I’ve always thought that opposition to affirmative action wasn’t an inherently conservative position. People on the left have plenty of reason to criticize affirmative action. It’s a tool for elite class reproduction, one that dresses up economic inequality in the guise of egalitarianism. My guest this week, the journalist Jay Caspian Kang, seems to see it that way. He’s a man of the left who has written searching, deeply intelligent pieces about affirmative action (among many, many other subjects). In the years since he began covering the Students for Fair Admissions cases, he’s gone from a proponent of the policy to a critic.
What about Grambling, Tuskegee and Morehouse? there are several others but those are the most familiar. Would they allow the type of situations like #7 Coleman Hughes article?
Is it me or is the White nationalist contingent--my bad, 'race realists'--a lot less prevalent in Glenn's comments sections these days? Are they on some sort of summer retreat?
In speaking of the elite university it would seem that we speak of a compounded idea: that such institutions are of a heightened, ‘elite’, quality and that they serve as, in addition to being repositories of knowledge and incubators of new ideas, rejuvenators of the intellectual elite from which our future leaders will be drawn. As such they are doubly tainted with the opprobrium of the term elite in popular discourse, by those who would deny legitimacy of hierarchical distinction or, from benevolent misguidance, lower standards to those of the common denominator, or those who take umbrage that their own sense of elevated worth is not properly acknowledged and rewarded.
The pursuit of excellence is the proper role of an institution that would aspire to elite status. What otherwise might justify the distinction? The public duty of the university is a patriotic duty to the integrity of the civic enterprise, that has long been recognized as best served by the sovereignty of institutions serving the cause of intellectual excellence; that ideas are most powerful and most vulnerable to correction when abstracted from the narrow ends of politics or popular agendas. The university is both the systematic organizer and keeper of knowledge and an incubator of insights that may challenge those carefully constructed systems. To do its work requires a degree of insulation from the din of public conflict, a sanctuary from popular currents, the tenured professor as the epitome of academic independence—not in the absence of conflict, but intellectual conflict at a more measured pace, arguments between those long practiced in the art of thinking and inured of the rules of logic; rather than an extension of the public arena, a place set aside for the practice of high-minded inquiry.
To the extent that the private university remains free of public funding, relying on tuition, fees, donations, and its endowment fund, the private institution retains sovereignty in defining its mission. To the extent it is beholden to the public dole, that sovereignty is diminished. Much of the current debate would seem to rise from a conflicted duality regarding identity, between institutional sovereignty and a growing dependence on public funds, entwined as the latter must be with public policy directives.
By accepting public money, the elite university strikes a Faustian bargain that favors the interest of administrators, over scholars and students, by justifying administrative expansion: larger salaries, larger staffs, larger budgets, income and career enhancing speaking engagements, under the rubric of ‘social justice’, the mi culpa of the privileged for their sin of being special. If administrative numbers and individual enumeration are functions of the size of their budgets, there is a strong incentive for growing the size and reach of the institution by the expansion of its mission beyond the ivied walls of contemplation. What will be seen approvingly by some as an opening of the institution to broader community inputs, will be seen by others as an opening to a dilution of academic integrity, government largesse inevitably imposing external political and bureaucratic restrictions on academic freedoms formerly imperfectly controlled by traditions of intellectual integrity and peer review.
The institution will see the world through the lens of its own identity, enshrouded as it necessarily is, in traditions supportive of cultural continuance. But such perspective will be mitigated by the purity of that vision, bound as it is to the pursuit of excellence. For the private, elite university, public money constitutes a corruption of that vision, corroding the traditional wall between government and the elite institution—elite by virtue of quality and independence. Amplectere excellentia.
You two touched on a topic at the very end of the discussion that has intrigued me for many years - the purpose of the non-profit.
It’s a very complicated topic, but I can briefly say that I learned much about it while working in the healthcare industry for a for-profit company that competes with non-profits, selling identical services (clinical lab tests) . To my amazement, I learned that the non-profits routinely charge 3 - 4 x the amount we charged at the for-profit for the same panel of tests. This dynamic had nothing to do with normal market factors, and was a simple reflection of the perversities of healthcare funded by an employer-pay insurance system.
