americans; now we do.  The fact that the civil rights struggle is over and won does not mean that there are not major problems confronting many members of the black community, but they are not civil rights problems and have little or nothing to do with racial discrimination.

Lawmaker: Hire more whites to run government.  Robb Pitts, a county commissioner in Atlanta, Ga., says the county needs to hire more whites. [...] Pitts, a black, said, "I would encourage the county manager to find ways to inform all ethnicities when new positions arise and make a concerted effort to diversify our employee base."  That was in a recent email to constituents, and Fulton County Personnel Board Chairman Paul Zucca says still today the workforce "needs more diversity."

The Editor says...
Why not hire the best available workers, instead of the ones that will produce just the right mix of colors?

Multiculturalism is the enemy of democracy.  Here we go again. Brazen and brutal attacks against British and French soldiers.  In broad daylight.  At the hands of homegrown Islamic extremists (Mr. Adebolajo is reported to have shouted "Allahu Akbar!" as he struck).  European conservatives reflexively clamoring for a crackdown on Islamic fundamentalism.  The left reflexing reminding us that the West is not at war with Islam.  This latest horrific chapter of Islamic radicalism brings me back to a topic I have often chronicled over the past 20 years:  the specter of multiculturalism.

Minority Student Needs.  Quack multiculturalism is the name [Professor Craig] Frisby gives to the vision of multiculturalism that promotes the falsehoods and distortions that dominate today's college agenda, sold under various names such as "valuing diversity," "being sensitive to cultural differences" and "cultural competence."  He identifies different brands of multiculturalism such as boutique, Kumbayah, light-and-fluffy, and bean-counting multiculturalism.  Insider language used to promote multiculturalism includes terms such as "practice tolerance," "celebrate diversity," "equity with excellence" and "differences are not deficits."

Confidential, expensive USDA sensitivity training: 'The Pilgrims were illegal aliens'.  Footage of the United States Department of Agriculture's compulsory "Cultural Sensitivity Training" program reveals USDA employees being instructed to refer to the Pilgrims as "illegal aliens" and minorities as "emerging majorities" — at "a huge expense" to taxpayers.  The video clips were made public Thursday evening by the conservative government accountability group Judicial Watch, which obtained them through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request made on May 18, 2012.

Fifty-One Discriminatory Scholarships At University of Rhode Island Challenged By Equal Protection Project.  The Equal Protection Project (EPP) (EqualProtect.org) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation has challenged numerous discriminatory programs done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  In all we have filed over 50 complaints and legal actions since launch in February 2023, with approximately half the schools withdrawing or modifying the discriminatory programs after our filing.  Almost all of our actions have addressed discrimination in higher education.  In our latest action, we have filed a Civil Rights Complaint (full embed at bottom of post) with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, against the University of Rhode Island over 51 scholarships that discriminated on the basis of race (23), race and sex (5), or sex (23).

The Futile Quest for Equity.  [Scroll down]  The equity battle goes beyond decriminalization.  Many schools today no longer disproportionately punish blacks for misbehaving, regardless of their bad behavior, while adjusting test standards to eliminate gaps in academic performance.  If blacks and Hispanics cannot pass the tests to enter academically elite high schools, alter admissions standard to increase minority representation even if overall school quality declines.  Higher education has become equity obsessed so schools ignore test scores to "curate" a more physically diverse student body.  That a black admitted to Harvard struggles academically and would thrive at the less elite Boston University is irrelevant for equity champions.  The primary goal is outward appearances, not what is academically best for the overwhelmed black student.

Kamalism Will Destroy America.  Recently, we have had two Supreme Court decisions that supposedly ban affirmative action.  But they won't help much, if at all.  This year's incoming class at Harvard, the first one since the Supreme Court decisions, is 14% black — down from last year's 17%, but still above the black share of the overall population (13%).  The percentage will go back up once admissions officers figure out how to fully game the system.  We have seen this many times in the states that have banned affirmative action.  What is needed is not a change in the law or the Constitution, but a change in public sentiment.  "Public sentiment," said Lincoln, "is everything.  Whoever molds public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or judicial decisions.  With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed."  Quotas will not go away because elite public sentiment — Republicans included — supports them, denials notwithstanding.  If admission to Harvard were based strictly on merit, black students would constitute less than 1% of Harvard's student body.  The elite will not tolerate this outcome, nor will it tolerate the consequences of a strictly merit based approach anywhere.

22 more academic scandals.  #1: MIT stops DEI statements.  A couple of months ago, MIT became the first elite university to eliminate DEI statements in faculty hiring:  [Links, exhibits]  #2: MIT stops affirmative action.  ...and then just yesterday, MIT became the first major university to reveal the ethnic composition of its incoming undergraduate class since SCOTUS ruled against affirmative action last year.  Unsurprisingly, asians showed a large (7%) gain, while blacks (-10%) and hispanics (-5) saw large drops.  Whites were not impacted.  See the black line plummet:  [Chart, links, other exhibits.]

Did DEI die?  Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard may prove to be the most important Supreme Court decision on race since Brown v. Board of Education.  Like the Brown case, Students v.  Harvard used the color blind 14th Amendment to end systemic racism in education.  In Brown, the racism was against black people.  At Harvard, the racism was against Asians in admissions. [...] Students v. Harvard case ended affirmative action without saying affirmative action.  The 1970s were filled with foolish ideas — avocado green refrigerators — and affirmative action was the worst.  Leftists replaced equal opportunity with equal outcome.  In college admissions, this meant the bar was lowered for black applicants and raised for Asians. [...] The Constitution does not call for a college student body that reflects the populace; it calls for everyone getting an equal chance to get in.  If a black student can get in with a B average and an Asian with an A+ cannot, that's racist.

Medical Internship Program Under Fire For Rejecting Anyone Who Doesn't 'Identify' As Black.  A medical internship program is under fire for allegedly racially discriminating against otherwise qualified applicants, requiring that applicants must "identify" as black or African American.  Do No Harm filed a complaint on behalf of a member on Thursday requesting the federal government investigate an internship offered by the Alliance for Regenerative Medicine (ARM).  The anonymous member was qualified academically and met all other requirements but was rejected because of his race.

'A Failed Medical School': How Racial Preferences, Supposedly Outlawed in California, Have Persisted at UCLA.  [Scroll down]  Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said one former member of the admissions staff.  "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it."  This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school — six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.  Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country.  The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence.  "I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," a member of the admissions committee told the Free Beacon.

Equity in Action:  Student With 100 GPA Gets Demoted to 72nd Percentile, Swatted From Her Dream School.  Once upon a time, U.S. students were awarded gold stars for achievement; merit was the American way.  These days, that celestial system has dimmed — DEI is lighting the way.  Consider the case of Kristina Raevsky, a 14-year-old from Queens.  The eighth-grader has a lot to be proud of:  Per the New York Post, she's "published four books" and won trophies for debating.  Her attendance record is perfect.  And where grade point average is concerned, Kristina's killing it — she boasts an immaculate 100.  Amid her pursuit of excellence, the youngster has harbored a dream: to go to Flushing's Townsend Harris High School.  But in 2024, accomplishment alone won't cut it.  Identity is king, and New York kneels before the throne.

The Democrats and the Rise of Racial Radicalism.  The attempt to raise black admissions to schools by banning testing or by using specious measures of personality, as Harvard employed, has primarily pitted black applicants against Asian-Americans.  Should the child of a working-class Vietnamese family be bypassed for admission to a university in favor of the child of an upper-middle class black family?

SCOTUS Declines High School Affirmative Action Case; Alito, Thomas Issue Scorching Dissent.  On Tuesday, the Supreme Court declined to review a 4th Circuit ruling regarding racial discrimination in high school admissions.  Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas issued a dissent that can be described as "fiery." [...] Principles, again:  If discriminating based on race is wrong, then it is wrong in every case, no matter who is being advantaged or disadvantaged, no matter what opportunity, service, or anything else is being unfairly granted or denied.  In the Fourth Circuit case, this has to do what what appears to be an affirmative-action workaround by a Fairfax County, Virginia school, the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria. [...] In principle, discrimination is always wrong; in the political world, apparently, racial discrimination is OK if it discriminates against high-achievers and in favor of lower achievers.

There is no diversity in American academia, none at all.  The modern academic racist bureaucracy that is usually called "Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion" (DEI) attempts over and over again to gaslight us into believing its goal is to welcome everyone.  For example, on Yale's DEI webpage is this statement in outlining its "Belonging" program:  ["]Advancing Yale's mission in vibrant community life, in which members encounter and appraise a broad array of ideas, are treated with dignity and respect, and feel welcome to make their voices heard;["]  Nothing about Yale's belonging program however encourages free expression, and in fact it works agreesively to discourage it.

Harvard's Chief Diversity Officer Plagiarized and Claimed Credit for Husband's Work, Complaint Alleges.  It's not just Claudine Gay.  Harvard University's chief diversity and inclusion officer, Sherri Ann Charleston, appears to have plagiarized extensively in her academic work, lifting large portions of text without quotation marks and even taking credit for a study done by another scholar — her own husband — according to a complaint filed with the university on Monday and a Washington Free Beacon analysis.  The complaint makes 40 allegations of plagiarism that span the entirety of Charleston's thin publication record.  In her 2009 dissertation, submitted to the University of Michigan, Charleston quotes or paraphrases nearly a dozen scholars without proper attribution, the complaint alleges.  And in her sole peer-reviewed journal article — coauthored with her husband, LaVar Charleston, in 2014 — the couple recycle much of a 2012 study published by LaVar Charleston, the deputy vice chancellor for diversity and inclusion at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, framing the old material as new research.

Group prepares to sue MIT, alleges it rejects male applicants for less-qualified female ones.  A group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni are working to prepare a lawsuit against the prestigious school that accuses its leaders of unlawfully rejecting male applicants for less-qualified female ones to advance gender parity.  The alumni have formed a nonprofit called FairAdmissions@MIT and currently seek male plaintiffs rejected by MIT despite "top SAT/ACT scores, great grades, strong recommendations, and substantial extra-curricular activities," the group's website states.  "This is about a return to meritocracy," said a member of the group who asked to remain anonymous for fear of possible retaliation against him for organizing the litigation.  "The entire political center of the institution has shifted so far left, and this is directly correlated," he said.  "The point is to treat applicants as individuals, not as members of an identity group."

Federal Judges Maintain Race-Based Admissions at the Naval Academy and West Point, For Now.  The United States Supreme Court ended race-based university admissions earlier this year in cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and North Carolina.  But tucked away in Footnote 4 of that opinion was a special carve-out for the nation's service academies, as we covered here:  The Supreme Court Should Apply Its Affirmative Action Ruling to Military Academies.

Claudine Gay's Most Grievous Sin.  Claudine Gay's sudden resignation from Harvard has been an eye-opener.  Why would Harvard appoint a serial plagiarizer with an undistinguished scholarly record as its President?  Or a person with such limited administrative experience?  Nevertheless, this disaster is even worse.  Claudine Gay is intent on promoting the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity (DIE) agenda whose aim is to radically transform the United States, including universities such as Harvard.  Nor is she alone in her radical quest.  According to one sampling of universities, the average university employes some 45 functionaries responsible for promoting the DIE program to recruit additional Black faculty across all departments.  Make no mistake, the DIE agenda is all about making racial identity, not merit, central to everything.  Hard to imagine an agenda more antithetical to American higher education than DIE.  This is not just an abstract philosophical dispute.  The DIE commissars exercise power over faculty appointments, promotions, and departmental budgets while mobilizing students to cancel conservative speakers.

A Culture in Collapse.  In ancient times, the President of the Harvard Corporation was a signature scholar and intellectual, befitting Harvard's own self-regard as the world's most preeminent university.  No longer.  Now-resigned president Coleen [sic] Gay's meteoric career was based on a flimsy record of a mere 11 articles — the majority of them plagiarized.  Her entire career was fueled by the tired pretext that the privileged Gay was somehow deserving of special deference given her race and gender.  Confronted with such corruption, the Harvard Corporation, its legal team, and 700 faculty sought to downplay Gay's intellectual theft.  Indeed, they smeared her critics as racist — only then to deal with her new billet as a professor of Political Science with a long record of plagiarism that was exempt from the sort of punishments dealt out to students and faculty for less egregious defenses.  How did Ivy League degrees so quickly become mostly certifications of ideological and woke orthodoxy?  Or is it worse than that?

The Big Takeaway from Harvard — Diversity is the Enemy of Meritocracy.  Harvard President Claudine Gay claims that she is being forced to resign because of racism.  As Greg Gutfeld aptly observed on Fox, Gay is not a victim of racism — she was appointed because she is the beneficiary of racist policy.  Ms. Gay is a sterling example of how DEI is the antithesis of meritocracy.  While it may seem that Gay is on the chopping block because of plagiarism or her defense of calls for anti-Jewish genocide, the real reason for her downfall is her lack of qualifications for the job.  She was appointed not because she was the best or the brightest, but because she fit the diversity profile that Harvard wanted.  Gay is the perfect symbol for a university that has become a bastion of left-wing ideology and the enemy of meritocracy.  Does Harvard really want diversity?  If you are a conservative professor, try to get hired at Harvard.  People who demand diversity, such as the people who run Harvard, are against viewpoint diversity — also known as free speech.

Claudine Gay may be gone, but the issues on campus remain.  [Claudine] Gay is not the only one who should be held accountable for this fiasco.  The university's governing board, the Fellows of Harvard Corporation, should be out, too.  They chose her, and their choice did enormous damage to the institution.  They should pay for it.  Their statement accepting her resignation shows just how feckless they are. [...] Barack Obama bears some of the blame, too, at least for keeping her in the position for which she was unfit.  Several weeks ago, after Gay's disastrous Congressional testimony, Obama intervened behind the scenes to keep her as president, even as calls for her resignation were rising.  As the former president and a graduate of the Harvard Law School, Obama was bound to have enormous influence.  It was amplified because he was closely tied to the woman who headed the university board, Penny Pritzker.  A member of the billionaire family, she was Obama's fellow Chicagoan and his secretary of commerce.  Her brother, J.B. Pritzker, is the governor of Illinois with presidential aspirations.

Claudine Gay's Resignation Letter and New York Times Editorial Make the Case for her Firing.  In response to widespread criticism of her "disastrous" testimony on Capitol Hill, in which she declined to say that calling for the genocide of the Jews is inconsistent with Harvard's Code of Conduct because this "depends on the context," Harvard President Claudine Gay issued a typical non-apology apology, [...] Her sudden grasp of the obvious appears to have been generated by her realization that her job as Harvard president was at stake.  However, the damage had been done and calls by the students at Harvard for her to resign, coupled with proliferating accusations of a long career of plagiarism, Gay finally resigned her position as Harvard president, making her time in the position the shortest term (6 months) in history.  Unfortunately, her resignation letter and New York Times editorial after the fact show that since she still doesn't grasp her errors, she should have been fired.

Harvard — Out the Frying Pan Into the Fire.  Harvard may assume the forced resignation of its president, Claudine Gay, has finally ended its month-long scandal over her tenure.  Gay stepped down, remember, amid serious allegations of serial plagiarism — without refuting the charges.  She proved either unable or unwilling to discipline those on her campus who were defiantly antisemitic in speech and action.  But Gay's removal is not the end of Harvard's dilemma.  Rather, it is the beginning.  In the respective press releases from both Gay and the Harvard Corporation, racial animus was cited as a reason for her removal.  Gay did not even refer to her failure to stop antisemitism on her campus or her own record of blatant plagiarism.  Yet, playing the race card reflects poorly on both and for a variety of reasons.  One, Gay's meager publication record — a mere eleven articles without a single published book of her own — had somehow earned her a prior Harvard full professorship and presidency.  Such a thin resume leading to academic stardom is unprecedented.

Claudine Gay Has Gone Away.  Harvard President Claudine Gay has resigned.  She follows Penn's president Liz Magill, and leaves only MIT President Sally Kornbluth surviving among the three university presidents who disgraced themselves in their testimony over campus antisemitism. [...] [T]he plagiarism charges against Gay, while apparently well-founded, aren't why Gay resigned.  She resigned because she sounded like a gray bureaucrat when confronted with the bloody reality of terrorism and antisemitism abroad, and shameless support for terrorism and antisemitism at home. [...] Gay's academic record is unimpressive — her publication record is hardly stellar, especially for Harvard — and she clearly wasn't up to the challenge of the job.  The plagiarism is just the icing on the cake, but if Chris Rufo could find it, Harvard's recruiting educrats should have been able to do so.  Most likely, they didn't do a very in-depth job because they wanted to hire a "diversity" president.  How did that work out for them?

