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Geese, Ganders, And The Sauces Of Higher Education Anti-Discrimination Policies

Is there anyone left in America (other than a recently arrived traveler or two from outer space) who believes that the Obama administration favors post-racial policies? If so, and if they?re able to read (which is doubtful), they should take a look at the brief the administration recently filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit supporting the University of Texas?s desire to return to ?race-conscious? admissions. As noted by Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity (which along with the Pacific Legal Foundation has filed a brief opposing this return to racial discrimination)

[t]he brief is a full-throated endorsement of such discrimination, and it goes out of its way to say that the administration will support it at the K-12 level, too, as well as throughout university admissions: ?In view of the importance of diversity in educational institutions, the United States, through the Departments of Education and Justice, supports the efforts of school systems and post-secondary educational institutions that wish to develop admissions policies that endeavor to achieve the educational benefits of diversity in accordance with [the Supreme Court?s 2003 decision upholding the use of preferences by the University of Michigan law school].?

There is, for anyone who has followed Obama?s career before the campaign and after the election, nothing surprising here. Nor is there anything surprising about the fact that the usual suspects of the higher education establishment are supporting UT, arguing in their brief that universities have a First Amendment right to discriminate in admissions if such a policies ?best meet their needs.? The value of ?inclusiveness? is so great, in their view, that they support the right of universities to exclude some applicants who would have been admitted but for their race.

Those same groups (for the most part), however, do not believe that religious student organizations have a First Amendment right to admit members (or not) based on whether applicants share the religious beliefs around which the groups are organized. The education organizations believe that the First Amendment rights of the education institutions trump whatever rights their students may have to organize groups that reflect their views.

The journalist A.J. Liebling famously said that ?freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.? To the grandees of American higher education, apparently, the First Amendment belongs only to the institutions that ladle it out as they see fit.

Full post as published by Discriminations on March 17, 2010 (boomark / email).