The larger non-profit hospital systems, are anything but “non-profit”. They are rich, they make operating profits, they make tax exempt income from their “net assets” (I.e., endowment), and they even receive tax deductible contributions from donors, and add it to the pile of money they already have.
Glenn, I have directly engaged many leaders in the industry about this subject which obviously extends to the higher education world (and even elite private K - 12 schools). The awkwardness of their response tells everything about the dishonesty of the system. I would love your thoughts one day on this subject, especially from an esteemed economist such as you, who doesn’t need to worry any more about the career suicide implications of talking about it. :)
Thank you Glenn and Jay. I live in SF, where we defeated SF-Equity effort to ban Algebra for 8th grade. But, then CA-Gov banned it state-wide, if I am not mistaken. I am concerned that I do not know what the “Algebra Ban” is connected to, or will be connected to - at the state-Gov or city-Gov level. Each Equity project is intended to connect to other projects for a purpose that extends beyond “8th Grade Algebra”. But, since State-Gov and City-Gov refuse to be transparent; the public has no way of knowing what happens next.”
On activist and/or public sentiment towards Asians; I am concerned. In Dec 2022; SF DPH website (and bus-shelter advertisements) posted “2023-2027 Early Childhood Strategic Plan” - (Age 0-5 yrs). Apart from “misinformation” mentioned as “One of our society’s greatest challenges”; Services for 0-5 yr old kids will be prioritized accordingly to race. Prioritized race groups are: Black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander - to correct for “historic oppression”. The 80 page document has the word “Equity” on each page.
Real public health only prioritizes for actual or suspected heath risk or need. Groups receiving prioritized health services would be defined by age, sex, marital status, children in household, income, zip code, etc. Real public health does not create a race-based class system.
Nothing like “the most educated” identifying as progressive far left socialist. So Jay acknowledges the corruption at Harvard with AA yet can’t image how this same ideology will warp the rest of society.
The speculation about the ostensible nature of a hypothetical discussion of affirmative action conducted in the absence of Blacks was troubling. It was predicated on stereotyping by race (Blacks would make these points, while rich whites would whine) is precisely the kind of analysis that the Supreme Court majority would reject as a compelling ground to justify race discrimination in admissions. Compare the arguments of Thomas and Kagan. Who was black? That is not to say, that in some cases Black voices might have contributed to improving the discussion, but that is, again, speculative and ignores the diverse thinking of Asians and whites. The color blind treatment of every individual American is too important a principle to be derailed by vague claims that college discussions must be inclusive based on race.
I know somebody that works for a foundation of a university. He says that you cannot just arbitrarily take Foundation money and open a school with it because most of it has been earmarked for specific purposes by the people who donated it.
Glen remember affirmative action is 50 years old. I graduated from college in 76 and this has been “ my entire life” !!! And where those white men discriminated against honestly view All helped as getting something undeserved and inferior by proxy. 50 years Glen....a whole working life. Imagine if you were kept back. Fuels resentment ironically from recipients and excluded alike.
I believe that Jay was referring to Natasha Warikoo’s recent book Race at the Top which focused on competition between white and Asian students in an East Coast town that the author nicknamed Woodcrest.
Glenn, I know that you frequently bring up The Asian American Achievement Paradox, a book which I haven’t gotten around to reading. I believe that any discussion of Asian American achievement should acknowledge the impact that elite immigration has had on Asian American academic performance over the past decades. Although I’m sure Asian Americans possess cultural attributes conducive to success and would be overrepresented among high achievers even if the Asian American population were representative, I do believe that selective immigration has played a non-trivial role in explaining the shift in the demographics of the right tail of math ability in this country.
Prior to the early 1990s, Jewish Americans were well-represented among competitors at the International Mathematics Olympiad, but since then East Asian Americans have come to dominate. Most recently this month, the 6-person Chinese American USA team finished 2nd to the 6-person Chinese team at the IMO held in Japan. The simple fact is that we’ve pushed for elite immigration from places like China, South Korea and India over the past 20-30 years and the children of those immigrants have distorted the achievement gap in ways that have resulted in palpable racial tensions.
The entire conversation regarding California’s newly adopted math framework is fascinating because although the discussion portrays Black and Hispanic students on the one hand versus higher performing white and Asian students on the other, the actual data that the initiative was based on is more nuanced in terms of the story that it tells. The data motivating the new framework showed that between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian students were in gifted math education, compared to around 8% of white, 4% of Black and 3% of Hispanic students. Clearly the Asian/non-Asian gap is far more significant than the gap between white students on the one hand and Black and Hispanic students on the other.