Harvard Crimson reports Claudine Gay has resigned as president.  The student-run daily newspaper at Harvard, the Harvard Crimson, reports that in the face of continuing discovery of plagiarism evidence in her published work, Claudine Gay has resigned: [...] The 13 members of Harvard Corporation, also known as The President and Fellows of Harvard University, have the formal power to hire and fire presidents.  It is widely believed that the richest member among them, billionaire heiress and former Obama administration official Penny Pritzker, led the search committee that hired Gay.  The exposure of their choice as an incompetent plagiarist, tolerant of Jew-hatred, is a gigantic blow to their standing.  Their over-hasty defense of her record, when plagiarism charges were first vetted, also discredits them.  They were entrusted with stewardship of an institution with almost 400 years of history, and they failed to preserve the legacy for which they took responsbility.

Our Razor's Edge.  Harvard President Claudine Gay's tenure is even more tenuous than Biden's.  Harvard can either claim to be the nation's preeminent academic institution or continue to protect a plagiarist as president — not both.  It can profess to be at the center of academia's moral and intellectual universe, but not if its president cannot punish those on campus who daily call for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.  Gay cannot lie to Congress that Harvard in the past has also allowed "hate speech" against entire groups the way it now allows against Jews.  Nor is it sustainable for Gay to fob off calls for her resignation as "racist."  In fact, the more the public learns about her academic career, the more she seems to be a lifetime beneficiary, not a victim, of racially-weighted policies.

Barack's Lieutenant:  The Racism, Revenge, and Ruin of Claudine Gay.  You've no doubt seen a lot of discussion of the fact that, despite her manifest lack of qualifications, Claudine Gay got the big job at Harvard because she checked all the boxes:  black, female, dedicated heart and soul to the vileness of DEI.  And that's all true.  Claudine Gay got that job running Harvard on the strength of identity politics and identity politics alone.  This is a woman who is now under suspicion for some 40 allegations of plagiarism.  Far from being the "distinguished scholar" she was advertised as, Gay is essentially a serial academic rapist.  And Harvard, for having installed her atop its hierarchy, deserves to be deposed from the ranks of elite, or even noteworthy, universities.  Harvard has been utterly corrupted and defiled.  It's now an institution without honor or quality.  Its reputation has been exposed as a fraud.  That's the effect Claudine Gay has already had on Harvard.  The only potential fix for it is her immediate resignation, along with that of all of the people involved in hiring her.  And that won't happen.

Harvard president Claudine Gay is now accused of botching study that landed her major tenure at Stanford.  Harvard's embattled president is facing yet further questions about her academic record, after a statistics expert challenged the data used in a report which helped win her tenure at Stanford.  Claudine Gay, who took over as president in July, has been at the center of a firestorm since the October 7 Hamas attacks.  She was seemingly slow to condemn students who justified the terrorist violence, and slow to speak out against antisemitism on campus.  The harsh spotlight has spread to her academic record, with accusations of plagiarism — and on Tuesday, a data scientist challenged her analytical methods.  It was then revealed that she had refused to share her data, raising eyebrows in academia.

Claudine Gay's DEI Empire.  Harvard president Claudine Gay has been embroiled in controversy for minimizing Hamas terrorism and plagiarizing material in her academic work on race.  Both scandals have discredited her presidency, but neither should come as a surprise.  Throughout Gay's career at Harvard — as professor, dean, and president — racialist ideology has driven her scholarship, administrative priorities, and rise through the institution.  Over the course of her career, Gay quietly built a "diversity" empire that influenced every facet of university life.  Between 2018 and the summer of 2023, as the dean of the largest faculty on campus, Gay oversaw the university's racially discriminatory admissions program, which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional.  Even after the court issued its ruling earlier this year, Gay said that it was a "hard day" and defended the university's policies, which were deemed discriminatory against Asian and white applicants.  Gay promised to comply with the letter of the law, while remaining "steadfast" in her commitment to producing "diversity" — a not-so-subtle message that Harvard would find a way, as the University of California has done, to evade the law in practice.

Analysis: Only 1 out of 16 black student applicants accepted by Harvard deserve to be there based on merit alone.  When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled this summer that universities can no longer consider race as a factor when making their admissions decisions, the idea that getting into college would be based on merit was good news for some students but bad news for others.  Everyone from teachers and parents to admission counselors had to figure out what the decision from Students for Fair Admissions v.  Harvard and its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v.  University of North Carolina would mean for them, but no one would feel its effects more deeply than high school seniors.  In a recent piece for The Washington Post, writer Hannah Natanson followed two high school students who were hoping to get into Ivy League colleges in the wake of the decision and showed how it influenced their approach to college applications.

The Catastrophic Death of Fairness.  Every year, U.S. universities pass over Asian-American applicants with higher grades and test scores in order to select new students from specially designated "underprivileged" categories, even though a disproportionate number of these Asian-Americans come from economically modest families who immigrated to the United States in the last two generations.  For so many of these Asian-Americans, hard work and discipline have been the keys to their academic success.  How have American universities rewarded their virtue?  By engaging in blatant discrimination based on the color of their skin.  Instead of highlighting Asian-American achievement as something that all Americans should emulate, so-called institutions of higher learning pursue "equitable" solutions that unjustly punish the most deserving.

Why a student with a 1590 SAT score was rejected by 16 colleges.  Stanley Zhong did everything right.  A 4.42 weighted GPA (3.98 unweighted).  A 1590 SAT score (1600 is perfect).  He'd even launched his own startup (RabbitSign).  Yet the 18-year-old Palo Alto-area graduate was stunned when he found himself rejected by 16 of the 18 schools he'd applied to, including multiple state schools.  "Some of the state schools, I really thought, you know, I had a good chance," Zhong told ABC7 News.  "I didn't get in."  Zhong's story has begun to gather some media attention, which was the subject of discussion at a recent House Committee on Education and the Workforce hearing.  Yet almost all of the stories failed to mention the likely reason Zhong was rejected:  He's Asian.  For years, colleges have been quietly discriminating against Asians in the admission process, admitting white, black, and Latino students with lower SAT scores and lower GPAs in the name of inclusivity.  The problem for Asians is that, as a group, they tend to score really well.

Is the Left Happy That They Got Their Wish?  Leftwing rich liberals for a half century have virtue signaled their support for affirmative action and de facto racial quotas.  The unspoken presumption was that they would always have the wherewithal to navigate around such systemic discrimination to ensure their own still went to the "right" colleges and universities and onto prestigious jobs and positions.  But then the woke revolution redefined affirmative action as "reparatory" admissions and hiring.  That radical expansion of racial quotas meant elite universities like Stanford and Princeton soon bragged in racist fashion that they would only admit so-called whites as 20-30 percent of their incoming classes, despite their traditional proportional representation of 65-70 percent of the general population. [...] High-paid suburban and progressive professionals whose privileged, and high achieving sons and daughters with 4.0-plus grade point averages and near perfect SAT scores, with an array of "community service" blue-ribbon resum&ecute;s — were summarily rejected en mass from America's most prestigious schools.

College diversity statements got started as a way to weed out white and Asian job applicants.  In July the Chronicle of Education published a story about University of Toronto psychology professor Yoel Inbar.  The short version is that Inbar's partner was offered a job at UCLA and she asked if they might be interested in hiring him as well.  Partner hires are fairly common in academia and Inbar was invited down for an interview.  It all seemed to go well but there was one out-of-the-blue question about his views on diversity statement, something he'd talked about four years earlier on a podcast called Two Psychologists Four Beers.  Inbar is a progressive who supported diversity but said he wasn't sure diversity statements were accomplishing what they were supposed to.

All Racism Is Evil, Supreme Court Rules.  The Supreme Court has ruled 6-3 that racial preferences in college admissions violate the U.S. Constitution.  At last!  No student with high grades and test scores should be rejected in favor of a lesser applicant who happens to have a certain skin color.  The evidence provided to the court showed that Harvard College and the University of North Carolina discriminated against Asian American and white applicants.  A Black, Hispanic or Native American student with a combined SAT score above 1,100 might be invited to apply to Harvard, but an Asian girl would need at least 1,350, and an Asian boy at least 1,380.  The real opportunity gap in this nation is not between Black and white.  It's between rich and poor.  Contrary to what most Americans assume, affirmative action has never helped poor kids.  In fact, Harvard favors wealthy kids.

Democrats Descend Into Racist Hysteria After Affirmative Action Decision.  On Friday, the Supreme Court delivered a landmark win against institutionalized racism by striking down affirmative action in college admissions.  In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that race-based promotion of applicants violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.  That doesn't mean race can never be a factor, but it does means that monolithic favoritism of a single racial group is no longer legal.  You could still explain your unique situation in an essay and have it judged on an individual level, but simply checking a box is no longer a way to gain an immediate advantage based on an inalienable characteristic.  Of course, that assumes these colleges follow the law and don't immediately begin mining for possible loopholes.

'Unstated Affirmative Action:' Berkeley Law Dean Admits He Discriminates Against Potential Faculty Hires.  Video footage appears to show UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky telling a class that he discriminates against potential faculty hires to boost racial diversity using what he called "unstated affirmative action."  The Dean tells his audience, "If ever I'm deposed, I'm going to deny I said this to you."  "What I mean by 'unstated affirmative action' is, what if the college or university doesn't tell anybody, doesn't make any public statements?" Chemerinsky says at the beginning of the video.  [Tweet with video clip]  "I'll give you an example from our law school, but if ever I'm deposed, I'm going to deny I said this to you.  When we do faculty hiring, we're quite conscious that diversity is important to us," the Berkeley Law dean continued.  "We say diversity is important — it's fine to say that," Chemerinsky explained.  "But I'm very careful when we have a faculty appointments committee meeting."

The Real Status of Black Students.  So why are Black students so disadvantaged?  According to the Census Bureau, most Black-intensive school districts get the most amount of money for education, averaging over $28,000 per pupil.  Is the problem more about Black culture?  But Black leaders and activists do not want to acknowledge that.  Rather they want preferential treatment for black students.  Yet Professor John Ogbu studied the issue of Black student underperformance and reported: a) Black students readily admitted they didn't work as hard as Whites, took easier classes and read fewer books.  And why?  Black students said, "It was not cool to be successful or to work hard or to show how smart you are."  Further, the Opportunity Myth study concluded: a) teachers who believe students are capable give students grade-level work; d) [sic] teachers who believe students aren't give their students below-grade work; and c) students know if their teachers believe their students can succeed and that determines students' motivation to learn.  CRT tells teachers that Black students cannot perform like White students.  Thus, teachers look upon African American students as incapable by nature.

Affirmative Action Is Another Nonsense Leftist Position We've Been Conditioned To Take Seriously.  The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against institutions of higher education using race as a factor in the admissions process, which prestigious ones like Harvard have been doing for years in order to artificially boost black and Hispanic enrollment, at the expense of white and Asian applicants.  In essence, the court determined that it violates the 14th Amendment for colleges and universities to prefer some races over others, a concept traditionally known as racism.  Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it."

Harvard vows to 'preserve... our essential values' (meaning affirmative action) following landmark SCOTUS ruling.  It's not quite as dramatic as George Wallace standing in a schoolhouse door sixty years and 19 days ago, trying to block the enrollment of the first two blacks at the University of Alabama, but the incoming (tomorrow) president of Harvard, Claudine Gay is almost as defiant in a video released in reaction to a federal demand that her institution stop discriminating on the basis of race, albeit in a subtler, wordier manner, couched in terms of regret, resolve and compassion.  Harvard will find a way around the ruling, rest assured.

The Supreme Court ends Affirmative Action [in college admissions].  Sixteen years ago, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote these wise words: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."  Today, the Chief Justice put action behind that statement and held unlawful the race-based admissions of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC), declaring they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  In doing so, he ended Affirmative Action in the colleges.  At issue in this particular case were the programs of Harvard and UNC, both of which consider race in determining which students get admitted.  In Harvard's admission process, race is determinative "for a significant percentage 'of all admitted African American and Hispanic applicants.'"  It's also determinative for a large number of Asians and whites who are not admitted based on their race.

Supreme Court rejects affirmative action in ruling on universities using race in admissions decisions.  The U.S. Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on affirmative action Thursday, rejecting the use of race as a factor in college admissions as a violation of the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.  In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, "A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's courage and determination."  "Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student's unique ability to contribute to the university.  In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race," the opinion reads.

The Unsurprising Affirmative Action Decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.  Today [6/29/2023] in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court effectively ended the current regime of diversity-justified-race-based affirmative action in higher education.  As the opinion for the Court by Chief Justice Roberts puts it:  University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.  Respondents' admissions systems — however well intentioned and implemented in good faith — fail each of these criteria.  They must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  While the majority opinion is somewhat cagey about the extent to which it is overturning its prior precedents such as Grutter and Fisher as a formal matter, it does seem clear that going forward current practices at many elite universities will now be held unlawful.

Supreme Court Bans Affirmative Action in College Admissions.  The Supreme Court has ruled that it is unlawful for colleges and universities to use race as a factor in admissions, overturning rulings from as far back as 1978 that claimed institutions of higher education had a valid interest in promoting racial diversity on campus and could thus give favorable consideration to black and Latino applicants in their admissions process.  Two separate decisions were reached in which the nation's highest court ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill engaged in unlawful discriminatory practices based on race that violated the Constitution.

What Happens if the Supreme Court Bans Racial Preferences?  The Supreme Court will soon decide the legality of racial preferences in higher education, In Students for Fair Admission Inc. v.  President & Fellows of Harvard College, the plaintiffs contend that Harvard University (and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in a separate case) violated Title VI of the US Civil Right Act of 1964 that prohibits racial discrimination for institutions receiving federal funds.  Given the clear statistical evidence that both schools favored blacks over Asians, and the Court's current conservative majority, the Asian plaintiff Students for Fair Admission, will most likely prevail.  Opponents of preferences are thus hoping that at long last U.S. higher education will restore meritocracy in college admissions.  Unfortunately, the likely judicial victory will change little, and conceivably make matters worse.  Giving African Americans an extra boost in everything from exams for police officers to awarding government contracts to admission to elite schools is now hard-wired into our national DNA.

American Despotism.  Universities increasingly drop the SAT or ACT requirement and even the GRE for graduate school in order to admit underperforming students.  Criteria include wealth, birth, diversity, and political activism.  Undergraduates have been disenrolled for posting videos that disagree with BLM, and undergrad journalists who question systemic racism have been fired, replaced by pliant token "conservative" writers.  Per their test scores and overall numbers in the population, white gentiles are the most underrepresented group in the Ivy League (25 percent), meaning the most underrepresented in the halls of power.  White Jews are the most overrepresented group (20 percent).  Black and Hispanic applicants with average GPAs and MCAT scores are accepted to U.S. medical schools at much higher rates (81.2 and 59.5 percent) than average (30.6 percent); black applicants are four times more likely to be accepted than Asians and almost three times more likely than whites.  Special diversity positions have been created for progressive educators and bureaucrats.

That's because "diverse" means not white.
HBCUs overwhelmingly lack DEI departments, research shows.  Amid the push by prominent Democrats and many in academia for the expansion of diversity, equity and inclusion departments in colleges and universities, research shows that the vast majority of historically black colleges and universities do not have them.  Of the 80 HBCUs that The College Fix researched, just 16 have an official DEI department.  While many more of those HBCUs have put out statements endorsing DEI initiatives, the vast majority have not established such departments, unlike other prominent universities in their respective states.

Die DEI, die.  The University of Arkansas issued a press release on November 16, 2022, "Ad/PR Student Attends National PR Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Summit in Chicago." [...] The photo accompanying the story showed 20 people.  Three were white women and one was a black male.  The rest were black women and Asian women.  They think there is a future in becoming a professional but DEI is a ghetto for women, minorities, LGBT and others who marginalize themselves by not availing themselves of the opportunities afforded them by the great civil rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s.  The women and the man in that photo need to develop marketable skills.

Stanford Law School's Black Students' Group Will No Longer Help Law School Recruit Minority Students in the Wake of Duncan Apology.  Stanford University's Black Law Students Association will no longer help the university recruit black students after the law school's dean, Jenny Martinez, apologized in early March to Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan.  The students cited what they described as the "scapegoating" of the school's diversity dean, Tirien Steinbach, for an incident last month in which students disrupted Duncan's remarks and Steinbach egged them on.  "The apology was intimately aligned with White supremacist practices," the group's board wrote in a letter to the administration, which was posted on Instagram earlier this month. [...] As such, the group said it would "boycott official admit events" for the class of 2026 and encourage prospective students to go elsewhere.  It's the second boycott to which the law school has been subjected:  James Ho and Elizabeth Branch, the circuit court judges who said last year that they would no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, earlier this month announced a similar clerkship moratorium on Stanford, citing the school's refusal to punish the students who shouted down Duncan.

The Editor says...
Why does the university have a Black Law Students Association anyway?  Why isn't that racist?

