The Multicultural Student Center at the University of Wisconsin shifts from "a focus on cultural diversity to one of social justice."

The University's website reports what it calls a "transformation."

“We’re building on the legacy of this campus,” says [MSC director Donte] Hilliard. “A social justice approach is our interpretation of the Wisconsin Idea. If the borders of the campus are the borders of the state, or the world, the educational access that we get by being here in Wisconsin includes a responsibility to help transform our surroundings into more just, equitable places.”...

"It’s comforting to think, 'If we just fix the race or gender issue, the rest will be fine…' No. Oppressions are linked. We can’t get racial justice but keep destroying the environment. In America, who lives in neighborhoods with the worst environmental problems? Poor people – who are, overwhelmingly, people of color."

(If you don't know what "Wisconsin Idea" refers to — here, it has its own Wikipedia article. It's a tradition going back more than 100 years.)

"American Diversity" class insufficiently heartwarming for some Wisconsin parents.

Daily Mail brings news of a local high school where kids were taught that "minorities had historically been oppressed by white people."

According to handouts..., 'white privilege' in the class was defined as a 'set of advantages that are believed to be enjoyed by white people beyond those commonly experienced by non-white people in the same social, political, and economic spaces...'....

[One] parent became alarmed after seeing the handouts provided to her 18-year-old son... “I felt it was indoctrination,” she said. “This is a radical left agenda and ideology that is now embedded in our school.”

I hate the use of schools for to indoctrinate children, but what exactly is the problem here? The students should be taught American history, and racial oppression is a big part of telling the story fairly and accurately. Maybe the name of the class — "American Diversity" — is misleading, in that it suggests a happy rainbow. That said, I'm not surprised to see parents fretting that the teachers are doing political indoctrination. I understand and share this mistrust.

Get ready for the first annual "Diversity Week" at the University of Wisconsin.

We're told the idea is "to engage students who are not specifically interested in diversity issues to think about the issue on a broader level." So you want to interest people who are not currently interested by having some sort of events... over the course of a week?

Tentatively, the week will feature a sexuality day, multicultural day,  religious diversity day, women’s day and a disability day.

The group also debated how to address “intersectionality” between the different types of diversity.

The student chair of the Diversity Committee "said she hopes the event would probe students’ minds and make them think about how their own identities are 'compiled.'"

"We are trying to say to people that you don’t have to be a minority, you don’t have to be an underrepresented group to be able to feel like you’re diverse or that you have a unique identity... This is really for all students."

I don't think the word "diverse" should apply to an individual. I think you have to say: This set of individuals is diverse. Not: This individual is diverse. Sorry to be pedantic about words. Now, it's interesting that the Diversity Committee has arrived at the idea that it wants specifically to get the attention of the students who do not belong to "underrepresented groups." The students who were not pursued by the University in its effort to increase "diversity" might, it is thought, respond to the idea that they are part of the diversity too. I'm trying to picture Diversity Week events that would convey that message!

***

Here's some campus graffiti I photographed the other day:

"So what you're saying is that what counts is race above all.... You want underprivileged of a certain race and privileged of a certain race. So that's race."

Said Justice Anthony Kennedy at during the oral argument over the the University of Texas affirmative action policy. UT, following state law, automatically admits everyone who graduates from a Texas high school in the top 10%, a colorblind policy that produces a certain amount of racial diversity, especially since there are many high schools in Texas that have a very high proportion of black or Hispanic students.

So why does UT do any additional affirmative action as it fills up the portion of the entering class not admitted through the 10% program? You've already got a lot of diversity, so why do you need more? The additional affirmative action is precisely to bring in privileged black and Hispanic students, that is, the black and Hispanic students who did not attend racially isolated schools. If white students get too many of the top 10% spots at those schools, then the 10% program does not bring enough of these minority students into UT.

The university says... that the highest-ranked students at a disadvantaged school have lower SAT scores than some in the middle of the pack at a more competitive suburban high school. UT's affirmative-action program aims to open doors for minority applicants from middle-class or professional families. Such students can "help dispel stereotypical assumptions…which actually may be reinforced" by minorities admitted only because of the top-10% plan, UT said in its brief.