New York City is an outlier in that Asian Americans supposedly have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the city. But the story in many other places around the country is one of highly educated Asian immigrants coming over to America in the past 20-30 years and settling in certain areas where their children end up dominating the elite high schools. I do believe that Asian Americans possess cultural attributes worthy of emulation and which surely in part explain their disproportionate success. But I question whether or not it’s realistic to expect non-Asian students to match the average achievement of children whose parents disproportionately hold advanced degrees.
As far as geopolitical competition with China, I’m far less sanguine than Jay that it’ll all die down. In fact, as the October 2022 semiconductor export restrictions by the Biden administration show, the US political class has clearly decided that China is a threat to American primacy in a way that transcends mere economic concerns. Jay’s right to point out that the business class in this country is pushing back against the various export controls being levied against China, arguing for instance that they deprive American companies of needed revenue. Unfortunately our politicians have decided that vaguely articulated national security interests trump any such economic concerns to the point that we’re willing to hurt American companies if it means being able to stick it to China.
The era of globalization may truly be dead. The only silver lining I can draw from all of this is that competition with China might be what finally cures America of its liberal universalist pretensions, a philosophy which people like John Mersheimer argue has resulted in disastrous American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
On the topic of affirmative action, I'm glad to hear that Jay has come around and realized how unproductive race based affirmative action has been. As I argued on Bari Weiss’ site The Free Press, I actually think the entire discussion around affirmative action somewhat misses the point given how few students actually attend elite schools.
It is one thing to argue that the time for affirmative action has passed, but it seems here you are arguing that it is necessarily fraudulent. In the case of MIT it is a mischaracterization to say that affirmative action dresses up economic inequality in the guise of egalitarianism. To accompany affirmative action it has since 1970 run the Interphase program, which according* to your guest Jim Gates, "gave me an accurate assessment of what I needed to do to be successful."
It will be necessary to follow a model like MIT's if a switch to affirmative action based on class is to succeed.
What about Grambling, Tuskegee and Morehouse? there are several others but those are the most familiar. Would they allow the type of situations like #7 Coleman Hughes article?
Is it me or is the White nationalist contingent--my bad, 'race realists'--a lot less prevalent in Glenn's comments sections these days? Are they on some sort of summer retreat?
They don't wanna pay to play? Is that it?😎
Faustian elitism-
In speaking of the elite university it would seem that we speak of a compounded idea: that such institutions are of a heightened, ‘elite’, quality and that they serve as, in addition to being repositories of knowledge and incubators of new ideas, rejuvenators of the intellectual elite from which our future leaders will be drawn. As such they are doubly tainted with the opprobrium of the term elite in popular discourse, by those who would deny legitimacy of hierarchical distinction or, from benevolent misguidance, lower standards to those of the common denominator, or those who take umbrage that their own sense of elevated worth is not properly acknowledged and rewarded.
The pursuit of excellence is the proper role of an institution that would aspire to elite status. What otherwise might justify the distinction? The public duty of the university is a patriotic duty to the integrity of the civic enterprise, that has long been recognized as best served by the sovereignty of institutions serving the cause of intellectual excellence; that ideas are most powerful and most vulnerable to correction when abstracted from the narrow ends of politics or popular agendas. The university is both the systematic organizer and keeper of knowledge and an incubator of insights that may challenge those carefully constructed systems. To do its work requires a degree of insulation from the din of public conflict, a sanctuary from popular currents, the tenured professor as the epitome of academic independence—not in the absence of conflict, but intellectual conflict at a more measured pace, arguments between those long practiced in the art of thinking and inured of the rules of logic; rather than an extension of the public arena, a place set aside for the practice of high-minded inquiry.
To the extent that the private university remains free of public funding, relying on tuition, fees, donations, and its endowment fund, the private institution retains sovereignty in defining its mission. To the extent it is beholden to the public dole, that sovereignty is diminished. Much of the current debate would seem to rise from a conflicted duality regarding identity, between institutional sovereignty and a growing dependence on public funds, entwined as the latter must be with public policy directives.