Forced Diversity Is Actively Harming America.  Almost all American universities have committed themselves to affirmative action (interpreted as favoritism towards the so-called "underrepresented" and "underserved") and forced (as opposed to naturally occurring) diversity.  To that end, they've lowered their admission, passing, and graduation standards, often selectively so, to ensure proportional "representation" of favored groups in their graduating cohorts.  The result is that graduates often lack the knowledge, skills, and abilities that one could expect from those holding degrees, especially from once-prestigious institutions.  Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who holds a B.A. and J.D. from Harvard and is currently in the news for indicting President Donald Trump, serves as an important example of this undesirable phenomenon.  Given the appalling quality of his indictment, it's not unreasonable to believe that Bragg's Ivy League resumé is the product of affirmative action. [...] Reputable legal experts have pointed out that the indictment has no legal basis.

The Best Students Are Not Going On To The Best Universities — Because Of Their Race And Gender.  Yes it's called reverse discrimination.  Just as bad as the original.  [Video clip]

Black California diversity director fired for asking questions.  At a small community college in Cupertino, California, De Anza College, Dr. Tabia Lee (who happens to be a Black woman) thought she had landed a great position in 2021.  She was placed as the school's director of its Office of Equity, Social Justice and Multicultural Education.  But her tenure grew rocky almost immediately.  She committed the sin of asking questions about the school's "anti-racism" policies and the language that was being used in describing what the policies meant.  She would later go on to publish an article in the Journal of Free Black Thought that was critical of DEI policies.  That turned out to be a bridge too far for the school and Dr. Lee was removed from her position.  And today she remains unsure of how and why it happened.

Downplaying Academic Excellence in Med School Admissions.  America's top medical schools, worried they have too few minority students, are doing something about it.  They are lowering academic standards for admission and trying to hide the evidence.  Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so.  The list already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.  Of course, the universities won't admit what they are doing — and certainly not why.  All they will say is that their new standards add "equity" and "lived experience."  Unfortunately, adding those factors inevitably lessens the weight given to others.  The harsh reality is medical schools are downplaying academic achievement and MCAT scores, which give the best evidence of how well students are prepared for medical school.

School that's part of notoriously woke Virginia district bans white and Asian students from college prep program.  A Virginia school district is under fire once again for its 'equality' programs — this time for sending a letter offering college preparation classes only to black and Hispanic students.  Fairfax County Public Schools has since the beginning of this year been under investigation by the state Attorney General for withholding merit awards from students at Thomas Jefferson High School.  TJs, as locals call it, is the United States' top-performing public school, and woke teachers there claimed they'd held back the awards to boost 'equity.'

Welcome to the Uncle Sam School of Law.  Harvard University recently co-hosted a Department of Education event with over 100 of the nation's law school administrators in attendance, to discuss how law schools must be more open and equal, not only in admissions criteria, but in the nature of how law is perceived and applied. [...] But the key theme and take-away from this particular event that Harvard and Yale hosted made it clear where all the sudden posturing over equity is coming from concerning law schools: the U.S. Government.  And the law schools are quickly and eagerly complying with the current administration's ideology out of self-interest and, to some extent, institutional survival.  What was especially fascinating about this get-together by federal government and law school deans was the Department of Education's mission to make law schools "share data" on all student applicants, in an effort to create an even, homogenous applicant pool that is not segmented by test scores, grades, essay strength or experience but is filtered by race, ethnicity, wealth, and legacy status.

Widespread public distrust in media baffles mainstream pundits.  For over two years, the mainstream media has regurgitated Biden administration talking points about how great leftist economic policies are, and find themselves "confused" as to why the public just doesn't believe them. [...] When Harvard and other schools weren't getting the mix of students they wanted, they started punishing one race, Asians, and adding points to Whites, Blacks, and Browns.  They discriminated.  Now that this method will be eliminated, they will start ignoring scores.  In other words, they will subjectively enroll.  Instead of striving for excellence, they will pretend they want equity.

The Day Your Doctor Won't Treat You If You Aren't the Right Kind of Patient Is Closer Than You Might Think.  Could the day come when you are denied medical treatment because you're white, male, or a member of some other group of "oppressors"?  Of course it could, and it's coming sooner than you might think.  Even in solidly red Tennessee, where Donald Trump won 60% of the vote in 2020, a new report has revealed what the Tennessee Star on Friday called "the pervasive infiltration of woke diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideologies in Tennessee medical school curricula and programs."  Could this have an impact on the quality of your medical treatment?

The collapse of civilization on the altar of equity and diversity.  The left's obsession with equity and diversity has led to the abolition of the SAT, the LSAT, and the MCAT. Does anyone think that people who cannot pass those tests will make good professionals, good lawyers, good doctors?  Of course not.  There will be life-threatening legal mistakes, horrific medical accidents, airline accidents, more derailments, and teachers who are grossly ill-equipped to teach.  All of this has nothing whatsoever to do with skin color.  Talent and merit has nothing to do with race, but the left does not accept that fact. [...] Meritocracy must prevail without regard for race if the U.S. is to prevail.  Biden just instructed Susan Rice to implement mandated equity (equality of outcome) throughout the federal government, and it will be the death of us.

Medical Schools Sacrifice Entry Standards at Altar of Racial Equity.  Medical schools are in the process of abandoning all pretense of merit as the criteria for admissions.  [Video clip] [...] The conventional take, which is morally correct, is to lament the unnecessary jettisoning of standards to chase the racial equity unicorn in lieu of a straight meritocracy.  That merit should equal success was historically a foundational principle of America.  But in reality, in some respects, none of this really matters for patients' health or quality of life.  Since the robber barons hijacked the medical infrastructure in the early 1900s, medicine has been more about maximizing profits by managing chronic health conditions than effectively treating them.

At least now we know who depends on cheating and plagiarism to graduate.
University's Ban On Cheating, Plagiarism 'Unfairly Targets' Minority Students, Ivy Leaguer Claims.  A Princeton University student argued in a Sunday night opinion article that the school's Honor Code unfairly impacts racial minorities, citing parallels to the U.S. criminal justice system.  The Ivy League school's Undergraduate Honor Code lays out standards for student conduct that all undergraduate students must abide by and prohibits students from plagiarizing or cheating, according to its website.  Emilly Santos, author of the op-ed and Princeton University student, likened the code to the United States criminal justice system to propose that it "disadvantages" minority students.  "Princeton's Honor Code, tasked with holding students accountable and honest in academic settings, mirrors the criminal justice system in its rules and effects," Santos wrote.  "It is harmful to the entirety of the Princeton community: the fear it instills in students fosters an environment of academic hostility.  But it is often most damaging for first-generation low-income (FLI) students — students who also often belong to racial minorities."

Diversity Through Obscurity: Applicants Told to Delete Names of Schools on their Resumes.  Colleges and universities have been implementing controversial new diversity reforms, including dropping standardized test scores, that eliminate objective criteria in academic admissions or advancement.  Now, HR&A Advisors, the TriBeCa-based real estate consultancy, has drawn attention to its LinkedIn posting asking applicants to to remove "all undergraduate and graduate school name references" from their résumés.  In order to achieve diversity goals, the company wants applicants to only list the degree and not where it came from.  It is equity through obscurity.  It is as irrational to eliminate any consideration of an academic institution as it is to rely exclusively on the academic institution.  The company insists that it is adopting this new policy as part of "ongoing work to build a hiring system that is free from bias and based on candidate merit and performance."  However, the identification of these institutions does reflect "merit and performance."  There can be vast differences in the academic rigor of academic institutions.  To only go by the degrees is manifestly illogical.

America's Systemic Racism Problem Is Mostly In Woke, Anti-Asian Education Bureaucracies.  Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin began 2023 by asking the state's Attorney General Jason Miyares to investigate the allegation that officials at Thomas Jefferson High School (TJ) intentionally withheld notifications of National Merit awards from the school's students and families (most of them are Asians) in the name of "equity" and "inclusion."  Asra Q. Nomani, a human rights activist and a proud mom of a TJ graduate, broke the latest scandal at the school right before Christmas.  According to Nomani, the scandal was initially uncovered by another TJ mom, Shawna Yashar, whose son took the PSAT test.  He was recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation "as a Commended Student in the top 3 percent nationwide — one of about 50,000 students earning that distinction."  It was the kind of honor that would have helped his applications for colleges and scholarships last fall had the TJ officials not withheld his award announcement.  When the TJ officials eventually notified him of his award, the deadline for his college applications had already passed, which rendered the award useless.  Nomani learned that her son, a graduate of TJ's class of 2021, was never told by school officials that he was a "Commended Student" in 2020. Even more infuriating is that these two young men's experiences were not the result of some honest one-time mistake.

With Schools Ditching Merit for Diversity, Families of High Achievers Warn They May Leave.  Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2.  It's a good life.  But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools.  These merit-based schools, which screened for students who met their high standards, will permanently switch to a lottery for admissions that will almost certainly enroll more blacks and Latinos in the pursuit of racial integration.  Shilkrut is one of many parents who are dismayed by the city's dismantling of competitive education.  He says he values diversity but is concerned that the expectation that academic rigor will be scaled back to accommodate a broad range of students in a lottery is what's driving him and other parents to seek alternatives.

Systemic Racism in College Campuses.  You're a student in your Senior year of high school applying to universities across the country.  At 17 years old, it's most likely the biggest change in your life so far.  You have a solid GPA, stellar SAT/ACT test scores, and your extracurricular activities are numerous.  You apply to top-ranked colleges like Harvard, Brown, and Berkeley.  You ultimately get rejected, only to find out that the reason why you got rejected wasn't because of your scores or volunteer work or a badly written essay, but because of your race.  This is one result of affirmative action, a policy being enacted by most universities in the United States.  On October 31st, [2022,] the Supreme Court will be looking at two cases from Harvard and the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, in regard to affirmative action.  What has been upheld for decades may no longer be the case if the court decides to strike down the constitutionality of affirmative action.

Sacrificing Academic Excellence on the Altar of 'Equity'.  One of the four dissenting judges in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger case, which resulted in the allowance of race quotas in student admissions, was Justice Clarence Thomas, a descendant of slaves and himself a beneficiary of affirmative action.  Outraged by the patronizing attitude of teachers and classmates, and driven by the values of hard work, merit, and pride instilled in him by his grandfather, he had come to believe, over the course of his inspiring life, that quotas are demeaning.  "The Constitution abhors classifications based on race," he wrote in his dissenting opinion, "not only because these classifications can harm favored races, or are based in illegitimate motives, but also because every time the government places citizens on racial registers and makes race relevant to the provisions of burdens or benefits, it demeans us all."  Against such eminent good sense, a deranged 'woke' agenda of diversity, inclusion, and equity (DIE) is sweeping the country.  This obsession with victimhood, with its unending demand for compensatory benefits, erodes self-respect and self-reliance, and perpetuates a culture of expecting and making do with government handouts and hand-me-downs.  It is the antithesis of the pursuit of excellence.

Systemic Racism: Students Downplay Stereotypically Asian Hobbies To Boost College Admissions Odds.  Asian-American college applicants are going to extraordinary lengths to conceal their race, the New York Times reported on Friday, stripping their applications of activities and accomplishments that might seem stereotypically Asian.  Students interviewed by the Times said they had downplayed their interests in chess, violin, and piano in an effort to avoid being rejected on racial grounds.  "It is a little sad now that I think about it," Marissa Li, a student at Harvard University, told the Times.  "I wasn't really able to talk about the activities that meant the most to me."  Other students said they chose not to declare their race for fear of incurring an admissions penalty, a practice that has been going on for years.

Study Shows Schools Award Girls and Women Better Grades Regardless of Merit.  Data indicates that only 40% of university students are now male.  Over the course of the last five years, 70% of the decreases in university enrollment are accounted for by men.  The high school dropout rate for students on the college track is 30% higher for boys as compared to girls.  Curiously, Social Justice™ activists — who, again, are otherwise obsessed with "gender disparities" — don't seem to voice any concern on this front.  As anyone who has been victimized by the public "education" system in the West over the past twenty years, as I have, can attest, educational institutions are now openly hostile to boys and men.

What's So Great About Diversity, Anyway?  What is diversity, and why is it so good for college students?  That's one of the questions at the heart of the Supreme Court cases over race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, and it was asked early and often during the nearly five hours of oral arguments last week.  "I've heard the word 'diversity' quite a few times, and I don't have a clue what it means," Associate Justice Clarence Thomas said to UNC's lawyer, North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park.  "I'd like you to give us a specific definition of diversity in the context of the University of North Carolina.  And I'd also like you to give us a clear idea of exactly what the educational benefits of diversity at the University of North Carolina could be."  It was the opening question to Park, and it should have been a softball.

American Bar Association Scraps LSAT and standardized admissions tests after woke law schools claimed they hurt diversity.  The American Bar Association voted to drop the LSAT and other standardized tests as requirements for law school admissions.  An ABA panel made its decision on Friday after noon after a committee recommended the testing requirements be scrapped because they hurt diversity in admissions.  The LSAT, or Law School Admission Test, estimates a prospective students reasoning and reading comprehension, and it serves as a predictor on how they will fair in classes.

What Should America Look Like?  The Supreme Court is taking another look at the question of race-based affirmative action.  Central to the question of selecting who gets into colleges that employ a diversity test should be the reasoning behind the requirement to consider it at all.  There has not been a national debate on the central importance of diversity; it is taken on faith with the Left daring anyone to say otherwise or risk being immediately outed as a racist.  This is a good time to question the orthodoxy of the Left on this issue.  Nowhere do you hear logical arguments on why diversity is more important than say, competence, and, it's a virtual secret on how the Left ranks its priorities to achieve diversity.  The Left has bet the farm on the notion that diversity and its other stablemate, equity, should rightfully replace millions of years of natural human development; overnight, on faith alone.

The Supreme Court Confronts the Left's Victimhood Consensus.  As George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley has shown, Harvard arguably manipulates the applicants' personality, likability, courage, and kindness scores to achieve its desired objective: race-based admissions levels.  This approach represents little more than the return of Plessy v. Ferguson's separate but equal doctrine, which is now hidden within contemporary diversity rhetoric.  Plessy v.  Ferguson was outlawed more than seventy years ago in the Brown v.  Board of Education decision.  The return of race-based admissions allows Harvard to rate Asian American applicants fifty percent lower on average than African Americans.  Harvard's percentage ranking allowed black students with lower scores on standardized tests to be admitted at roughly twice the rate of Asian American students.  This raises the question of why Harvard and other universities have decided to engage in subterfuge that is hidden in plain sight.

Yes, please explain why.  (This ought to be good.)
Justice Kagan suggests gender-neutral college admissions could give unfair advantage to 'white men'.  Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan suggested that gender-neutral admission processes could give "white men" an advantage over people who have been "kicked in the teeth" during an oral argument Monday on a pair of lawsuits deciding whether affirmative action within Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) is constitutional.  During the oral argument for Students for Fair Admissions v.  President and Fellows of Harvard, Kagan suggested to Patrick Strawbridge, who is representing Students for Fair Admissions, that higher education institutions that use gender-neutral policies lead to unequal outcomes for men at universities.  Kagan noted that "white men" could get a "thumb on the scale" in university admissions if educational institutions sought to address the disparity.

The Editor says...
I thought all they wanted was a level playing field.

Fairfax schools implemented 'equity grading' to fight 'bias'.  Officials with Virginia's Fairfax County Public Schools have taken steps to implement so-called "equitable grading" at Langley High School and other schools across the district in a bid to fight "institutional bias," according to internal FCPS communications.  The district's emails, obtained by local parents through a Freedom of Information Act request and exclusively shared with the Washington Examiner, detail efforts by high school principals across the district, especially officials at Langley High School in recent months, to adopt "equitable grading" practices, including by using federal coronavirus relief funds to purchase a book for a teacher summer reading club titled Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms.  The district and Langley administrators also denied the efforts were ongoing when a parent inquired.

Next up on the Supreme Court's agenda: Affirmative action.  Progressives who are still reeling from the end of Roe v Wade are already expecting the worst from the Supreme Court's next term which starts next week.  One of the big issues the court will be considering in the next term is affirmative action in college admissions. [...] In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor predicted that the need for affirmative action for university admissions "will no longer be necessary."  It has been 19 years since she said it.

When you are sick, do you want Dr Woke or Dr Smart?  Medical school and postgraduate training is a long and arduous journey, often taking 8-10 years beyond college.  There is much to learn, process and assimilate.  Clinical judgement stems not only from experience but also from intelligence.  Medicine is a high stakes game.  Sickness and health lie in the balance, as does life and death (or vision and blindness in my professional world of retina surgery).  Medical errors can be due to accidents, incorrect judgement calls, or lack of knowledge.  When your health or life is on the line, you want the smartest physician caring for you, making critical decisions, or performing challenging surgery.  I would want the best and the brightest caring for me.  I am not as much concerned with my doctors' bedside manner, wokeness, or social skills but rather that they be smart, capable, and competent.  Are woke doctors necessarily the smartest?  If they are thinking more about proper pronouns and social justice, are they thinking less about blood tests and MRI findings?