Justice Samuel Alito seized on that point. "I thought that the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, but you make a very different argument that I don't think I've ever seen before," he said.

Actually, under the Court's case law, the diversity that is considered a compelling interest (which is what the state needs to defend race discrimination) is not about boosting the underprivileged. In Grutter v. Bollinger, the majority approved of the idea of  assembling a class that includes "a 'critical mass' of minority students," which does not mean "racial balancing, which is patently unconstitutional" but is "defined by reference to the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce."

These benefits are substantial. As the District Court emphasized, the Law School’s admissions policy promotes “cross-racial understanding,” helps to break down racial stereotypes, and “enables [students] to better understand persons of different races.”...These benefits are “important and laudable,” because “classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting” when the students have “the greatest possible variety of backgrounds.” ...

The Law School does not premise its need for critical mass on “any belief that minority students always (or even consistently) express some characteristic minority viewpoint on any issue.”... To the contrary, diminishing the force of such stereotypes is both a crucial part of the Law School’s mission, and one that it cannot accomplish with only token numbers of minority students. Just as growing up in a particular region or having particular professional experiences is likely to affect an individual’s views, so too is one’s own, unique experience of being a racial minority in a society, like our own, in which race unfortunately still matters.

If it's about breaking down stereotypes, the 10% approach creates a problem: The minority students in the classroom tend to come from the racially isolated schools, the less privileged Texans. So, it seems, the additional affirmative action is needed to get a more varied group of minority students, in which case, the point is to bring in privileged minority students, because these are the students who — in Grutter terms — might provide the classroom benefit of teaching all the students that minority students don't have "some characteristic minority viewpoint."

Obviously, there were dissenting opinions in Grutter. For example, Justice Scalia scoffed at that idea of the compelling interest: The lesson taught by classroom diversity is "essentially the same lesson taught to (or rather learned by, for it cannot be 'taught' in the usual sense) people three feet shorter and twenty years younger than the full-grown adults at the University of Michigan Law School, in institutions ranging from Boy Scout troops to public-school kindergartens."

I'm not taking a position on whether UT's admissions policy is good or whether it's constitutional. (Do not assume you know what I think. You don't.) All I am saying is that if Grutter is to be applied (and not limited or overruled), an affirmative action program that's all about boosting the most privileged minority students actually makes sense.

Did Justice Alito not see that (or was he mainly expressing disapproval)? Here's his quote (along with Justice Kennedy's), put in context, beginning at page 43 of the PDF transcript:

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, I thought that the whole purpose of affirmative action was to help students who come from underprivileged backgrounds, but you make a very different argument that I don't think I've ever seen before. The top 10 percent plan admits lots of African Americans -- lots of Hispanics and a fair number of African Americans. But you say, well, it's -- it's faulty, because it doesn't admit enough African Americans and Hispanics who come from privileged backgrounds. And you specifically have the example of the child of successful professionals in Dallas. Now, that's your argument? If you have -­ you have an applicant whose parents are -- let's say they're -- one of them is a partner in your law firm in Texas, another one is a part -- is another corporate lawyer. They have income that puts them in the top 1 percent of earners in the country, and they have -­ parents both have graduate degrees. They deserve a leg-up against, let's say, an Asian or a white applicant whose parents are absolutely average in terms of education and income?

[GREGORY G. GARRE, counsel for the University of Texas]: No, Your Honor. And let me -­ let me answer the question. First of all, the example comes almost word for word from the Harvard plan that this Court approved in Grutter and that Justice Powell held out in Bakke.

JUSTICE ALITO: Well, how that question be no, because being an African American or being a Hispanic is a plus factor.

MR. GARRE: Because, Your Honor, our point is, is that we want minorities from different backgrounds. We go out of our way to recruit minorities from disadvantaged backgrounds.

JUSTICE KENNEDY: So what you're saying is that what counts is race above all.

MR. GARRE: No, Your Honor, what counts is different experiences -­

JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, that's the necessary -- that's the necessary response to Justice Alito's question.

MR. GARRE: Well, Your Honor, what we want is different experiences that are going to -- that are going to come on campus -­

JUSTICE KENNEDY: You want underprivileged of a certain race and privileged of a certain race. So that's race.

