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Hypocrisy From The California State Bar Association?

According to a report in the National Law Journal yesterday, the State Bar of California ?is finalizing a proposal that calls on U.S. News to adjust its formula so that diversity accounts for 15% of the overall law school rankings.?

?The deans care dearly about where they rank,? said Craig Holden, a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith and the chairman of the council, which is spearheading the proposal. ?The rankings are a real driver for change ? everybody recognizes that ? and when you make diversity a sidebar rather than a component of the rankings, you?re sidelining the issue.?

Making diversity a factor in the rankings would create a solid incentive for law school administrators to bolster their diversity efforts, Holden said. Law firms and legal clients have recognized the benefits of diversity among attorneys, but law schools need to do more to create a supply of minority lawyers, he said.
....
?Diversity assessments should not be limited to admissions and student body demographics,? the proposal reads. ?Instead, diversity should also be measured by the support and resources provided by the institution to foster an inclusive culture and climate in which students from diverse backgrounds can excel.?

A real driver for change? Can anyone point to a law school, any law school, that is not already tripping over admissions standards to promote more ?diversity??

But wait. Isn?t this the same California Bar Association that refuses to release privacy-protected data on the success of ?diverse? law students on the bar exam?

Judge Curtis E.A. Karnow of the California Superior Court for San Francisco County ruled last week [article dated March 30, 2010] that the state bar is not legally obliged to release the data sought by Richard H. Sander, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Joe Hicks, a former governor of the California state bar who is involved in a consortium of affirmative-action researchers organized by Mr. Sander. The two men were joined by the California First Amendment Coalition in their lawsuit, which seeks state-bar data on law students broken down by race and ethnicity.

Apparently the California Bar Association wants U.S. News to judge law schools on the basis of everything they do for ?diverse? students ... except how well they educate them.

Full post as published by Discriminations on February 18, 2011 (boomark / email).