Google scholarship sets racist quotas favoring minorities.  Tech giant Google has established a discriminatory fellowship program that major universities can participate in that specifically favors some races while barring others. [...] As noted by numerous lawyers quoted at the first link, this program is flagrantly illegal, violating numerous anti-discrimination laws, both federal and state.  Since the program is being offered in partnership with many major universities, those universities are also in direct violation of those anti-discrimination laws, and if those laws were enforced properly, these schools should immediately lose all federal funding.  The article at the link lists Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Princeton, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Johns Hopkins, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, the University of California Berkeley, and New York University as participating universities.  All of these colleges also have their own internal anti-discriminatory policies, which this fellowship program also violates.  Because the federal government is run by Democrats who favor such racism, we can expect it to do nothing against these schools or Google.

72% of America's Top Medical Schools Use Racial Politics to Eliminate Applicants.  Seventy-two percent of America's top medical schools use racial politics to weed out applicants, according to a review conducted by medical advocacy group Do No Harm. [...] The number 14-ranked school — the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine — prompts applicants to answer the following:  ["]We are interested in combating all forms of systemic barriers, and would like to hear your thoughts on opposing specifically: systemic racism, anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, and misogyny.  How will you contribute?["]  In addition, the number 43-ranked medical school in the country at the University of Minnesota asks applicants whether they have "personally experienced or acted with implicit or explicit bias," and then goes on to prompt a response to the following:  ["]Our country is reckoning with its history, racism, racial injustice, and especially anti-black racism.  Please share your reflections on, experiences with, and greatest lessons learned about systemic racism.["]  As Breitbart News previously reported, the Association of American Medical Colleges released new standards for teaching medicine that require students to achieve "competencies" in "white privilege," "anti-colonialism," and "race as a social construct," among other race-essentialist ideas.

Meet the new racism, same as the old racism.  The past few weeks have offered us an excellent snapshot of what the Left's idea of "equity" looks like in practice.  The Minneapolis public school district reached an agreement with the local teachers union to fire white teachers first, regardless of their seniority or how long they've worked for the district, to protect the jobs of nonwhite educators.  A private housing co-op near the University of California, Berkeley banned white visitors and tenants unless other residents in the home grant them permission to be there.  And Harvard University is preparing to make the case before the Supreme Court that it has the right and responsibility to deny admission to Asian American applicants simply because they are Asian American.  Meet the new racism, same as the old racism — except with a new outgroup and a set of outward characteristics by which to pass judgment.  The Left defends blatantly discriminatory practices, including the ones mentioned above, as necessary measures to make right the wrongs of the past.  Leftists deny the very concept of equality — rather, they judge and assign personal worth based on skin color and nothing more.  We've been down that road before, and our nation suffered as a result.

Racism to Achieve Diversity Harms All Americans.  If you've navigated the thicket of microinstructions, hectoring, guilt-tripping, institutionalized resentment, establishment-generated misinformation, double standards, and bizarre new terminology, then welcome to the world of woke antiracism in America today.  One of the biggest absurdities spread by the woke antiracists is that white people must practice "allyship" and refrain from sharing their opinions on race relations with "people of color."  There is nothing wrong with listening as well as talking, but for white people to remain silent in the face of one of the most destructive movements in American history is negligent and cowardly.  As it is, progressive elites in America, almost all of them white, are indoctrinating nonwhites in America to believe that they live in an oppressive, racist nation.  They are falsely told that unjustified police violence disproportionately targets blacks.  They are falsely told the biggest threat to the nation is white supremacists.  Worse still, they are told that every disparity in achievement between races is a product of white racism, and that white racists are to blame for any failures in their individual lives or within their communities.

The Editor says...
Apparently, "allyship" is the word used by public school students when they mean "alliance."

Google Goof?  Raced-Based Scholarships From Tech Giant Are Likely Unconstitutional.  For our friends on the left, attitudes toward race have apparently come full circle.  It wasn't that long ago, less than a decade perhaps, that the mere suggestion of a major corporation openly discriminating against prospective candidates for scholarships and fellowships based on their race would have been denounced from every angle of the political spectrum.  If those being excluded from consideration were to have been limited to only white folks, there would have certainly been sympathizers with the idea from various leftists, but they wouldn't have been brazen enough to put forth the notion publicly.  And if it wasn't only white folks whose candidacies were being barred, if non-white scholars were also being eliminated from the pool of candidates, then we would have expected to hear screams of objection from all sides.  But times have changed, and it now appears to be perfectly acceptable for not only corporations but for academic institutions as well, to exclude any race they feel like, provided such exclusions align with their hierarchy of victimhood and electoral strategies.  Now Google and many of the top colleges and universities in the country may have a serious problem on their hands as a result.

A UC Berkeley housing co-op goes full Jim Crow, only it's banning Whites.  Standing under the portico of the Alabama state Capitol, Democrat governor George Wallace famously promised, "Segregation today... segregation tomorrow... segregation forever."  For a brief, shining moment in the last decades of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st, Democrats managed to abandon their racial obsessions.  However, beginning with Barack Obama, accelerating under Donald Trump, and coming into full bloom under Joe Biden, Democrats have returned to their roots.  The latest florescence comes from Berkeley, California, where a housing cooperative for low-income students from the leftist victim classes has announced that no Whites may enter the house's common areas.

American Bar Association Scraps Controversial Diversity Proposal After Blowback.  The American Bar Association on Monday axed a proposal to require law schools to "diversify" their student bodies after more than a year of warnings from law professors that the plan would force schools to violate federal law.  The proposal, first released in May 2021, would have required law schools to submit annual progress reports on minority enrollment to the American Bar Association.  Law schools that failed to boost the enrollment of "underrepresented groups" would have been at risk of losing their accreditation.  The proposal underwent three rounds of revisions before finally being withdrawn by the association's house of delegates, which did not rule out revisiting the proposal at a later date.

Chicago public school announces automatic higher grades for black students — even if they skip school and fail to turn in assignments.  Oak Park-River Forest High School in Chicago apparently believes that black students are dumber than white students and must be given special grading privileges.  Part of the school's new "equitable" grading system includes giving students with dark skin — meaning non-whites — automatic higher grades because they cannot perform to the same academic standards as light-skinned students.  A similar thing occurred in San Diego several years back.  Entitled "Transformative Education Professional Development & Grading," the plan was presented at a May 26 meeting presented by Assistant Superintendent for Student Learning Laurie Fiorenza.  "[The plan] calls for what OPRF leaders describe as 'competency-based grading, eliminating zeros from the grade book ... encouraging and rewarding growth over time,'" reports explained.  "Teachers are being instructed how to measure student 'growth' while keeping the school leaders' political ideology in mind."

An Illinois high school embraces racism that would make old Jim Crow proud.  One of the most cherished beliefs of the old-time racists, the ones who supported slavery or, when slavery ended, instituted and enforced the Jim Crow laws, was that the darker the skin, the more stupid the person.  They were even able to provide "evidence" to support this theory by depriving minorities of access to education so that the racists could later use their lack of education as evidence of their "stupidity."  That was then.  Now, Oak Park and River Forest High School (OPRF), in Oak Park, Illinois, has announced that the darker you are, the less the school will expect of you academically.  Jim Crow would be proud.

Chicago High School to Implement Race-Based Grading System.  A high school in a Chicago is implementing a race-based grading system "to adjust classroom grading scales to account for skin color or ethnicity of its students."  The move is necessary, advocates say, because "traditional grading practices perpetuate inequities," a slide used in a presentation said.  Students, depending on their race, will not be held accountable for missing class, misbehaving in school, or for failing to turn in assignments.

After Race-Based Admissions To Nation's Top High School, Students Drop Out And Underperform At Record Rates.  In summer 2017, when Ann Bonitatibus walked through the front doors of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology as its new principal, she came with a mission to turn the top-rated school upside down.  For her, that meant flipping the school's racial demographics.  At the time, 7 of 10 students came from Asian immigrant families, two of 10 from white families, and one of 10 students came from black, Hispanic, and multiracial families.  On June 7, 2020, after George Floyd's killing, Bonitatibus emailed our mostly minority, immigrant families, telling us to check our "privileges," expressing her shame at our "Colonials" mascot, and outlining her vision for a new racial makeup at the school.  Soon Bonitatibus will be able to say "mission accomplished" — courtesy of an unfortunate 6-3 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday [4/25/2022].

SCOTUS reinstates woke admissions criteria that top Virginia high school enacted after George Floyd's murder to 'diversify' student body.  Supreme Court justices have temporarily reinstated a woke admissions policy at one of America's top schools despite a federal judge previously ruling it was racist.  The high court did not explain its order Monday that allows the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science & Technology to continue using its admissions policy, while the Fairfax County School Board appeals the lower court's February ruling.  Fairfax County School Board changed its admissions policy in the wake of the killing of George Floyd in May 2020 to boost 'equity' at the school.

Regional Racism:  What It Is, and Why It's Getting Worse.  The idea that whites must endure classes in racial sensitivity and that they must pay reparations to blacks — such as the enormous racially targeted sums included in BBB — is predicated on the false view that whites, especially Southern whites, are responsible for income disparity among the races.  In fact, under 50 years of affirmative action, blacks have enjoyed enormous advantages over whites and Asians.  Yet, according to the latest numbers, high school graduation rates for blacks (79.6%) were far below those for whites (89.4%) and Asians (92.6%).  College graduation rates showed the same pattern, with 74% of Asians, 64% of whites, and 40% of blacks graduating, despite preferential treatment for blacks.  These low black graduation rates are not the fault of whites.  If anything, whites and Asians should be granted reparations to compensate for the effects of affirmative action.

University of Illinois adds diversity, equity, inclusion statement to faculty-promotion process.  Candidates for promotion and tenure at the University of Illinois will have to submit a one-page summary of their on-the-job contributions to diversity, equity and inclusion come fall 2025.  Officials believe the UI to be one of the first — if not the first — "research 1" university to explicitly implement a diversity, equity and inclusion requirement into the formal faculty promotion process.  This change is one byproduct of the revised promotion and tenure guidelines unveiled by the UI at the end of March, after several years of internal revisions and feedback.

Rhode Island High School Cancels Honors Classes Because Only Whites Qualified To Take Them.  In the highest-performing school district in Rhode Island, parents are in a tizzy over eliminating honors classes, arguing that it hurts students who are exceptional as well as those struggling to master the material.  Embedded in the controversy is a deeper complaint that school officials have not done a good job explaining their rationale for combining three levels of instruction into one in core subjects and, as of Friday, eliminating the honors designation in English and social studies.  [Video clip]

Resistance is rising to woke colleges' race and sex discrimination.  People used to talk about "resistance" to President Donald Trump.  That's old hat.  Now it's resistance to the woke.  And we're seeing more and more of that resistance.  University of Michigan economics professor Mark J. Perry is working with numerous folks across the nation to file equal-opportunity complaints with the federal Department of Education when colleges and universities discriminate on the basis of race and sex.  Perry recounts that in three years of research, he's found more than 1,200 Title IX and Title VI violations — and continues to uncover more.  "The significant and troubling frequency of violations of federal civil rights laws in higher education demonstrates unaddressed systemic sexism and racism that needs greater awareness, exposure and legal challenges," he writes.

Judge rules race-based admission standards at VA high school discriminate against Asians.  The school board in Fairfax County was one of many in liberal bastions around the country to revamp the admissions process for the highly successful Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in 2020.  Parents compete intensively to get their children accepted to the magnet school because it is consistently ranked among the best high schools in the nation with a nearly 100% success rate in college acceptance by graduates.  But the school board decided to scrap the standardized test that had previously served as a significant factor in accepting applicants and instead reserved a fixed number of seats that had to be filled from each middle school in the county.  A group of parents challenged the new admissions process and this week a judge ruled that the changes resulted in racial discrimination against Asian students.

Christian College Hosts 'People of Color' Appreciation Lunch.  As relayed by The College Fix, Gustavus Adolphus College is hosting a People of Color International Faculty and Staff Appreciation Lunch.  University of Michigan Flint Professor Mark Perry sent a screenshot of the registration form to the Fix.  Mark's unimpressed — he's filed a complaint with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR).  The professor notes the event violates the Civil Rights Act.  Courtesy of his complaint, "[Gustavus Adolphus College] is legally required to enforce Title VI as a condition of receiving federal financial assistance..."  The lunch is an interesting choice, perhaps particularly during February — otherwise known as Black History Month.

Student government demands 24 percent American Indian enrollment.  The University of Washington's student government wants to see an American Indian enrollment quota of 24 percent by 2030.  The Associated Students of the University of Washington wrote a list of demands as a response to a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering department who refused to participate in a "land acknowledgment" requirement.  "I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington," Professor Stuart Reges wrote on his syllabus.

White students excluded from Arizona State theatre performance.  The theatre department at Arizona State University recently hosted a cabaret show that explicitly barred white students from performing in it.  "The Color Cabaret" is "an opportunity for BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) students in the School of Music, Dance and Theatre to create performances that speak to their own experience," according to a description for the performance held the last weekend in January.  "The cabaret, held Jan. 29 and 30, was made up entirely of students of color, and the songs performed told a story with heart, grace and a cultural flair representing the diverse community at ASU," The State Press reported.

The Supreme Court Should Reject Racial Preference in College Admissions.  The Supreme Court is going to hear two cases about racial preference in college admissions that allegedly discriminates against Asian students.  In the 1978 Bakke decision, the Supreme Court said race could be a factor in admissions, but as anyone who is sat through an academic committee meeting knows, when race is a factor, it is the only factor.  Even though the Supreme Court in Bakke said that a set-aside for admissions, or quota, was impermissible, colleges and universities routinely use racial quotas masquerading as goals.  The consequence has been that highly qualified Asian students are rejected on trivial and subjective data, such as leadership skills and self-confidence, to increase the proportion of less qualified blacks and Latinos.

SCOTUS to rule on Harvard affirmative action scheme.  The conservative-dominated Supreme Court could put an end to the practice of factoring race into college admissions, after agreeing to take up a pair of court challenges claiming affirmative action is unfair to white and Asian American students on Monday [1/24/2022].  The high court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants.  The suits claim that affirmative action gives an edge to African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans over Asian students.

Supreme Court to Hear Cases Challenging Affirmative-Action at Universities.  The Supreme Court announced on Monday [1/24/2022] that it will take up suits challenging the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions.  The Court will hear challenges by non-profit Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.  The group alleges that Harvard discriminates against Asian applicants, and that UNC uses race in admissions even though "race-neutral alternatives can achieve diversity."  Arguments will likely be heard in spring of this year, with a decision by June.  "We are grateful the Supreme Court accepted these important cases for review," SFA president Edward Blum said in a statement.  "It is our hope that the justices will end the use of race as an admissions factor at Harvard, UNC and all colleges and universities."

The Selective Bigotry of the Campus Diversity Industry.  Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion — or "DEI" — is now big business across American campuses.  A 2021 Heritage Foundation study found that the average American college employs 45 full-time DEI administrators.  With a reported average salary of $79,400 per DEI staffer, the average college DEI budget exceeds $3.57 million.  Hence across more than 4,000 colleges nationally, America's total college DEI bill tops $14 billion.  One would hope that such massive investments yield tangible gains in the DEI bureaucracies' self-described mission, namely, assuring an inclusive campus environment for all students.  Unfortunately, a new study shows that the campus DEI industry not only fails this test, but also — at least towards one minority group — actively subverts its stated goal.

University of Maryland Adds New Ethnic Category for 'Students of Color minus Asian'.  On Thursday, a photo went viral of a student admissions chart from the University of Maryland, which depicts a bizarre new racial category for non-White students titled "Students of Color, minus Asian," the Daily Caller reports.  The photo, shared by investigative journalist and leading opponent of Critical Race Theory Chris Rufo, depicts freshmen admission rates over the course of four years, from 2017 to 2021.  At the bottom of the chart, newly-admitted freshmen are separated into two categories:  "Students of Color, minus Asian," and "White or Asian students."  Across all four years, the latter category notably made up roughly 80 percent of all admissions in every Fall semester.  "We're at the point in the discourse when colleges have created the highly scientific and totally legitimate racial category of 'Students of Color, minus Asian,'" Rufo sarcastically remarked on Twitter.

What they're saying, or what their actions say, is that blacks can't possibly compete in standardized academic testing.
NCAA Task Force Pushes for Elimination of SAT, ACT Scores to Advance 'Racial Equity'.  The NCAA Standardized Test Task Force recommended that high school students preparing to compete in Division I or Division II sports should not have to submit SAT or ACT scores.  "This work reflects the NCAA's commitment to continually reviewing our academic standards based on the best available data and other relevant information," said Morgan State President David Wilson, who led a group of representatives in both divisions in carrying out a nearly six month project on the matter.  "We are observing a national trend in NCAA member schools moving away from requiring standardized test scores for admissions purposes and this recommendation for athletics eligibility aligns directly with that movement."