MR. GARRE: No, Your Honors, it's -- it's not race. It's just the opposite. I mean, in the LUAC decision, for example, this Court said that failing to take into account differences among members of the same race does a disservice -­

JUSTICE KENNEDY: But the reason you're reaching for the privileged is so that members of that race who are privileged can be representative, and that's race. I just -­

MR. GARRE: It's -- it's members racial group, Your Honor, bringing different experiences. And to say that -- if you took group, if you had an admissions process that to admit from a -- people from a particular background or perspective, you would want people from different perspectives.

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Counsel -­

MR. GARRE: And that's -- that's the interests that we're discussing here. It's the interests that the Harvard plan specifically adopts and lays out -­

"Norway is today more imbued with democracy and diversity than it was on July 22, 2011..."

Said Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

Democracy is "the most important weapon in the fight against violence," he added.

"Have you noticed that the left’s nightmare is a small town where everybody sees and comments on whatever you do..."

"... but they try to turn every place into a small town where everybody sees and comments on whatever you do?"

ADDED: And they love diversity, but they're hot to run you out of town for nonconformity.

For at least 6 years, during Elizabeth Warren's tenure at Harvard Law School, Harvard University reported that there was a Native American woman at the law school.

Boston Globe reports on documents Harvard filed with the federal government:

The US Department of Labor requires large employers to collect diversity statistics annually and suggests they be based on employees’ classification of themselves. In cases in which employees do not self-identify, federal regulations allow some administrators to make judgment calls on the correct categories using “employment records or observer identification.’’

The administrator responsible for Harvard Law School’s faculty diversity statistics from 1996 to 2004, the period in question, was Alan Ray, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation who, like Warren, has fair skin, blue eyes, and Oklahoma roots.

But Ray, now president of Elmhurst College in Illinois, said in a statement that he “did not encourage the Law School to list any faculty member as one particular race or ethnicity, including Professor Warren.’’ He further said through a spokeswoman that he “never encouraged any faculty member to list himself or herself in a particular way.’’ Ray added that Harvard “always accepted whatever identification a faculty member wanted to provide,’’ a characterization another highly placed former Harvard administrator backed up.

The linked article also recounts the history of Harvard Law's perceived diversity problem circa 1990, just before Warren arrived. Lawprof Derrick Bell had gone on "strike" (unpaid leave) to protest, some students brought a lawsuit (unsuccessful), and the U.S. Department of Labor audited what the article calls "Harvard's diversity practices" and found 10 violations. Warren arrived in 1992 (as a visiting professor), at which point she "had been listing herself for seven years as a minority in a legal directory often used by law recruiters to make diversity-friendly hires." She was still on that list when Harvard Law gave her a permanent position in 1995.

In 1996, law school news director Mike Chmura, speaking to the Harvard Crimson, identified Warren as a Native American professor.

In 1997, the Fordham Law Review, citing Chmura, referred to Warren as Harvard Law’s “first woman of color.’’

I find it hard to believe that — after all the uproar over diversity in 1990 — that the law school could quietly pass off Warren as its "first woman of color." There were so many people who were genuinely angry over the lack of diversity. Why would they have tolerated the school making such a lame assertion? Wouldn't they have wanted to keep up the pressure? If you were at Harvard in the 1990s, what do you remember about this?

The Globe article has more detail about Harvard's "affirmative action plan," a 1999 document, which "lists one Native American senior professor at the entire university," and, in a section on the law school, specifies that there is "a single Native American senior professor." This must be Warren, right? But this document also defines Native American in a way that would not include Warren: "a person having origins in any of the original peoples of North America and who maintains cultural identification through tribal affiliation or community recognition."

The inference is that Harvard itself lied on diversity documents filed with the federal government (and posted on line for years).  Note that this information is used to recruit students, some of whom may care a great deal about whether there are faculty who seem as though they will be special mentors. I wonder whether there were students who chose Harvard and sought out Warren as a mentor because of her perceived status as a Native American.

There's something very odd here. A lot of things, actually. This isn't just about whether Elizabeth Warren is a worthy candidate for the U.S. Senate. This is about more general chicanery about diversity at Harvard and even more general deception and manipulation in the politics of diversity.

