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ZorbaTHut  1yr ago (text post)   44948 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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We're now one month away from the opening of the new Supreme Court term, and hopefully the summer break has allowed tensions around the last term to cool down somewhat.

The test of that, I think, will be a lightning rod of a case coming up early in the term, regarding affirmative action. But actually, it's two cases, Harvard, the one everyone talks about, and UNC, both on Halloween. I haven't paid as much attention to the UNC case, but I finally bothered to read some of the amicus briefs yesterday and one stood out because it comes at the issue in a way that's less talked about than the issue with Harvard's diversity "tips" or low personality scores for Asian students.

The brief is filed on behalf of a handful of former US Dept. of Ed. officials who served under Betsy DeVos in the previous administration. The brief recounts the history of some of the changes made during the Obama administration:

Before Amici’s tenure in OCR, the Obama Administration actively encouraged schools to adopt race-conscious policies, providing schools with suggestions and guidelines regarding race-conscious scholarships, student retention, mentoring, andelsewise. In 2018, OCR withdrew most of the Obama-era guidance on these topics, and in 2020 and 2021,issued other guidance and information on the limited ability for schools to use race under Title VI. Now, since January 2021, the Biden Administration has already undone much of that work, which offered information regarding the limited lawful use of race in admissions, grading, discipline, and other arenas. In short, existing case law on the issue of diversity has given rise to widely divergent views of the permissible scope of the use of race, and subjects students and schools to legal “whiplash” on this topic. In the meantime, many schools continue to expand their use of race-conscious policies, sometimes under the guise of “diversity” and “equity” as an all-purpose exception to Title VI.

So the Obama Administration makes a bunch of changes in 2011, then the Trump administration rescinds those in 2018 and issues entirely different guidance. The brief describes some of the complaints they dealt with and how they responded. No, you can't reopen schools following the pandemic to only black and brown kids in order to reduce in-person class size and leave white kids at home. No, you can't have segregated dorms, etc. Then the Biden admin - on Day 1 - rescinds all the Trump-era guidance. So a major argument they're making is that this goes beyond affirmative action in admissions - or at least that it should. They're inviting the court to say in what ways race can and cannot be used in a whole host of other circumstances relating to education as well. They're also saying that when every few years the guidance changes when the party in power changes, and the Department sometimes winds up giving diametrically opposite guidance, clearly such wildly different interpretations mean there needs to be some clarification from the Court on when the use of race is and is not permissible.

The actual question before the Court is narrower, but I can see where this argument about the instability might have an audience among at least some of the justices.

I guess the question is, given the very large reaction to Dobbs, if the Court were inclined to overturn Grutter, will that scare them off? Or is there a chance they actually go farther and weigh in on the culture war around the use of race in non-admissions related education policy? If the Court were to demand a more race-neutral approach to education does that take some of the heat out of the culture war, the way Obergefell did in re: gay marriage, or does it trigger more anger, more calls for court packing, etc?

I work at a very left wing college - you get inundated with messages supporting exclusively democratic positions. I agree with some, disagree with others, but overall abhor the general tone from my employer, as anyone should.

I'm wondering what the message will be if AA is overturned. They will need to comment AND change practices, which is very different from low-hanging fruit of virtue signaling (aside - I have to refrain from using the term "low-hanging fruit" at this institution).

I think their justification for race-based admission and discrimination against certain groups will be heavily weighted with critical theory - the "disadvantaging whites & Asians is equitable" approach.

At the end of the day, potential ending of AA opens a huge breach in the DEI. Will they circumvent it? Will there be 'sanctuary colleges' where admissions is allowed to be race-based?

My guess is yes, this will heat the culture war. We will be shown unequal outcome statistics, and hear discussion about the 'racism' of this Supreme Court decision, and resulting 'inequity' that comes from the boost in technical 'equality'. I do not believe I am being uncharitable in this description.

Seems likely that if the conservative majority on the Supreme Court survives long enough to decide this case, and if they strike down affirmative action, it will almost certainly be effectively resisted by the universities. As with gun regulation, if SCOTUS leaves even the slightest loophole, they will fit their entire DEI/AA structure into the loophole, and there will have to be another multi-year court battle to decide that. If, miracle of miracles, Chief Justice Roberts actually reiterates his "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." and uses absolute language with no loopholes, the colleges will rig their measures -- drop objective ones, make up new "objective" ones which are skewed to favored minorities, and use subjective ones. And then there will be more multi-year court battles, after which the cycle repeats. As long as they cannot actually be punished for doing this, they will.

I'm not so sure there's no way to enforce - couldn't non-compliance end up in lawsuits? I agree, but there will be SOME ability to prevent it after a decision against AA.

Sure, lawsuits. There's always lawsuits. But if they win the lawsuit they go on as usual, and if they lose the lawsuit they change their language a bit and STILL go on as usual. Until they can actually be forced to stop (e.g. by a court-appointed supervisor over their day-to-day operations) or the persons making the decisions can be personally punished, they can go on spending public (and student, which amounts to the same thing given the college financing situation) money to defend against these lawsuits.

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