Why I Am Suing UCLA.  Recently, I was suspended from my job for refusing to treat my black students as lesser than their non-black peers.  Let me back up:  I teach at UCLA's Anderson School of Management, and I've been doing this for 40 years.  I've taught 15 different courses, in finance, accounting and law.  CNBC has had me on; I've been quoted in The Wall Street Journal.  My saga — which nearly led to my firing — began on the morning of June 2, 2020, when a non-black student in my class on tax principles and law emailed me to ask that I grade his black classmates with greater "leniency" than others in the class.  "We are writing to express our tremendous concern about the impact that this final exam and project will have on the mental and physical health of our Black classmates," the student wrote.  (There was no project in this class, and it was unclear to me who the "we" in this case was.  I suspected the student simply used a form letter he found online and neglected to change the subject.) [...] The student then requested that the final be a "no harm" exam — meaning it should be counted only if it boosted one's grade.  "This is not a joint effort to get finals canceled for non-Black students, but rather an ask that you exercise compassion and leniency with Black students in our major."  (As I noted in my legal complaint, the student clarified, in a subsequent conversation with a university investigator, that he "intended that the requested adjustments apply to Black students and not the class generally.")

Professor suspended for refusing to give Black students easier final exams sues UCLA.  A UCLA professor who was briefly suspended after declining a request that Black students get easier final exams after George Floyd's death sued the school Wednesday, accusing it of defamation and loss of financial opportunities.  Gordon Klein, a lecturer at UCLA's Anderson School of Management who has taught there for decades, filed the lawsuit in state court against the school's dean, Antonio Bernardo, the University of California Board of Regents, and a host of unnamed "co-conspirators."  "I did this because the school has continued to retaliate against me, and other scholars are facing retaliation, and I thought it was important for someone to step up and say, 'enough,'" Mr. Klein told The Washington Times.  "I have the legal skills and training to do so, so I'm stepping up."

WSJ: Men appear to be giving up on college.  There's an interesting story in the Wall Street Journal today about the declining enrollment of men in 2 and 4-year colleges.  This gender enrollment disparity is a trend that has been happening for a while now, but at this point the divergence between men and women is becoming pretty dramatic. [...] The situation has become bad enough that some colleges are already offering more slots for boys in an attempt to bring the enrollment back into parity.  The WSJ says this is "higher education's dirty little secret," i.e. schools are now practicing a kind of affirmative action for men.

Oregon removes reading, writing, math requirements for high school graduation.  The Governor of Oregon has signed a bill into law that removes all requirements for high school students to demonstrate their proficiency in reading, writing, and math.  We'll get to the supposed "reasoning" behind this legislation in a moment, but it's first worth mentioning the timing.  As the Oregonian found out, this law has actually been in place for a while now.  Governor Kate Brown signed the bill back on July 14th, but nobody knew about it until this past week.  The reason for that is that the Governor didn't hold a signing ceremony, there was no press release about it and the bill wasn't entered into the legislative database until July 29th.  At that point, journalists finally noticed it began writing about it.

Gov. Kate Brown signed a law to allow Oregon students to graduate without proving they can write or do math.  She doesn't want to talk about it..  For the next five years, an Oregon high school diploma will be no guarantee that the student who earned it can read, write or do math at a high school level.  Gov. Kate Brown had demurred earlier this summer regarding whether she supported the plan passed by the Legislature to drop the requirement that students demonstrate they have achieved those essential skills.  But on July 14, the governor signed Senate Bill 744 into law.  Through a spokesperson, the governor declined again Friday to comment on the law and why she supported suspending the proficiency requirements.  Brown's decision was not public until recently, because her office did not hold a signing ceremony or issue a press release and the fact that the governor signed the bill was not entered into the legislative database until July 29, a departure from the normal practice of updating the public database the same day a bill is signed.

Not So Sure What Oregon's Governor Did to Equalize Education for Nonwhites Is a Good thing.  In Oregon, Democratic Gov. Kate Brown decided that nonwhite high schoolers don't need to be proficient in math, writing, or reading to graduate.  Yeah, that's some system they have out there.  She did this in the name of equity.  I'm not so sure where the equitable element is in removing some education requirements for some students and not others to graduate, but that's liberal America.  There are no standards.  Well, there are double standards, but that's only when they get caught up in their own shoddy narratives.  Given that CRT is the main course for liberals nowadays, Ms. Brown is just doing her part to destroy our supposedly racist education system because... reading, writing, and math are bastions of white supremacy?

The American Descent into Madness.  At the Ivy League or major state university campuses, admissions are no longer based on proportional representation in the context of affirmative action, but are defined increasingly by a reparatory character.  Grades, test scores, and "activities" of the white and Asian male college applicants are growing less relevant.  Only "privileged" white males with sports skills, connections, or families who give lots of money are exempt from the new racial reparation quotas.  The new woke admission policy ironically is targeting the liberal suburban professional family, the Left's constituency, whose lives are so fixated on whether children graduate from Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, or like campuses.  Given the radical change in incoming student profiles, the faculty increasingly will have to choose between accusations of racism, or grading regardless of actual performance, given thousands of new enrollees do not meet the entrance standards of just two or three years ago.

Fixing Racism by Being Racist?  Racism is, by one definition, "A belief that race is a fundamental determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."  History is replete with societies and cultures signing on to such thinking. [...] Princeton University, an elite institution of higher learning, comparable in prestige to the Brigham in the hospital world, offered admission to about 1500 applicants to its class of 2025, according to Powerline Blog.  Only 28 percent were white Americans, compared to 68 percent who identified as "persons of color."  This is less than half of the 61 percent figure of white students enrolled in US public schools.  So much for a class of students that "looks like America."  Last year, Princeton University president Christopher Eisgruber all but admitted that his school was racist, that "racist assumptions from the past" remain "imbedded in structures of the university itself."  Now Princeton has embraced a new form of racism to fix their past racism.

Princeton is selecting fewer white students every year: 32% of the Class of 2025 are white.  Princeton is selecting fewer white students every year and now takes more non-white applicants than any other Ivy League school, new data from the university has revealed.  Princeton announced on Thursday [4/8/2021] that it had sent letters out to its class of 2025.  The successful applicants will learn by 7pm EST if they've got a place or not.  More than 37,600 applied and 1,498 were selected.  Of them, 68 percent - 1,018 - 'self-identify' as people of color.  The school did not separate among that group how many are black, Hispanic, Asian or any other race, leaving 32 percent - 479 students - to 'self-identity' as white.

Will BLM cancel MLK?  The left argues that people who value these traits do better in the game of life — and they do — and that those people tend not to be the left's favored flavors of skin colors.  Therefore, these traits are bad and must be de-legitimized.  The de-legitimizing process begins with branding.  Traits for success are branded "white privilege." Forget that it is not just whites who value these traits.  The phrase "white privilege" has a nice ring to it.  Then they attack the traits themselves.  A key trait under attack is the notion of merit.  In colleges, the left bans objective measures of academic achievement.  In college admissions, for example, the SAT gets canceled because too few of the right kind of minorities do well on it.  Colleges that continue to use the SAT have different cutoffs for different races.  At Harvard, the average SAT scores of accepted blacks is 300 points lower than average scores of accepted whites and 450 points lower than accepted Asians.  Even high schools are phasing out testing, or specifically discriminating against whites and Asians.  Most thought this foolishness would be limited to academia, because it doesn't work in the real world.  A business that refuses to reward employees for merit tends to see less merit.  A business that sees less merit in its employees sees less profits.  But now the madness has metastasized.  Everywhere, "merit" is increasingly seen as a codeword for "white."  But if merit is canceled, what replaces it in deciding how to allocate society's rewards?  Race, that's what.

Keeping Georgetown Law School Profs from Talking About Black Students' Low Grades Helps No One.  Some simple, obvious facts are too politically incorrect for academics to state publicly.  Georgetown University just fired law professor Sandra Sellers and forced out professor David Batson.  Sellers' offense?  "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks," Sellers' said in discussion with another professor at the end of a Zoom call.  Batson's offense?  He didn't condemn the statement, but instead sympathized with Sellers' concerns.  "What drives me crazy is... my own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things" might be responsible for their poor scores, he said.  The logic is that blacks do poorly in college because of professors' biases.  Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor said he was "appalled" by these statements, but all academics know that this is true.  I held teaching or research positions at many universities — the Wharton Business School, University of Chicago, UCLA, Yale, Stanford, and Rice — and I have heard these concerns raised many times.  I have listened to even the most liberal professors make the same statements as Batson and Sellers.

Georgetown Law professor caught complaining about black students on Zoom.  A white Georgetown Law professor belittled black students during a Zoom call with a colleague, saying they "usually" perform "just plain at the bottom" of her classes, according to video posted online this week.  The brief clip, posted to Twitter Wednesday [3/10/2021], shows an adjunct professor of law identified by the Georgetown Black Law Students Association as Sandra Sellers and another faculty member, David Batson, having what they believed was a private discussion about a class they jointly taught.  "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks," Sellers said.  "Happens almost every semester.  And it's like, oh come on.  It's some really good ones, but there are usually some that are just plain at the bottom.  It drives me crazy."

The Editor says...
Did the professor say anything that isn't true?  Somebody is at the bottom of every class.

Liberals find a case of racism they don't want the courts to correct.  The editorial board at the Washington Examiner has a good analysis of a pending case before the Supreme Court that could turn some of the current debates over racism in America on its head.  The subject at hand once again deals with the college admissions system in this country and the ham-handed way that many schools put their thumbs on the scales for all the wrong reasons.  A lawsuit against Harvard is currently attempting to deal with that issue, particularly as it applies to one specific group of minorities.  Through an arbitrary "rating system" used by the admissions board, Asian-American applicants are routinely downgraded to the benefit of Black and Hispanic students.  So will the Supreme Court finally step in to correct this?  Clearly, the elites at our houses of higher education would prefer they didn't.

Boston Public Schools Cancel Advanced Courses:  Too Many Students Are White.  The Boston Public School System is suspending enrollment in their Advanced Work Classes for one year due to concerns over racial inequity.  The advanced program provides high-achieving students in grades 4-6 a more rigorous academic program, with additional coursework and a deeper analysis of study topics.  According to Boston's school district, "more than 70 percent of students enrolled in the program were white and Asian, even though nearly 80 percent of all Boston public school students are Hispanic and Black," GBH News reports.  In an effort to be "anti-racist," Superintendent Brenda Cassellius decided to discontinue enrollment in the program to take a closer look at the racial makeup of its participants.

The Resurrection of the Third Reich in Amerika.  Yes, the Third Reich is undergoing resurrection, but not by white supremacists.  It is the white liberals in the Democrat Party and their presstitute propaganda machine — New York Times, CNN, NPR, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and the rest of the presstitute whores — that comprise the new Nazi movement.  The only difference is that this time the target is white gentiles.  The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum says that "the goal of Nazi propaganda was to demonize Jews and to create a climate of hostility and indifference toward their plight."  In actual fact, the purpose was more severe.  The purpose was to deprive Jews of their dignity and the protection of law.  This has now happened to white gentiles in the United States.  For example, as I reported earlier today, Jodi Shaw, a white female staff member of Smith College, in former times a prestigeous women's college, now an anti-white propaganda institution, resigned, accusing the college of creating a "racially hostile environment" for white people.

One College Is Feeling the Impact of Adopting an Anti-white Policy.  A Smith College administrator resigned earlier this month citing the creation of a "racially hostile environment" in the wake of a widely reported accusation of discrimination against the school in 2018.  Jodi Shaw graduated from Smith College in 1993 and was "over the moon" when she found herself joining the school's staff years later.  However, after a 2018 incident of alleged racial profiling, the school began to adopt a racially radical curriculum and everything changed.  Shaw, a white woman, wrote in her resignation letter, the "curriculum is dehumanizing, prevents authentic connection, and undermines the moral agency of young people who are just beginning to find their way in the world."

Whites need not apply.
College Offers Free Tuition - for Black and American Indian Students.  If you're black or American Indian and looking for a free education, I've got news you can use.  Small university Wayfinding Academy is leveling an unjust playing field.  That's right — the two-year community college has announced its "Free Tuition Initiative."

Wanting a strong American culture is not racist.  It is ironic that in the United States, Asian people are more victimized by racist policies of the left than what they imagine coming from the right, yet Asian-Americans tend to be more leftist than conservative.  When college admissions policies first began to diverge from those that favored Caucasians, the left soon became appalled by the result — a heavy preponderance of Asians on the campus.  The leftist administrators reacted by implementing the racial quota system to reduce that preponderance.  They succeeded.  They replaced higher-caliber students with less capable ones.  Contrary to conventional belief in some quarters, Asians are not significantly more intelligent than Caucasians or blacks, at least not in the degree reflected in their college performance.  Their families do, however, tend to be more emphatic about educational success, sometimes to the extreme.  Obviously, the outcome is enhanced academic performance in that group, due not to their race, but to their culture.

URI establishes scholarship for Black pharmacy students.  The University of Rhode Island has received a $50,000 gift from an alumnus to establish a scholarship for qualified Black students or for students from other underrepresented populations to study to become pharmacists.  Fewer than 5% of all pharmacists are Black, the university said in a statement this week, citing information from Pharmacy Times.

With its twisted idea of social justice, Biden's DOJ will let discrimination against Asian Americans slide.  Despite repeated promises to clamp down on racism against Asian Americans, President Biden's Justice Department decided to withdraw a lawsuit targeting Yale University for rampant discrimination against Asian American applicants.  The same social justice dogma that considers it racist to refer to the novel coronavirus as the "Chinese coronavirus" also views the higher education industry's systemic bias against Asian Americans as a positive good.  When the Justice Department announced it would be dropping the Yale case, the American Civil Liberties Union applauded it.  While there are no publicly available statistics for Yale's admissions, we do have ample evidence of Asian American college applicants being held to a higher standard in general, as well as damning data from its fellow Ivy League university, Harvard.

Sometimes racial discrimination is okay:
Biden's DoJ drops Trump-era lawsuit against Yale which alleged the school discriminated against white and Asian students.  In another reversal of Trump-era policy, President Joe Biden's administration on Wednesday [2/3/2021] dropped its discrimination lawsuit against Yale University that alleged the Ivy League school was illegally discriminating against Asian American and white applicants.  Wednesday's voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit, which had been brought by the Trump administration, followed a November 12 decision by a federal appeals court that Harvard University's use of race in undergraduate admissions complied with federal civil rights law.  In a letter to Yale's lawyer, Gregory Friel, deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, said the Justice Department dropped the Yale case 'in light of all available facts, circumstances, and legal developments,' including the Harvard case.

Trump-Barr Justice Department sues Yale for discriminating in admissions.  The Department of Justice has sued Yale University for race and national origin discrimination in undergraduate admissions.  The DOJ alleges that Yale's discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, in particular most Asian and White applicants.  According to the complaint, Yale engages in racial balancing by, among other things, keeping the annual percentage of African-American admitted applicants to within one percentage point of the previous year's admitted class as reflected in U.S. Department of Education data.  The complaint alleges similar racial balancing with regard to Asian-American applicants.  It also alleges that Yale injures applicants and students because its race discrimination relies upon and reinforces damaging race-based stereotypes, including such stereotypes against Yale's racially-favored applicants.

Black student activists ask for race quotas in admissions.  It turns out black student activists at Pitzer College are just as bold as its faculty, who tried to axe its study-abroad program with Israel in the name of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.  The Black Student Union published an "address" Monday that it framed as "a coherent list of ways" the Claremont Consortium member can help black students succeed.  While it claims "this is not a list of demands," the address insists on "immediate change."  The most sweeping request may be imposing race quotas in admissions starting with next year's cycle:  "In order for Black students to feel more at home at Pitzer, we are calling for aggressive recruitment of Black students to be initiated immediately at Pitzer College.  There should be proportional representation of minority students for the 2021-22 academic year and every year following.

Justice Department Finds Yale Admissions Illegally Discriminated Against Asian American and White Applicants.  A two-year long Justice Department investigation has found that Yale University illegally discriminated against Asian American and white applicants in violation of federal civil rights law.  In a letter to the college's attorneys Thursday, the department said that Yale "rejects scores of Asian American and white applicants each year based on their race, whom it otherwise would admit."  "Yale's race discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular Asian American and White applicants," Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband, the head of the department's civil rights division, wrote.