The NYT reports that "officials involved" in hiring Elizabeth Warren "all said that she was hired because she was an outstanding teacher, and that her lineage was either not discussed or not a factor."

What would you expect them to say?

“To suggest that she needed some special advantage to be hired here or anywhere is just silly,” said Jay Westbrook, chairman of business law at the University of Texas.

But you see, in faculty hiring, the question isn't whether this particular candidate is good enough. The question is why does this person with excellent credentials get selected from the pool of applicants who all have excellent credentials? Why did Warren move up the ranks of the law schools the way she did?

Her identification as a member of a minority group in the Association of American Law Schools directory would help. Why are the schools reticent about saying that they consider minority status a plus factor in hiring? Why aren't they out-and-proud about diversity? Law schools have fought for the proposition that diversity is a compelling state interest, justifying racial discrimination.

For Professor Westbrook to scoff that it's "just silly" to "suggest that [Warren] needed some special advantage" is to clumsily insult all the people who have gotten hired (or admitted as students) because of the diversity efforts of law schools. Those other people needed some special advantage, but oh, no, not her.

Is this reticence about the decency of affirmative action happening here because they want to help Warren in her Senate race? Is it because if she didn't really have that factor going for her but the schools used it, then... well... who, really, is hurt? Who was the next person in that pool of applicants? No one knows. Look away.

Hey, but who else might be cheating, claiming minority status that's not really true? Now, now, you're not supposed to think about that. It's quite unseemly, isn't it? Impolite.

James Taranto theorizes that Elizabeth Warren "downplayed her alleged Indian roots after coming to Harvard to avoid the stigma of 'affirmative action.'"

Now, he's bouncing off something I said:

As Althouse points out, early in her career, "minority status" would have been useful to her advancement. But once she was on the tenure track at an Ivy League law school, she had more or less reached the pinnacle of academia. At that point, if people thought of her as white, they would assume she got the job entirely on the merits, without benefit of racial preferences.

What I said was — guessing — "Being on the list of minority law professors served her interest in advancement, but the claim was weak and potentially embarrassing, so it was deleted . . . after she achieved what was the ultimate advancement (to Harvard Law School)." I didn't specify what I thought was "potentially embarrassing," and Taranto's theory in fact never crossed my mind. He goes on:

Not all minority professors could pull that off. If Warren were black, for instance, everyone would know it, and there would be no way of escaping the stereotype. Because she is--or can pass for--white, she was in a position to have the best of both worlds, advancing through affirmative action, then enjoying the white privilege of appearing to have gotten ahead solely on the merits.

What I thought was "potentially embarrassing" was that people might begin to ask if she really was Native American, and she might not be able to verify her status. (She is not an enrolled member of a tribe, which is something students coming to her as a mentor might ask about, perhaps in a challenging way.)

From my perspective — as a lawprof with 25+ years of experience — I do not think the lawprofs who are members of minority groups go around feeling stigmatized. But I do think it would be embarrassing if you were recruited because you were perceived as a member of a minority group that you in fact did not belong to. Harvard was under a lot of pressure at that time to do something about the lack of racial diversity on the faculty, and I'm skeptical of the claim that Warren's minority status never came up during the hiring process. Well, it's not really even a claim. It's just a statement of inability to "recall" that it did.

"But don’t worry, Harvard Law School racked up their identity-group bonus points on the basis of the authoritative evidence of Ms Warren’s family 'lore'..."

"... which surely ought to be good enough for faculty-lounge affirmative-action credits."

Mark Steyn aptly notes.

We were talking about this yesterday, and tmitsss reminded us of the "Dear Prudence" column that we were talking about a couple weeks ago. You remember, the Slate advice columnist Emily Yoffe got a question from a student who wondered whether it was ethical to accept a scholarship that was available only to Hispanic students when, in fact, he had recently learned that he had no Hispanic ancestors. (He was adopted and had a Hispanic surname.)

Yoffe told him:

There is one essential criteria people must meet in order to be considered Hispanic by the U.S. Census Bureau: That’s what they say they are. 

Your say-so makes it so. And there's money in it!

You were raised by a Hispanic father and have his last name. For most of your life you identified yourself as Hispanic. 

So family "lore" is good enough!