By accepting public money, the elite university strikes a Faustian bargain that favors the interest of administrators, over scholars and students, by justifying administrative expansion: larger salaries, larger staffs, larger budgets, income and career enhancing speaking engagements, under the rubric of ‘social justice’, the mi culpa of the privileged for their sin of being special. If administrative numbers and individual enumeration are functions of the size of their budgets, there is a strong incentive for growing the size and reach of the institution by the expansion of its mission beyond the ivied walls of contemplation. What will be seen approvingly by some as an opening of the institution to broader community inputs, will be seen by others as an opening to a dilution of academic integrity, government largesse inevitably imposing external political and bureaucratic restrictions on academic freedoms formerly imperfectly controlled by traditions of intellectual integrity and peer review.
The institution will see the world through the lens of its own identity, enshrouded as it necessarily is, in traditions supportive of cultural continuance. But such perspective will be mitigated by the purity of that vision, bound as it is to the pursuit of excellence. For the private, elite university, public money constitutes a corruption of that vision, corroding the traditional wall between government and the elite institution—elite by virtue of quality and independence. Amplectere excellentia.
I think this Colemen Hughes article is appropriate. I especially liked #7.
https://colemanhughes.substack.com/p/10-notes-on-the-end-of-affirmative
You two touched on a topic at the very end of the discussion that has intrigued me for many years - the purpose of the non-profit.
It’s a very complicated topic, but I can briefly say that I learned much about it while working in the healthcare industry for a for-profit company that competes with non-profits, selling identical services (clinical lab tests) . To my amazement, I learned that the non-profits routinely charge 3 - 4 x the amount we charged at the for-profit for the same panel of tests. This dynamic had nothing to do with normal market factors, and was a simple reflection of the perversities of healthcare funded by an employer-pay insurance system.
The larger non-profit hospital systems, are anything but “non-profit”. They are rich, they make operating profits, they make tax exempt income from their “net assets” (I.e., endowment), and they even receive tax deductible contributions from donors, and add it to the pile of money they already have.
Glenn, I have directly engaged many leaders in the industry about this subject which obviously extends to the higher education world (and even elite private K - 12 schools). The awkwardness of their response tells everything about the dishonesty of the system. I would love your thoughts one day on this subject, especially from an esteemed economist such as you, who doesn’t need to worry any more about the career suicide implications of talking about it. :)
Thank you Glenn and Jay. I live in SF, where we defeated SF-Equity effort to ban Algebra for 8th grade. But, then CA-Gov banned it state-wide, if I am not mistaken. I am concerned that I do not know what the “Algebra Ban” is connected to, or will be connected to - at the state-Gov or city-Gov level. Each Equity project is intended to connect to other projects for a purpose that extends beyond “8th Grade Algebra”. But, since State-Gov and City-Gov refuse to be transparent; the public has no way of knowing what happens next.”
On activist and/or public sentiment towards Asians; I am concerned. In Dec 2022; SF DPH website (and bus-shelter advertisements) posted “2023-2027 Early Childhood Strategic Plan” - (Age 0-5 yrs). Apart from “misinformation” mentioned as “One of our society’s greatest challenges”; Services for 0-5 yr old kids will be prioritized accordingly to race. Prioritized race groups are: Black, Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander - to correct for “historic oppression”. The 80 page document has the word “Equity” on each page.
Real public health only prioritizes for actual or suspected heath risk or need. Groups receiving prioritized health services would be defined by age, sex, marital status, children in household, income, zip code, etc. Real public health does not create a race-based class system.
Nothing like “the most educated” identifying as progressive far left socialist. So Jay acknowledges the corruption at Harvard with AA yet can’t image how this same ideology will warp the rest of society.
The speculation about the ostensible nature of a hypothetical discussion of affirmative action conducted in the absence of Blacks was troubling. It was predicated on stereotyping by race (Blacks would make these points, while rich whites would whine) is precisely the kind of analysis that the Supreme Court majority would reject as a compelling ground to justify race discrimination in admissions. Compare the arguments of Thomas and Kagan. Who was black? That is not to say, that in some cases Black voices might have contributed to improving the discussion, but that is, again, speculative and ignores the diverse thinking of Asians and whites. The color blind treatment of every individual American is too important a principle to be derailed by vague claims that college discussions must be inclusive based on race.