The New War on Merit.  The American dream is that any citizen, regardless of sex, race, creed, or color, can rise on his determination and merit.  History is littered with examples of the reformers who worked to realize that dream, pushing the most influential institutions in the country to prize talent and hard work over wealth and connections.  The introduction of standardized testing, accessible to all American teens, was part of that push.  Harvard University began administering a standardized test to all applicants in 1905.  Its effect was profound and immediate: historically a landing spot for the Protestant upper crust, the school began admitting far more public school kids, Catholics, and Jews.  The increasing number of Jewish students was a major concern for Harvard president and committed progressive A. Lawrence Lowell.  He tried to implement a quota on Jews, then pivoted to an admissions process that used intangible factors such as "character" and "manliness."  It worked:  Jewish applicants consistently fell short.

How Affirmative Action Screwed Up Michelle Obama.  In 1985, Michelle Obama presented her senior thesis in the sociology department of Princeton University.  Although Michelle drew no such conclusion, the thesis is a stunning indictment of affirmative action.  Those who benefited from it, Michelle most notably, may never recover from its sting.  Her thesis reads like a cry for help.  "I have found that at Princeton no matter how matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me," she writes, "I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as I really don't belong."  She didn't.  Michelle should never have been admitted to Princeton.  Thanks to the "numerous opportunities" presented by affirmative action, however, Princeton is where she found herself.  "Told by counselors that her SAT scores and her grades weren't good enough for an Ivy League school," writes biographer Christopher Andersen, "Michelle applied to Princeton and Harvard anyway."  Sympathetic biographer Liza Mundy writes, "Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well."  She did not write well, either.  She even typed badly.

University Memo Suggests Fighting 'Systemic Racism' Necessary If Applying For Enrollment And Employment.  A memo sent by University of Colorado-Boulder officials on June 5 to all students and employees states that systemic racism exists, and asserts that applicants to the school must be willing to "combat systemic racism" because that would be a "non-negotiable condition of enrollment and employment." [...] Foundation for Individual Rights in Education President and CEO Greg Lukianoff told Campus Reform that the CU-Boulder perspective was "one of the starkest of attempts to imply that ideological conformity is a prerequisite to being part of the university community."  "University presidents and chancellors often take great advantage of their bully pulpit to condemn behavior they deem inappropriate, but they should be careful lest they create a pall of orthodoxy over the classroom, the research, and the institution itself," said Lukianoff.

Systemic Racism and Bigotry Are the Lifeblood of the Left.  A person applies for admission to college or grad school.  Or to the federal or state or municipal government for a Small Business Loan or other program to help promote commerce.  Or for a job at most anywhere.  The résumé is submitted and is competitive.  Or the business loan paperwork is in perfect order.  Or the job applicant is able-bodied and dependable.  Time passes, and a decision is made as to whom to admit, or who gets the government business benefit, or who gets the job.  And it turns out that the decision went to someone based on race.  The person with lesser credentials won because of his (male) or her (female) or their (whatever other gender they got) race.  That is racism.  Of course it is racism.  It is an "ism" derived from and based on race.  If the English language still has any words not yet deconstructed by the Left, that is the very definition of racism:  admitting people to schools, supporting businesses, hiring for work ... based on race.  It is racism, and racism is the theological sacrament of the Left.

California Democrats Want to Bring Racial Preferences Back.  Rather than focus on COVID-19 or the economic recovery, California liberals insist on pushing their pet issues.  The "stimulus" bill rammed through the House this month by Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco was a liberal wish list of subsidies and spending.  Now other California Democrats are ramming through an effort to repeal the state's ban on racial preferences.  Two things often happen when a single political party dominates a state the way Democrats dominate California.  First, an echo chamber of the dominant party convinces its leaders they can steamroll over any opposition.  Second, that conviction leads to political overreach.  Caucasian Americans are now only 19 percent of UC students, down from 38 percent a quarter century ago — this change reflects the increasing ethnic diversity of Californians.

An Unlikely Alliance of Blacks and Asians.  On March 9, 2020, the Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee approved House Bill H440, a measure outlawing race-based affirmative action in state agencies, state contracting, and public education.  The bill is currently on Idaho's full senate floor for amendments.  Once amended and signed by Governor Brad Little into law, H440 will make the Gem State the ninth to adopt a statewide ban on affirmative action.  The other eight states are:  California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma.  In most cases, measures to ban racial discrimination and preferential treatment were passed by popular votes on the ballot.  At the national level, we are also witnessing a descending trend regarding the legal parameters and public attitudes supporting race-conscious admissions.

Harvard virtue-signals:  DoJ brief finds that 45% of its black and Latino admissions got in on race.  Imagine being a talented black or Latino applicant who got into Harvard University.  Now there's news that 45% of the blacks and Latinos were found to have been admitted on race over merit, according to a new Justice Department brief, which credibly argues that Harvard engaged in illegal "race-balancing." [...] Every employer is going to be looking at your diploma and wondering if you were part of the 45%.  This is a pretty nasty burden to throw onto the talented 55% who got in on merit alone.  Everywhere they go, they'll be suspected of not being Harvard material but for the color of their skin.

Highlights of the News.  ITEM 5:  PJ Media reported, "Almost half of all blacks and Hispanics who attend Harvard were admitted because of illegal racial preferences in admissions according to a brief just filed by the Department of Justice.  "The Department of Justice has filed a brief in a federal lawsuit filed by Students For Fair Admissions that says Harvard's race-based admissions process violates federal law.  This filing marks a extreme departure from the Obama Civil Rights Division that spent significant time and resources seeking to expand the use of race in decision making.  "The brief filed by the Justice Department says Harvard "considers applicants' race at virtually every step, from rating applicants to winnowing the field of applicants when attempting to avoid an oversubscribed class."  The brief notes that forty-five percent of African-Americans and Hispanics at Harvard are because of racial preferences given to them during the admissions process.  "The Justice Department notes that providing blacks racial preferences has created a large class of victim applicants:  Asians."  The best way to end racism is to stop rewarding it.  If black people want to get into Harvard, they should do what Asians do:  study harder.

The best 'Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion' statement in the history of political correctness.  Professor Stephen Bainbridge is getting a lot of well deserved attention and praise for staring for staring down the academic diversity mafia and throwing its own rhetoric back in its face.  Required to submit to what amounts to a loyalty oath to "diversity" in order to qualify for a merit raise at UCLA Law School, he spoke truth to power and discussed his devotion to intellectual diversity — documenting it with footnotes.

A Duplicitous Attempt to Rescue Affirmative Action.  Despite all the attention that has been devoted to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in which a U.S. District judge in Boston recently held that Harvard's discrimination against Asian applicants was not illegal, the next chapter in the generations-old battle over affirmative action will not be written by the First Circuit in Boston or even by the Supreme Court.  It will be written by the voters of Washington State on November 5.

Harvard, Diversity, and the Courts.  The federal district court has ruled that Harvard's admissions practices, while "not perfect," do not violate federal law.  This does not mean that Harvard is not engaged in "discrimination," only that any such discrimination is "narrowly tailored" to address two compelling governmental interests — remedying the effects of past discrimination and diversity in higher education. [...] Harvard is constrained by both law and economics in the degree to which it discriminates against merit applicants.  Harvard has considerable, but not unlimited, discretion in how it administers its admissions policies.  Should Harvard violate the "narrowly tailored" criterion of race-based admissions policies, the court will order it to cease and desist.  If Harvard trades off too much merit in order to achieve a sufficiently diverse class it will cede its esteemed reputation to other prestigious universities that do not.  The law delineates what is permissible, but the market dictates what is sustainable.

Guaranteeing the future collapse of buildings that are engineered by people who couldn't make the cut.  Since women apparently aren't smart enough to make it in the field of engineering on their own merits, the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia has decided to give them a little extra boost by drastically lowering its entry requirements, making it easier for women to get accepted into the program.  According to reports, the goal is "to get more women to study engineering and consequently get into the engineering workforce" by basically dumbing down the entire engineering curriculum.  In the process, UTS will be able to virtue signal about how "diverse" it is, while simultaneously disenfranchising men who are actually qualified for entry into the program.

The American Left Is Racist, Not President Trump.  Does anyone really think affirmative action — an explicitly racist practice — does "people of color" any favors when such preferences lower academic standards to admit them into universities even when they lack the academic skills to compete with their classmates?  Ah, but create undemanding "ethnic studies" majors and turn them all into left-wing activists!  That they can do.  The biggest crime committed by the racist Democrats is the destruction of America's public schools, where the leftist teachers unions have stifled innovation and accountability.  The worst impact of the union grip on public education has been felt in low-income "communities of color."

White and Bright.  A new study from Georgetown University reveals that if the student bodies of the 200 most selective American colleges were enrolled solely on objective SAT or ACT aptitude test scores, their student bodies would increase from 66 percent white under the current subjective system to 75 percent white.  Ironically, this study was supposed to prove, in the wake of the entertaining and immensely popular Varsity Blues scandal in which TV actresses bribed their lowbrow kids into USC instead of Arizona State, that affluent white people have unfair advantages in college admissions.

How about a 'real disadvantage' SAT score?  The U.S. Supreme Court is likely soon to ban race as a factor in college admissions in all 50 states.  This new secret "adversity" score — although it never mentions race — gives liberal colleges new ways to guess (with high accuracy) which student applicants are leftist-favored minorities.  It is a way to circumvent any future ban on explicitly using race in college admissions.  This is ironic because, as Sidney Fussell noted in the May 18 online Atlantic magazine:  "The original Scholastic Aptitude Test was invented in 1926 by Carl Brigham, a Princeton alumnus and avowed eugenicist who created the test to uphold a racial caste system."

How About Some "Adversity Points" for Hardworking Kids of Hardworking Parents?  "Adversity scores" are manifestly not designed to cull out those applicants with the least adversity.  They are designed to cull out your kids in favor of kids in the political demographics the elite prefers. [...] The talented kids of middle managers, soldiers or other uncool people who probably go to church and do not even subscribe to the New York Times? Forget it.  This is another way for our garbage ruling class to promote "diversity," by which it means a wide range of people who can be brainwashed into sharing the elite's liberal elitist views.

College board president behind SAT 'adversity score' was also the mastermind of the controversial K-12 'Common Core' curriculum changes that has children just learning for a test.  The man behind the new plan to assign adversity scores to every student who takes the SAT is the same person who championed the controversial Common Core K-12 curriculum standards that remain a point of contention among parents, teachers and political leaders in many states.  David Coleman, president of The College Board, which administers the SAT, was the 'architect of Common Core' — which several states dropped after its adoption due to pressure from local communities and educators, according to Fox News.  Proponents of Common Core say the method was meant to establish a baseline of curriculum standards for K-12 education, with a focus on math and English language arts literacy.

Grievance Proxies.  For decades, the College Board defended the SAT, which it writes and administers, against charges that the test gives an unfair advantage to middle-class white students.  No longer.  Under relentless pressure from the racial-preferences lobby, the Board has now caved to the anti-meritocratic ideology of "diversity."  The Board will calculate for each SAT-taker an "adversity score" that purports to measure a student's socioeconomic position, according to the Wall Street Journal.  Colleges can use this adversity index to boost the admissions ranking of allegedly disadvantaged students who otherwise would score too poorly to be considered for admission.

Telling the awful truth about the new SAT 'adversity' score.  In his introduction [Tucker] Carlson outlined many problems with the whole idea:  [#1] It's kept a secret.  "Trust us," in effect, they say.  There is no appeal possible.  And as a black box whose inner workings are secret, it becomes an ideal vehicle for engineering the racial results admissions offices desire.  [#2] It is easily gamed — fake addresses, even possible income manipulation (by claiming a lot of depreciation, for instance, the way that Donald Trump reported negative income in the 1980s)  [#3]  And it provides perverse incentives, rewarding victim status, not achievement.

College Board Openly Trying to Skirt the Supreme Court with Secret 'Adversity Score'.  The College Board is going to assign a secret "adversity score" to students who take the SAT in an apparent attempt to help colleges get around a potential Supreme Court ruling on race-based admissions. [...] Colleges will see the 1-100 score, called the "Overall Disadvantage Level" when they view a student's test results.  Anything over 50 designates hardship.  The move is an attempt to do away with differences in test scores that result from disparities in wealth and education and preempts a ruling from the Supreme Court on race-based affirmative action.  Several college admissions officers told The WSJ the tool will be especially useful if the Supreme Court bans race-based admissions.

SATs will now contain secret 'adversity scores': Students will be rated on deprivation and crime in effort to level playing field.  Every student taking the SAT will now be given an 'adversity score' to level the playing field between people with different social and economic backgrounds, but critics say children of affluent parents could be penalized by the new system.  The scoring system was established by the national College Board, the nonprofit which administers the test, according to The Wall Street Journal.  The new system will use 15 different factors to weigh a student's adversity score, based on things such as the crime and poverty rates in the neighborhood where the teens grew up.

The Editor says...
The SAT is not a contest to see who is the most downtrodden victim of society.  It is supposed to be a measure of scholastic aptitude.  Those who are given hundreds of extra points to compensate for all their woes, and then end up in a rigorous university, are set up to fail.

For Asian Americans, a changing landscape on college admissions.  Then she eases into a potentially incendiary topic — one that many counselors like her have learned they cannot avoid.  "Let's talk about Asians," she says.  Lee's next slide shows three columns of numbers from a Princeton University study that tried to measure how race and ethnicity affect admissions by using SAT scores as a benchmark.  It uses the term "bonus" to describe how many extra SAT points an applicant's race is worth.  She points to the first column.  African Americans received a "bonus" of 230 points, Lee says.  She points to the second column.  "Hispanics received a bonus of 185 points."  The last column draws gasps.  Asian Americans, Lee says, are penalized by 50 points — in other words, they had to do that much better to win admission.  "Do Asians need higher test scores?  Is it harder for Asians to get into college?  The answer is yes," Lee says.

Ocasio-Cortez Joins De Blasio In Call To Punish Asian Students.  The battle over the admissions standards at New York City's elite public high schools has heated up again. [...] At issue is the fact that these hyper-competitive high schools consider only a test score in deciding admissions.  This meritocracy has created some of the best high schools in the world.  They would have you believe that wealthy white parents game the system by hiring expensive tutors, but while they might, it's not working.  In fact, wealthy white kids are not dominating this process at all.

Louisiana school that went viral for sending students to elite colleges accused of falsifying transcripts: report.  A southern Louisiana school became an internet sensation after multiple videos showing its underprivileged black students receiving acceptance letters to elite colleges went viral over the past two years.  The school is back in the spotlight after a report from The New York Times that says the school's founders fabricated applications and falsified transcripts, in addition to fostering "a culture of fear with physical and emotional abuse."  Tracey and Michael Landry, the husband-and-wife founders of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School, a private K-12 school in Breaux Bridge, are accused of mining "the worst stereotypes of black America" to play up the students' tales of hardship and academic accomplishments in order to appeal to Ivy League school's hunger for diversity, according to the report.

Louisiana School Made Headlines for Sending Black Kids to Elite Colleges.  Here's the Reality.  T.M. Landry College Prep, a small private school in Louisiana, boasted about its record of sending black students from working class families to top universities.  But there's more to the story.  In reality, the school falsified transcripts, made up student accomplishments and mined the worst stereotypes of black America to manufacture up-from-hardship tales that it sold to Ivy League schools hungry for diversity.  The Landrys also fostered a culture of fear with physical and emotional abuse, students and teachers said.

Identity Politics in Overdrive.  Harvard caps the number of Asians it admits, allege the plaintiffs — a coalition of Asian-American groups called Students for Fair Admissions — in [a] lawsuit against the university.  As a result, Asian applicants must present higher academic qualifications than any other racial or ethnic group in order to be considered for admission.  According to Harvard's own data, test scores and a high school GPA that would give an Asian-American high school senior only a 25 percent chance of admission would provide a virtual admissions guarantee — 95 percent — for an otherwise identical black applicant, a 77 percent chance of admission for a Hispanic student, and a 36 percent chance of admission for a white student.  Asians would make up more than 50 percent of the admitted class if Harvard were colorblind, estimates Students for Fair Admissions, instead of the 18.6 percent Asian average maintained over recent years.

Why The Media Will Never Tell You 85 Percent Of Americans Oppose Race-Based College Admissions.  This week, Harvard University went to trial over the claim it discriminates against Asian-American applicants.  Affirmative action moved back onto the main stage of American politics, particularly as this is an issue where replacing Justice Anthony Kennedy with Justice Brett Kavanaugh could make a difference at the Supreme Court.  Yet the political discussion of this hot-button issue again proceeds with little recognition of a basic fact: racial preferences in college admissions are wildly unpopular.  Eighty-five percent of Americans oppose considering race in the college admissions process, according to "Hidden Tribes," a recent report from the left-of-center group More in Common.  Of the seven "tribes" identified in the report, racial preferences were supported only by progressive activists, the furthest-left 8 percent of Americans.  Ironically, progressive activists are almost the least diverse of the tribes, except the furthest-right 6 percent.