On your behalf the “Hispanic” box was checked on the relevant forms. If you want to shed your Hispanic identity, of course you are free to do so. But given your last name, people will still assume that's what you are, even if you are no longer checking the appropriate boxes. This Pew Hispanic Center report shows just how squishy and variable the term “Hispanic” is. I’m confident your college is thrilled to include you in their count of Hispanic students and doesn’t really want to know you may be thinking of yourself as Armenian. 

Your college is thrilled. You and the college, benefiting together... and who is harmed by this thrilling fantasy... this mutual stimulation to self-pleasure....? Let the frottage continue!

Given the price of tuition, a substantial scholarship is a blessing and you should claim it with equanimity.

Claim your blessings! Everybody wins! Not a loser in sight. Ah! Beautiful!

UPDATE: Yoffe links to this post and makes an offensive, inaccurate statement about it.

Colleges are asking incoming students to declare their sexual orientation.

"Sexual orientation is a part of diversity and cannot be ignored, said Robert Anderson, chair of the Academic Senate of the University of California system.

It's for their own good. The university has services it wants to provide. All the government's intrusions into your private life are for your own good. You will be given what is good for you, so come on now, tell us all about everything.

ADDED: When I started college, at the University of Michigan in 1969, the freshman were all given a test — various multiple choice questions — and it produced a number of different scores, one of which was not revealed to the students (although we figured out the code and were able to read our scores). This score purported to place everyone on a spectrum from very masculine to very feminine, and perhaps the authorities imagined that they could identify the homosexuals.

What were the questions? — you may wonder. Famously, one question was do you prefer cooked or raw carrots. In my family, we only ate raw carrots, so I'd always regarded cooked carrots as gross. I suppose that made the University regard me as more of a lesbian. I seem to remember a question that asked what would you rather do, where one option was to take apart a clock and then put it back together again. I don't know what the other choice was, but I suspect that clock project skewed a lot of the boys gay.

The lawsuit against the University of Iowa College of Law for rejecting a conservative applicant for a lawprof job.

The applicant, Teresa R. Wagner, was active in the Right to Life cause, and the associate law school dean is caught in writing saying "Frankly, one thing that worries me is that some people may be opposed to Teresa serving in any role in part at least because they so despise her politics (and especially her activism about it)."

In the NYT, Adam Liptak calls attention to the dissonance conservatives ought to feel about litigation:

“I have serious misgivings about asking the courts to fix this through lawsuits,” [Walter Olson, a fellow at the Cato Institute, said]. “It threatens to intrude on collegiality, empower some with sharp elbows to sue their way into faculty jobs, invite judges into making subjective calls of their own which may reflect their assumptions and biases, all while costing a lot of money and grief.”

“At the same time,” he added, “there’s a karma factor here. Law faculties at Iowa and elsewhere have been enthusiastic advocates of wider liability for other employers that get sued. They’re not really going to ask for an exemption for themselves, are they?”

If a public school does a seasonal, multicultural concert with songs like "Feliz Navidad" and "Hava Nagila"...

... can it remove the song "Raghupati Ragava Raja Ram" — which refers to the Hindu gods Sita and Rama and contains the line "God or Allah is your name" — after various parents complain?

If you think it's unconstitutional, is it a violation of free speech, freedom of religion, or the Establishment Clause?

Teaching school kids how to debate about politics.

It's a great idea... if you can do it right.

[University of Wisconsin-Madison education professor Diana Hess] is a nationally renowned expert on curriculum and instruction with a special focus on helping teachers in the art of leading students in effective, respectful debate of controversial topics. A key motivator: her research shows that high school students are more open-minded and intellectually flexible than adults.

"A lot of parents want schools to reflect their own ideological views," Hess says in an interview. "I argue that parents shouldn't want that. If they do, they need to rethink why they have their kids in school.

"It's not to suggest schools should be working against parents' values," she continues, "but we want schools to be ideologically diverse places. That's how we educate citizens."

Reading that, I can't help worrying that what teachers will really try to do is indoctrinate students in liberal ideology. Can we trust them to put the development of young minds first? Or will they take advantage of their "intellectually flexible" minds and the opportunity to displace conservatism that parents may have instilled.