I know somebody that works for a foundation of a university. He says that you cannot just arbitrarily take Foundation money and open a school with it because most of it has been earmarked for specific purposes by the people who donated it.
Glen remember affirmative action is 50 years old. I graduated from college in 76 and this has been “ my entire life” !!! And where those white men discriminated against honestly view All helped as getting something undeserved and inferior by proxy. 50 years Glen....a whole working life. Imagine if you were kept back. Fuels resentment ironically from recipients and excluded alike.
I believe that Jay was referring to Natasha Warikoo’s recent book Race at the Top which focused on competition between white and Asian students in an East Coast town that the author nicknamed Woodcrest.
Glenn, I know that you frequently bring up The Asian American Achievement Paradox, a book which I haven’t gotten around to reading. I believe that any discussion of Asian American achievement should acknowledge the impact that elite immigration has had on Asian American academic performance over the past decades. Although I’m sure Asian Americans possess cultural attributes conducive to success and would be overrepresented among high achievers even if the Asian American population were representative, I do believe that selective immigration has played a non-trivial role in explaining the shift in the demographics of the right tail of math ability in this country.
Prior to the early 1990s, Jewish Americans were well-represented among competitors at the International Mathematics Olympiad, but since then East Asian Americans have come to dominate. Most recently this month, the 6-person Chinese American USA team finished 2nd to the 6-person Chinese team at the IMO held in Japan. The simple fact is that we’ve pushed for elite immigration from places like China, South Korea and India over the past 20-30 years and the children of those immigrants have distorted the achievement gap in ways that have resulted in palpable racial tensions.
The entire conversation regarding California’s newly adopted math framework is fascinating because although the discussion portrays Black and Hispanic students on the one hand versus higher performing white and Asian students on the other, the actual data that the initiative was based on is more nuanced in terms of the story that it tells. The data motivating the new framework showed that between 2004-2014, roughly 32% of Asian students were in gifted math education, compared to around 8% of white, 4% of Black and 3% of Hispanic students. Clearly the Asian/non-Asian gap is far more significant than the gap between white students on the one hand and Black and Hispanic students on the other.
New York City is an outlier in that Asian Americans supposedly have the highest poverty rate of any ethnic group in the city. But the story in many other places around the country is one of highly educated Asian immigrants coming over to America in the past 20-30 years and settling in certain areas where their children end up dominating the elite high schools. I do believe that Asian Americans possess cultural attributes worthy of emulation and which surely in part explain their disproportionate success. But I question whether or not it’s realistic to expect non-Asian students to match the average achievement of children whose parents disproportionately hold advanced degrees.
As far as geopolitical competition with China, I’m far less sanguine than Jay that it’ll all die down. In fact, as the October 2022 semiconductor export restrictions by the Biden administration show, the US political class has clearly decided that China is a threat to American primacy in a way that transcends mere economic concerns. Jay’s right to point out that the business class in this country is pushing back against the various export controls being levied against China, arguing for instance that they deprive American companies of needed revenue. Unfortunately our politicians have decided that vaguely articulated national security interests trump any such economic concerns to the point that we’re willing to hurt American companies if it means being able to stick it to China.
The era of globalization may truly be dead. The only silver lining I can draw from all of this is that competition with China might be what finally cures America of its liberal universalist pretensions, a philosophy which people like John Mersheimer argue has resulted in disastrous American foreign policy since the end of the Cold War.
On the topic of affirmative action, I'm glad to hear that Jay has come around and realized how unproductive race based affirmative action has been. As I argued on Bari Weiss’ site The Free Press, I actually think the entire discussion around affirmative action somewhat misses the point given how few students actually attend elite schools.
Glenn,
It is one thing to argue that the time for affirmative action has passed, but it seems here you are arguing that it is necessarily fraudulent. In the case of MIT it is a mischaracterization to say that affirmative action dresses up economic inequality in the guise of egalitarianism. To accompany affirmative action it has since 1970 run the Interphase program, which according* to your guest Jim Gates, "gave me an accurate assessment of what I needed to do to be successful."
It will be necessary to follow a model like MIT's if a switch to affirmative action based on class is to succeed.
*https://orlandomemory.info/people/oral-history-interview-with-professor-sylvester-james-gates-jr/