James Madison doesn't want your dead cat to vote, and maybe not you either.  Society's refusal to recognize and reward talent starts early now in the educational system.  College admissions, hiring and promotions are increasingly on the basis of skin color or political outlook, not merit.  The Los Angeles Times reports that the affirmative action czar at UCLA who is tasked with covertly discriminating in favor of certain skin colors and sexual preferences — in violation of the state constitution prohibiting such discrimination — is paid $414,000 a year and presides over an office of 150 employees.  This "Vice Chancellor for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion" implements the policies of his boss, the president of the university.  Those include written instructions to faculty discouraging them from making statements such as "The most qualified person should get the job."  Because micro-aggression.  I wonder about their grading system.  Are professors also discouraged from giving A's to the students who perform best on the exam?

Harvard Case Could End Affirmative Discrimination.  If there was ever any question why Harvard University officials adamantly opposed the Trump administration's rescinding of Obama-era guidelines for race-based admissions decisions, the answer is now clear.  Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard — set to go to trial October 15 in federal district court in Boston — could expose how affirmative action has morphed into a preferential scheme that sets one minority group against others.  Even worse (and more ironic), modern affirmative action policies such as those being implemented at Harvard grossly violate the very civil rights they were meant to protect in the first place.  Thankfully, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is siding with students and parents who allege Harvard has instituted by stealth a racial-balancing scheme that deliberately limits admissions of highly qualified Asian students in a way that's similar to the strategies used by Ivy League institutions in the early 20th century to exclude Jews.

Park Slope is now ground zero in de Blasio's drive to impose quotas on city schools.  Park Slope is the next front in Mayor de Blasio's drive to remake the city's middle schools — in this case, by eliminating academic screening in admissions in favor of quotas intended to impose racial balance.  And the Department of Education has made it clear that any parents who object will be deemed bigots.

And They Wonder Why We're Angry.  What many parents fail to realize when they send their young people to expensive collegiate educations this week is that the business degree will not be an automatic option.  Business schools consistently maintain the most strict entry standards for admission to their major on college campuses.  Not just anyone can get a business degree.  The business school has standards, and this allows it to keep classes sizes small and the desired social environment positive.  This hypocrisy is but one of thousands that extend from the interpretive class into the suffering public.  Why not let all immigrants from anywhere have immediate free access to a business degree from any of our nation's top universities?

Deactivating Affirmative Action.  The ACT's annual reports show that Asian students consistently score higher than all other ethnic groups on the standardized test.  However, when it comes to Asian applicants, as noted in No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, schools seem to have higher standards for them.  According to a Princeton study conducted in 2009, Asians had to score on average 140 points higher on the SAT than whites to have an equal chance at admission.  This discrimination is a direct byproduct of this failing policy.  Clearly, some of the most qualified applicants are being rejected in order for the school to boast a diverse pool of acceptances.  In 2014, a lawsuit was filed against Harvard accusing admissions of having an unconstitutional cap on Asian acceptances, as the percentage of Asians in Harvard's student body had remained about 16 percent to 19 percent for two decades even though the Asian-American percentage of the population had more than doubled.  Therefore, in the attempt to diversify the class, these top-tiered colleges seem to make use of a quota-like system in order to boast their commitment diversity, but in reality, they are ousting qualified candidates simply because of their race.

Trump administration ditches Obama's guidelines which told colleges to consider applicants' race to increase diversity.  The Trump administration plans to encourage colleges to ignore race in their admissions process, abandoning guidelines that called on universities to consider race as a way of promoting diversity, it was reported on Tuesday [7/3/2018].  The guidelines, put in place under President Barack Obama in 2011 and 2016, presented legal recommendations that Trump administration officials contend 'mislead schools to believe that legal forms of affirmative action are simpler to achieve than the law allows,' the Wall Street Journal reported, citing two people familiar with the plans.

Trump admin pushes colleges to drop Obama-era affirmative action policy.  The Trump administration is urging colleges not to consider race in their admissions process, reversing an Obama-era guideline that encouraged affirmative action to boost diversity.  The move, reported by multiple news outlets, restores the policy under then-President George W. Bush that encouraged "race-neutral methods" in college admissions.  Plans to launch the new policy were first reported Tuesday [7/3/2018] by The Wall Street Journal.

Harvard Isn't Interested In Meritocracy or Asians.  [Scroll down]  The worm in the apple here is that Harvard offers an illusion of meritocracy.  But its aim is preparing future leaders.  Rather than letting in the brightest and most dedicated students.  And its notion of leadership qualities has only so much to do with academic merit.  That is why there's an extensive industry dedicated to helping parents get their children into those high end schools.  Some Asian parents have been paying thousands to tens of thousands of dollars just for the image management side of things.  Diversity is a much more important value than merit in academia.  And while that serves as an unofficial quota on white people.  It serves as a quota on Asian people too.

NYC's War on Academic Excellence.  While student "Dreamers" here illegally from south of the border garner bleeding-heart front-page stories and nightly news dispatches, the high-achieving sons and daughters of legal immigrants from Asia are getting shafted by far-left Democrats.  And it's all in the perverted name of "diversity."

Illegal U: An Immigration Scam in Plain Sight.  The notion of establishing a college intended for an otherwise illegal alien market flabbergasted me some 20 years ago when I evaluated some categories of colleges for the State of Virginia.  In my brief time (1999-2000) at Virginia's State Council of Higher Education (SCHEV), I examined the credentials of marginal, for-profit colleges, which sometimes had high portions of foreign students.  Their administrations were dominated by foreign men.  At least one emphasized its ties with a foreign nation.  In one egregious instance, I found clear signs of dishonesty:  the school claimed faculty who denied to me they had anything to do with the institution.  Other faculty listed inflated their credentials.  SCHEV did nothing, claiming the agency lacked the resources to do a thorough examination of each applicant for institutional approval.  Other schools had ties to foreign countries that compromised their integrity as academic institutions.

Black-On-Black Racism At Cornell.  Cornell University's Black Students United [...] complains that the prestigious Ivy League school admits too many blacks — from Africa and the Caribbean.  "We demand that Cornell Admissions to come up with a plan to actively increase the presence of underrepresented Black students on this campus," the BSU student group said in its demands.  "We define underrepresented Black students as Black Americans who have several generations (more than two) in this country."  Hold the phone.  Isn't the mantra of modern higher education "diversity," "inclusion" and "overcoming disadvantage"?  If so, the black African and Caribbean students would seem to nail all three.  Maybe the problem is that it is tough to explain why so many black foreign applicants outperform America-born blacks on what some call "culturally biased" standardized tests.

Democrats Pressure the Federal Government to Support Racial Discrimination.  Top Democrats in Congress are pressuring the Justice and Education Departments to stop the administration's plans to investigate and potentially sue universities that intentionally discriminate against applicants based on race.  In their letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), Representative John Conyers (D., Mich.), and others embrace the Alice in Wonderland worldview in which curtailing racial discrimination "would undermine civil rights protections."

Affirmative Action Has Failed.  It Never Had a Chance to Succeed.  After decades of affirmative action, billions of dollars invested in finding, mentoring, and recruiting minority students, and extraordinary levels of effort and experimentation, black and Hispanic students are "more underrepresented at the nation's top colleges and universities than they were 35 years ago" (emphasis added).  White and Asian students, on the other hand, remain overrepresented as a percentage of the population, with Asian students most overrepresented of all.  On the one hand, these statistics represent a staggering failure.  It's difficult to overstate the modern campus obsession with diversity.  To judge from marketing materials, campus investments, and the explosive growth of diversity bureaucracies, increasing minority representation on campus isn't just a priority on par with, say, a good math, English, or engineering department, it's deemed to be an indispensable part of a high-quality college education.  That's the legal rationale that's used to justify racial discrimination in college admissions — that there is a "compelling state interest" in creating a truly diverse educational experience.  On the other hand, however, one wonders whether failure was inevitable.  Not even the most aggressive of affirmative-action programs can find students who don't exist.  And when it comes to college admissions, the problem isn't a lack of collegiate demand for qualified minority students but rather a serious deficiency in supply.  There are simply not enough students who are ready, willing, and able to do the work.

Trump, Justice to tackle affirmative action against whites.  President Donald Trump's Department of Justice is reportedly poised to launch some civil rights investigations, and perhaps lawsuits, against those colleges and universities that discriminate against applicants based on skin color — and hold on, it's not what you think.  White people, get ready to be shocked.  Justice is turning critical eyes at schools that wrongfully keep out whites.  That's what a read-between-the-lines look at an internal Justice Department memo suggests, anyway, at least to The New York Times.  And if true, hold the phone.  It'll be hard to gauge whose scream is louder, Barack Obama's or Eric Holder's.  Either way, Black Lives Matter and George Soros just found a new fundraiser.

Harvard makes diversity history:  Majority of incoming freshman class are not white.  Harvard University's incoming freshman class will be unlike any since its founding in 1636 — the majority of students are non-white.  The institution, which has made a concerted effort in recent years to become more diverse, confirmed that 50.8 percent of its class of 2021 are non-white.

Justice Dept to tackle college admissions racial discrimination, left freaks out.  If a report in the NY Times is accurate, the Trump administration is getting ready to take on the most precious of liberal dogmas, the institutionalized racial discrimination in college admissions, aka affirmative action.  The Times reaches the conclusion that affirmative action will be under attack, even though the documents it has obtained for its reporting don't actually say that.

Students vote to give blacks free tuition at Western Kentucky University.  The student government at Western Kentucky University on Tuesday [4/18/2017] voted in favor of giving free tuition to black students.  The school's Student Government Association passed a resolution by 19-10 supporting slavery reparations for black students in the form of free tuition and free access to the public Bowling Green campus.  The resolution also recommends that the university create a task force to "assess the feasibility of test-optional admissions and geographically-weighted admissions," claiming that some standardized testing poses a disadvantage for needy students and perpetuates inequality and "white supremacy," The Bowling Green Daily News reported.

Debate over in-state tuition for students in US illegally.  Twenty states already offer cheaper in-state college tuition to students who are in the United States illegally.  Legislation making its way through the Tennessee Legislature would make that state the 21st.

Wisconsin students group demands free tuition for black students.  The student government at the University of Wisconsin-Madison said on Wednesday [2/15/2017] that black students should be offered free tuition and housing because blacks were legally barred from education during slavery and university remains out of reach for black students today.  The Associated Students of Madison said in a resolution that suburban high school students are over-represented.  The group said consideration of ACT and SAT scores in applications upholds "white supremacy" because it restricts opportunities for the poor.  The college has proposed measures aimed at improving diversity.

The 'Diversity' Fraud.  It is common, at colleges and universities across the country, for the test scores of Asian American students who have been admitted to a given college to be higher than the test scores of whites or of blacks or Hispanics.  That may not seem strange, since that is true of test scores in general.  But, at any given institution, applying the same standards to all, the test scores of students at a particular institution would tend to be similar.  More Asian Americans would be admitted to higher ranked colleges and universities, however, if the same standards were applied to all.  In short, something very much like the quota limits that were applied to Jews in the past are now being applied to Asian Americans — and, once again, are being justified by diversity.  But what justifies diversity?  Nothing but unsupported assertions, repeated endlessly, piously and loudly.

Beating Affirmative Actions.  Affirmative action, for liberals, is a means toward the end of egalitarianism.  The policy originally sought to end discrimination in government employment but expanded into a quota system that taxpayer-funded universities use against Caucasian women such as Abigail Fisher, Jennifer Gratz, and Barbara Grutter.  Affirmative action also discriminates against Asian-Americans.  The University of Texas policy that led to Fisher sought to increase African-American and Hispanic enrollment while ignoring Asian-Americans, who have higher average SAT scores.  In amicus briefs, the Asian American Legal Foundation noted that ["]racial preferences in college admissions programs ... discriminate against Asian-American applicants by deeming them overrepresented relative to their demographics in the population and thus less worthy of admission than applicants of underrepresented races.["]

Conservative club's 'affirmative action bake sale' draws scrutiny.  The Young Conservatives of Texas club at the University of Texas at Austin sparked outrage Wednesday after hosting an "affirmative action bake sale" and charging people different prices based on their race and sex.  The Dallas Morning News reported that a cookie at the sale cost $1.50 for Asian males, $1 for white males and 50 cents for African-American and Hispanic males.  Native American men and women were given free cookies.  Asian women had to pay $1.25, white women 75 cents and Hispanic and African-American women 25 cents.

Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in College Admissions.  The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday [6/23/2016] upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas at Austin, ending a protracted legal battle.  The vote was 4-3.  It was not immediately clear how far-reaching the ruling will be because of the specifics of the Texas program at issue.  However, the court offered a grudging agreement that in the Texas case the program is needed.

New App Helps Illegal Aliens Access U.S. College Scholarships.  Sarahi Espinoza Salamanca found it hard to find money for college after graduating from North Hollywood High School in Southern California.  She was brought to the state illegally from Mexico by her parents when she was 4, but following a free K-12 education, she faced paying tuition for college — something she said she could not afford. [...] The app also has a map that tells illegal aliens which states allow them to pay in-state tuition and which states allow them to pay in-state tuition, plus have access to financial aid.  The article explained that Salamanca started the app after winning $100,000 in the Voto Latinos Innovator Challenge contest and also received $25,000 from an anonymous donor.  Salamanca is now, the article said, in the U.S. legally and has been honored by the Obama administration and Facebook.

Reaction to the article above:
Illegal Alien Gets a Free Education.  [Scroll down]  My knee-jerk reaction was to exclaim, which I did out loud — boo-freaking-hoo!  Poor illegal immigrant brought to our country illegally, which means her and her family is not supposed to be here in the first place and after receiving an entirely free American education (as well as a myriad of other freebies) now has the nerve to whine about having to pay for college.  That is bad enough, but it gets worse.  Rather than sucking it up and finding a way to pay for college, or just not going, "Salamancadecided to find a way to help illegal aliens gain access to college scholarships..."  She created an app called the DREAMer's Roundup.  Only inAmerica!  The app creates a database of scholarships for illegals and already has at least 500 available.

Misleading and Using Blacks.  The issue for black parents is not whether their sons and daughters should be admitted to an elite college or one that is lower-ranked.  The issue is whether their sons and daughters should be admitted to a college where they would not be admitted if they were white.  The question for black parents and black people is:  Which better serves our interests, a black student's being admitted to an elite college and winding up in the bottom of his class or flunking out or a black student's being admitted to a less prestigious college and performing just as well as his white peers?  I would opt for a black student's doing well and graduating from a less prestigious college.

Brown University unveils $100 million plan to address campus diversity.  Brown University has unveiled a $100 million plan aimed at boosting diversity on its Rhode Island campus over the next 10 years, including doubling the number of faculty members from minority and other underrepresented populations.  The plan is spelled out in a 19-page document that Brown President Christina Paxson posted on the Ivy League university's website earlier this week.

Critics blast $20M Cal-Berkeley fund for race-based scholarships, hiring.  The $20 million fund unveiled by a top California university last month to endow scholarships for African-American students and to hire diverse faculty is just the latest attempt to get around a state law barring schools from using racial preferences in admissions, according to critics, who are vowing yet another legal battle.  University of California-Berkeley's "African-American Initiative" would raise funds from private non-profits to fund "a comprehensive effort to address the underrepresentation of African-American students, faculty and staff at our university, and improve the climate for those who are here now and all who will join our community in the future."  The money would go to scholarships for black students, the hiring of race-specific clinical psychologists and fostering a more diverse faculty and senior management, according to the school.

Whitewash: Kroll left dozens of bad LSATs out of UT report.  An investigation into the corruption of admissions standards at the University of Texas School of Law confirmed Watchdog's reports that dozens of applicants had been admitted to UT Law despite atrocious test scores.  Nonetheless, Kroll Associates made no mention in its final report of the dozens of inadequate Law School Admission Test scores it found in researching applicant data from 2004 to 2014.

The Editor says...
How many of the students with "atrocious test scores" were admitted due to affirmative action quotas?

Rachel Dolezal sued Howard University for discriminating against her because she's white.  This was in 2002, before the "transition." [...] She lost the suit but Dolezal's issues with Howard were well known to her family.  Her history with the school is fascinating, in fact, and may be a window onto why she began to try to pass as black in the first place.

More about Rachel Dolezal.

Why I faked being black for med school.  In the early 1990s, the Division of Community and Minority Programs of the Association of American Medical Colleges devised Project 3,000 by 2000.  This program set the quantitative target (a quota — official or unofficial) of increasing minority enrollment in US medical schools from 1,584 to 3,000 between 1990 to 2000.  Many medical schools, including St. Louis University, where I eventually attended, jumped on this program.  But the question was whether, in order to achieve their quantitative goal, medical schools were compromising their academic standards, or were they simply going to aggressively recruit minority students?