The backdrop, of course, is one in which political incivility and intolerance seems ever more toxic in Wisconsin and across the nation. Hess agrees that the culture outside schools is more polarized than when she started focusing on the subject in 1997.

But it was specifically teachers who were at the core of the Wisconsin protests, vilifying conservatives.

And as for parents needing "to rethink why they have their kids in school." Let's be clear: Schooling is compulsory. The government forces parents to send their children to school. (Yeah, they have a right to opt out of public school if they can swing it, but it's not easy and schooling is still required.) Teachers should never forget that they have their students trapped in their classroom by the force of law.

But sure, let's teach kids how to talk about controversial issues, support their arguments, and listen to divergent opinions respectfully and critically.

Yesterday, we drove past the new "Occupy Madison" encampment...

... which you can see in the first 10 seconds of this 14-minute video...



... and you can hang out with Meade and me for the rest of the drive if you want. You'll see some more of Madison and the University of Wisconsin and eavesdrop on us. It's not all politics, I assure you, at 2 p.m. on a beautiful Saturday.

ADDED: A couple extra videos for reference. Here's the awesome song "United We Stand" by Brotherhood of Man:



And here's one of the wonderful "I'm a Pepper" commercials from the 1970s:



Of course, you must know the Herman Cain "smoking man" commercial, and here's the take-off by the Huntsman daughters.

AND: 2 more references. Donald Rumsfeld:



And Little Edie:

Taking race into account — simply wrong or rather complex?

Louis Molepske, a Democratic member of the Wisconsin Assembly, questions Roger Clegg, president of Center for Equal Opportunity, which has released a study that supposedly shows that the University of Wisconsin has engaged in serious race discrimination in its admission process for the undergrad program and the law school. Clegg responds. This short clip — shot by Meade, edited by me —  shows that the 2 men are not on the same page about affirmative action.



The colloquy took place at a hearing on October 17, 2011,  before the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities.

Molepske utters a classic quote: "We got a lot of white people in Wisconsin."

ADDED: Here's the thing. The University's policies align with the Supreme Court's case law, which permits race discrimination narrowly tailored to serve the goal of classroom diversity. Clegg performs moral clarity: He says race discrimination is "wrong" and "bad." That's something he just knows, quite aside from the CEO's study. He asserts it in answer to any question from someone who thinks there's something more complicated here — that is, someone who would leave it to the University to design and implement its own admissions policy.

That's why the 2 men talk past each other.

"Did UW-Madison's diversity chief incite students?"

Deborah Ziff asks:

Talk show host Bill O'Reilly called him "a loon." The head of a conservative think tank said he fed students propaganda and egged on a student "mob."

The comments were directed at UW-Madison's chief diversity officer, Damon Williams, who has been at the center of an admissions maelstrom ever since the Virginia-based Center for Equal Opportunity alleged in a report this month that the university gives preferential treatment to black and Hispanic students.

Learning a day early that the center planned to release its findings at a Madison news conference, Williams and Dean of Students Lori Berquam convened a meeting of students to discuss "a threat to our diversity efforts." The next day, a group of students disrupted the news conference, forcing the center's president and a former UW-Madison professor to leave the room.

Read the whole thing. Who knows the causal connection between the meeting one day and the disruption the next? My point — and I'm quoted toward the end of this piece — is that the University should not act scared about this. It should not concede that the CEO's activity is a threat. Presumably, the admissions policies are aligned with the case law and within the range permitted under the Equal Protection Clause. Why stir up negative emotion and anxiety?

The appropriate attitude is confidence and pride, demonstrating a belief in the chosen policy. The organization that has attacked us is serious and hardworking. It's not a random swipe at us that deserves no attention. We should respond in a way that suits a public university and have a reasonable, vigorous debate, including a conversation with the people of the state. The people have the power to trump the University's policy choice by legislation, so simple political sense ought to make us want to make a good argument aimed at them. But quite apart from political pragmatism, we should, as a matter of principle, show that we care about the citizens of Wisconsin who were excluded in the admissions process. As a university, we should take advantage of what is an opportunity to teach and to demonstrate a love for debate and weighing diverse viewpoints.