Asian-American groups accuse Harvard of racial bias in admissions.  A coalition of Asian-American groups filed a federal complaint against Harvard University on Friday alleging the school engaged in "systemic and continuous discrimination" against Asian Americans during its admissions process.  More than 60 Chinese, Indian, Korean and Pakistani groups came together for the complaint, which was filed with the civil rights offices at the justice and education departments.  They are calling for an investigation into Harvard and other Ivy League institutions that they say should stop using racial quotas or racial balancing in admission.

Liberal Affirmative Action Racism Facing New Threat.  Finally, push is about to come to shove regarding the systemic racism exercised in the name of diversity.  Almost anyone paying attention realizes that nearly all elite universities and colleges discriminate against Asian-Americans in admissions policy.  In those rare elite campuses that don't discriminate, such as the University of California system (where voters passed an initiative outlawing it) and California Institute of Technology, the most selective campuses have 40% to 50% Asian-American undergraduate student bodies.  But elsewhere, the numbers are far lower.  Now, a large coalition organizations representing Asian-Americans has filed a formal complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

Mindy Kaling's Brother Says He Got Into Medical School By Posing As Black.  On a website promoting his book, [Vijay] Chokalingam writes that he realized when he was a junior at the University of Chicago he didn't have the grades or the MCAT score to get into medical school.  According to Chokalingam, he had a GPA of 3.1 and a score of 31 on the MCAT, which ranks in the 80-85 percentile for the test.  "Still, I was determined to become a doctor and I knew that admission standards for certain minorities under affirmative action were, let's say... less stringent?" he writes.

Asians Penalized 50 Points On SAT — Black Students Given 230 Bonus Points.  Don't let your jaw drop too far, this fundamental change is not just happening in college application processes.  This exact same methodology is also being applied to Credit Scores for home mortgages and car loans.

Harvard Affirmative Action Lawsuit Could Decrease African American Students by 50% at Elite Universities.  On Monday [11/17/2014], federal lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were filed alleging that both universities discriminated against white and Asian American students as a result of their race-based affirmative action policies.  Moreover, according to an AP article, the lawsuit against Harvard alleges that the prestigious university has a limit for the number of Asian Americans it admits each year.

Affirmative action lawsuits hit Harvard and UNC.  Lawsuits filed Monday [11/17/2014] against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill argue that affirmative action policies should be banned at colleges across the nation.  The federal suits allege Harvard and UNC rely on race-based affirmative action policies that impact admissions of high-achieving white and Asian-American students.  The Harvard lawsuit also contends that the Ivy League university specifically limits the number of Asian-Americans it admits each year.

Muslim Sues Latino Caucus for Not Giving Her Latino Scholarship.  A Muslim student with a Muslim father and Latino mother is suing the Illinois Legislative Latino Caucus Foundation (ILLCF) for not giving her a scholarship even though she was a mediocre student and was accused of faking a letter of recommendation.

University of Texas can use race as factor in admissions, court rules.  The University of Texas can consider race in undergraduate admissions to promote diversity, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday [7/15/2014].  Acting in a lawsuit that the U.S. Supreme Court had sent back last year, Judge Patrick Higginbotham wrote that considering race boosted the university's efforts to assemble a diverse student body.  "Universities may use race as part of a holistic admissions program where it cannot otherwise achieve diversity," Higginbotham wrote.  "This interest is compelled by the reality that university education is more the shaping of lives than the filling of heads with facts — the classic assertion of the humanities."

The Editor says...
In other words, indoctrination and multiculturalism are more important than marketable skills.

UCLA prof says stats prove school's admissions illegally favor blacks.  Public universities in California are barred from using race as a factor in admitting students, but a UCLA professor who once served on its admissions oversight team says he has proof they do it anyway.  While the first round of admissions consideration is handled fairly, African-American students are nearly three times as likely to make it out of the "maybe" pile than equally-qualified white students, and more than twice as likely as Asians, according to Tim Groseclose, a political science professor at the school and author of a new book [...]

Coming End to Racial Preferences.  Last week's U.S. Supreme Court 6-2 ruling in Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action et al. upheld Michigan's constitutional amendment that bans racial preferences in admission to its public universities.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor lashed out at her colleagues in a bitter dissent, calling them "out of touch with reality."  She went on to make the incredible argument that the amendment, which explicitly forbids racial discrimination, itself amounts to racial discrimination.  Her argument was that permissible "race-sensitive admissions policies," the new name for racial preferences, both serve the compelling interest of obtaining the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body and inure people to the benefit of racial minorities.  By the way, no one has come up with hard evidence of the supposed "educational benefits" that come from a racially mixed student body, and there's mounting evidence of harm done to minorities through academic mismatching.

In Washington, It's Politics "By Any Means Necessary".  The Supreme Court, in a moment of unusual clarity, ruled last week that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment did not prohibit states from requiring public universities to treat applicants of different races equally.  Or, in other words, equal protection is not opposed to (14th Amendment) equal protection.  It is a powerful testimony to the Orwellian nature of our legal world that such a question arose in the first place and that two Justices could be found to dissent from the ruling.  The full name of the original plaintiff, however, reveals much:  "Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary."

Supreme Court Upholds Michigan Affirmative Action Ban.  The justices said in a 6-2 ruling Tuesday [4/22/2014] that Michigan voters had the right to change their state constitution to prohibit public colleges and universities from taking account of race in admissions decisions.

Supreme Court upholds Michigan's ban on affirmative action in college admissions.  In upholding a ban on the use of race in admission decisions at Michigan's public universities, the U.S. Supreme Court didn't end affirmative action — they just very strongly upheld the right of voters to ban it.

Antonin Scalia faults Sonia Sotomayor for 'doubly shameful' suggestion that Michigan voters are racist.  Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia faulted Justice Sonia Sotomayor for making what he regards as a "shameful" suggestion that the Michigan voters who decided to ban affirmative action in college admissions were motivated by racism.  Scalia wrote a concurring opinion upholding a 2006 ballot initiative that amended Michigan's constitution to ban affirmative action. [...] Sotomayor, in her dissent, opened by describing three stages of "the majority" discriminating against racial minorities in the political process, beginning with the Jim Crow laws that flouted the 15th Amendment.

Krauthammer: 'Leave the decision of affirmative action up to the people.  Charles Krauthammer told viewers Tuesday on "Special Report with Bret Baier" that Tuesdays Supreme Court opinion that effectively ends affirmative action at public universities in Michigan was a sound decision.  "The left is trying to institutionalize affirmative action to make it impossible for any legislature or any referendum ever to abolish it ever in the history of the country," the syndicated columnist and Fox News contributor said.  "An outrageous proposition that was rejected by the court."  Krauthammer said the issue should be decided on a state-by-state basis.

Court's affirmative action ruling: A step towards respecting states' rights.  With its ruling upholding the right of Michigan voters to ban racial preferences in state university admissions, the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts on Tuesday took what legal scholars are saying one more step away from the concept of federal supremacy.  The 6-2 decision reversed a 2012 ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that struck down the voter initiative on the grounds that it violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, and carved out more power for the states over Washington in the process.

Raced-Based Preferences Forever.  What was called "racial quotas" in the 1970s and has been referred to as "affirmative action" since the 1990s is giving way to a new term:  "race-sensitive admission policies."  The language shift is telling — race-based preferences are losing intellectual, judicial, and political support. — Yesterday, the Supreme Court voted six to two to uphold the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), which was passed with support from 58 percent of that state's voters in 2006.  It simply enshrines in Michigan's constitution that the state should not engage in race discrimination.  Opponents of the initiative sued, claiming the measure discriminated against racial minorities who might wish to lobby for preferential treatment.

A Lack of Affirmative Action Isn't Why Minority Students Are Suffering.  In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that a ballot initiative by Michigan residents to bar the use of race preferences as a factor of admission was constitutional.  On a Court that has consistently issued closely contested opinions — often in 5-4 decisions — the overwhelming majority of the Justices recognized the importance and the legality of people in several states like Michigan to prohibit the use of race as a factor in admissions.  Despite the commentary to the contrary which is likely to follow in the coming days, the Court did not address whether colleges or universities could use race as a factor of admission — they wisely left the decision to the voters in individual states to make such a decision.

Supreme Court upholds Michigan's ban on racial preferences in university admissions.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday [4/22/2014] made clear that states are free to prohibit the use of racial considerations in university admissions, upholding Michigan's constitutional amendment banning affirmative action.  By a vote of 6 to 2, the court concluded that it was not up to judges to overturn the 2006 decision by Michigan voters to bar consideration of race when deciding who gets into the state's universities.

Going Negative On Affirmative Action.  The good news about yesterday's Supreme Court ruling is that it affirmed the right of the people to ban racial preferences in university admissions.  The bad news is that it didn't go further.

Scalia's plain truth on affirmative action.  [The US Supreme Court] issued a major ruling that upheld Michigan's 2006 constitutional amendment banning the use of affirmative action as a factor for admission in the state's public universities.  That amendment had been adjoined to the state's constitution following an election in which nearly 4 million votes were cast — and in which the side supporting the amendment prevailed by a 16-point margin, 58 percent to 42 percent.  No matter; in a highly provocative 2011 ruling, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals declared it unconstitutional.  The Supreme Court on Tuesday, with a 6-2 vote, threw the 6th Circuit's ludicrous decision onto the trash heap of history's discarded ideas.

Justice Sotomayor and the affirmative action bitter-enders have lost bigtime.  There is a growing body of experience indicating that the phenomenon known as "mismatch" results in minorities being placed in situations where they cannot compete with the more-qualified students who received no such preferences.  The results have been high drop-out rates, leaving failed students worse off than if they had been admitted to institutions where their qualifications were similar to those of other students.  This is precisely what has happened with the end of racial preferences in California following the passage of Proposition 209.

The 'Wise Latina jumped the shark.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor jumped the shark Tuesday with her lengthy dissent from the Schuette decision, read aloud from the bench.  Although the liberal media sympathize with her and presented the decision as a setback, the positions she took are at variance with both the clear meaning of the text of the Constitution and with the sentiments of the vast majority of Americans, who consistently vote against racial preferences whenever they get the chance.

Half a Win on Racial Discrimination.  There's a reason they call it "progressivism" — for years, the main legal question contested in affirmative-action cases, from Bakke to Grutter, was whether the state should be allowed to engage in racial discrimination.  In the Michigan affirmative-action case decided today [4/22/2014], Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the question was whether the state should be required to engage in racial discrimination.  The progress, then, has followed the Left's familiar ratchet-effect model, inching its way from "not forbidden" to "compulsory."  Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal put it, the question here was not whether the use of racial discrimination for putatively benevolent purposes is constitutional but whether states "may end racial preferences without violating the U.S. Constitution."

What Race Preferences Hide.  Any person attempting to overcome hardship can look to Sotomayor for inspiration.  But as she demonstrated in her long, impassioned dissent in the case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, the experience of benefiting from race preferences has left her prickly and defensive on the subject.  As others, including her Supreme Court colleague Justice Clarence Thomas, have argued, that kind of gnawing insecurity is one of the consequences of preferences.  Others are never sure if you've achieved your position entirely on merit, and neither are you.

Finally getting it right on affirmative action.  Every once in a while a great, conflicted country gets an insoluble problem exactly right.  Such is the Supreme Court's ruling this week on affirmative action.  It upheld a Michigan referendum prohibiting the state from discriminating either for or against any citizen on the basis of race.  The Schuette ruling is highly significant for two reasons:  its lopsided majority of 6 to 2, including a crucial concurrence from liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, and, even more important, Breyer's rationale.  It couldn't be simpler.  "The Constitution foresees the ballot box, not the courts, as the normal instrument for resolving differences and debates about the merits of these programs."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor proves herself not so wise.  Justice Sonia Sotomayor this week took the unusual step of reading her dissent in a case involving state-sponsored affirmative action in Michigan.  In doing so, she showed herself not only petulant to be on the losing side in a 6-2 decision, but unable to divorce her legal reasoning from her own sense of racial grievance.  It was an embarrassing but predictable performance.  In 2009, I was one of a handful of witnesses who testified against Sotomayor's confirmation before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  I did so with sadness, because there is much to admire in Sotomayor's personal history.

Asians Derail Affirmative Action In California.  The express train hurtling to return racial preference admissions to California — in the form of State Constitutional Amendment 5, which if placed on the ballot and approved by voters would have overturned Prop. 209  — has just been derailed by an outburst of opposition from Asian Americans.  The eruption of opposition caught SCA 5's Democratic sponsors by surprise and caused a crucial three Asian American senators to withdraw their support, depriving the measure of the two thirds senate majority required to place an initiative on the ballot.

Racial spoils system starting to fall apart in California.  California's ruling Democrats are in danger of splintering their coalition over an attempt to re-introduce affirmative action, which has been banned ever since the passage of Proposition 209 in 1996, which banned the use of racial preferences by the state, including in higher education.

Racial Preferences Under Siege.  Two recent events, one on the West Coast and one on the East Coast, demonstrate that after half a century, support for racial preferences in college admissions is getting more and more unsustainable — both politically and intellectually.  In California, liberals have long deplored the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which banned racial preferences at state universities.  Its backers pointed out that the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which is often cited as the authority for mandating preferential treatment for racial minorities, actually forbids all racial discrimination.  "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race," Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts has concluded.

Supreme Court justices' comments seem to favor Michigan affirmative action ban.  The Supreme Court appeared eager during oral arguments Tuesday [10/15/2013] to uphold a Michigan ban on affirmative action, with the justices even considering whether they would need to overrule previous precedents to make sure the state's color-blind school admissions requirement can remain in place.

False Equality in Michigan.  Can a state's citizens amend the state constitution to ban affirmative action programs in public universities, even if the Supreme Court has approved those programs?  That is the question the court is facing this week in the case of Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action.  The court last considered an affirmative action case out of Michigan in 2003, when it upheld the race-conscious admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School.

Black Skin Privilege.  This collectivist view of guilt and debts that erases individuals and their accountability is now entrenched in America's institutional framework.  In the 1970s, affirmative action was successfully redefined to mean racial preferences for non-whites, and a new standard was set for admissions policies at universities across the United States.  Though black students' median SAT scores in any given year were at least 200 points lower than the median for white students,' blacks were admitted to virtually all academically competitive schools at much higher rates. [...] Inevitably the racial bias does not stop with the admissions process.  Once a university accepts black students, under-qualified for that school though they may be, it is imperative that they remain in school and eventually graduate, poor performance notwithstanding.

Elite colleges confronting failure of affirmative action.  A new report from researchers at Georgetown University must be horrifying diversicrats at elite colleges and universities.  The report's title, "Separate and Unequal: How Higher Education Reinforces the Intergenerational Reproduction of White Racial Privilege," gives away the conclusion of the study.  Despite all the efforts at affirmative action, as a whole, the top tier of colleges is making racial inequality worse, rather than better.

School Administrators at NC University Allegedly Inflate Grades of African-American Students.  Two things immediately come to mind when reading these allegations:  First, not only is it immoral and presumably in violation of the school's honor code to inflate grades for undeserving students, but it's completely unfair to those whom [sic] worked hard for the grades they undoubtedly earned.  And second, how offensive!  The notion that any group of students — merely because of the color of their skin — needs to be "taken care of" by a small group of "administrators" is repugnant on its face.

Abigail Fisher says she's confident UT 'won't be able to use race in the future'.  Abigail Fisher, a 23-year-old at the center of this year's Supreme Court case on affirmative action, predicts that Monday's [6/24/2013] decision will mark the end of race-based admissions at the University of Texas.  Just hours after the court sent her case back to the district level, Fisher said the decision brought the nation "closer to a day when student's race isn't used at all in students' admissions."

Race discussion may crowd out scandals in wake of Supreme Court affirmative action decision.  Get set for a Supreme Court decision that could alter or even end affirmative action.  Or not.  Predicting SCOTUS decisions is hazardous, but Fisher v University of Texas could plunge the nation into heated discussion of the role of racial preferences in education and beyond.

The Real Damage from Racial Preferences in College Admissions.  Three members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Todd Gaziano, Gail Heriot, and Peter Kirsanow, filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in the Fisher case.  Their Commission found "extensive empirical research" showing that "students who attend schools where their entering academic credentials put them in the bottom of the class are less likely to follow through" pursuing a major in science or engineering than other students with similar credentials "who attend schools where their credentials put them in the middle or top of the class."  The Commission found the same thing to be true in law schools [...]

Even in Medical School, Affirmative Action Rules.  When it comes to becoming a physician, the academic rigors, years of schooling, and personal sacrifice common to the effort are well-known.  This process is a sort of rite of passage, an intellectual marathon that only the best and brightest can complete.  As such, medical schools should select candidates best-suited to excel throughout school and cultivate the skills that will allow them to practice in the best health care system in the world.  The process by which these candidates are selected, however, may come as a shock.

Equal Treatment Under the Law.  Ward Connerly says the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in Fisher v. University of Texas may help kill racial preferences once and for all.