I mean, diversity is supposed to be the central value. And — here's a lesson in what the Supreme Court has said the Equal Protection Clause means — the diversity that justifies the use of racial classification "is defined by reference to the educational benefits that diversity is designed to produce."

The reason the Court has allowed some flexibility to use race in admissions is that it supposedly connects to the University's educational mission. If that connection is real, it ought to show.

Chancellor David Ward responds to attack on University of Wisconsin—Madison admissions practices.

From email addressed to "members of the campus community," which I received a few minutes ago:

Many of you have been involved this week in an important debate about diversity at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I want to again say that the university remains firmly committed to enrolling a highly diverse student body -- that means recruiting not only students from ethnic minorities, but those from rural Wisconsin, first-generation college students, women in the sciences and othergroups.

When making admissions decisions, UW-Madison uses holistic processes for undergraduate, graduate and professional schools that take into account a range of factors. University officials are confident these practices are constitutional and consistent with U.S. Supreme Court decisions that say race is a permissible factor when part of a holistic admissions process. We know that enrolling students of all cultures and backgrounds improves the learning environment at UW-Madison and prepares everyone to be competitive in an increasingly multicultural world.


In the coming weeks and months, you may hear more about this issue as the discussion moves off our campus to the state Legislature and greater Wisconsin. If a legal or legislative challenge to admissions practices at UW-Madison emerges, we are fully prepared to respond to questions and defend our processes, as we did when we faced similar scrutiny in 2007.

To students, I especially want to tell you how important all of you are to UW-Madison's vibrant academic community and, eventually, to our world-class alumni population. All of you who have been accepted are here because you are Badgers, with the ability to succeed and contribute something special to our student body. Please do not listen to anyone who tries to tell you otherwise.

If you would like to remain engaged on how we can continue to improve our efforts when it comes to diversity on campus, I encourage you to get started by attending the annual diversity forum sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate, scheduled from 8:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 6, at Union South.

And as we continue to discuss these issues, I want to remind everyone on campus of the importance we place on sifting and winnowing here at UW-Madison. Although we may disagree with some of those around us, we should respect differing viewpoints and not allow ourselves to be divided from within by an outside group.

On, Wisconsin!

There was a huge crowd for tonight's big affirmative action debate here at the University of Wisconsin.

But the 2 speakers  — Roger Clegg and Larry Church — refrained from cranking up the emotions in the big room. There was some clapping and finger-snapping to approve of just about anything pro-affirmative action and some hooting and booing over anything against affirmative action, but the men were in no way drowned out. Clegg and Church got to say what they had to say. During the question period, the various students who got a turn at the mike sounded passionate but not irrational.

I would have liked more discussion of legal doctrine and the precise issues from the case law, but both men chose to concentrate on policy, with the assumption that racial equality and harmony are the desired ultimate goals. What's the best way to get there? It's an old, old question, and the 2 men mainly assembled the usual pro and con arguments, so I doubt if any minds were changed.

As Meade and I walked home, I called the students "admirable" for not getting out of hand and shouting down the speakers, and Meade made fun of my low standard. I said, "It's Wisconsin. Kudos for not rioting."

ADDED: Pictures:





"Socialism 101/What it is and why we need it":

In Madison: 150 protesters storm hotel to disrupt press conference given by the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

Roger Clegg was announcing 2 studies that purport to show the University of Wisconsin racially discriminates in its undergrad and law school admissions.

About 50 minutes into Clegg's press conference -- in which he took questions from media members, students and UW-Madison faculty -- noise erupted outside the banquet room. Protesters, most of whom were UW-Madison students, could easily be heard chanting "Power to the people!"

Power to the people?! You know, when one side is claiming constitutional rights, yelling about the majority's will is not impressive. Seriously, what is the point of a protest like this? What is it coherently saying? If you want to argue that there is no violation of rights... why are you yelling? And why are you breaking into a private place of business?

The article says the hotel secured its entrances, but one student got in "through the food services entrance and then allowed everyone else inside." And hotel "staff were... rushed by a mob of protesters, throwing employees to the ground."

Meanwhile, at Union South, there's a debate at 7 pm between Clegg and our wonderful Wisconsin Law colleague Larry Church. Will the 2 men be allowed to debate or will hostile voices try to drown them out? I'll let you know.