Lawyer and
author Stuart Taylor, Jr., a member of the Quintumvirate of candidates seeking
election this Spring to the Harvard Board of Overseers (is “overseer” an
archaic echo of slavery?) under the banner “Free Harvard/Fair Harvard,” today
submitted a detailed set of responses to a questionnaire on diversity and
related-issues sent to the eight insider and five outsider candidates for seats
on this second-most-powerful body in the governing apparatus of American’s
oldest and, arguably, most prestigious and influential university.
He took
issue with the attitude of one of the sponsors of the questionnaire, sent by a
consortium of 10 groups, including the “Coalition for a Diverse Harvard,” which
writes on its web site
that:
“As
Harvard alumni and students, we call on members of the Harvard community to
join this Coalition against the petition slate — and in
favor of race-conscious and holistic admissions practices that
support campus diversity.”
The “petition
slate” refers to the fact that the insurgent Quintumvirate, which, in addition
to Mr. Taylor includes Ralph Nader, Steven Hsu, Lee Cheng, and Ron Unz, the
principal organizer of this effort, qualified for the Overseers ballot by submitting
the required number of petition signatures from Harvard alumni by the February
1, 2016, deadline. Mail-in ballots for
the election will go out to 320,000 Harvard alumni by April 1st and
need to be returned by May 20, 2016.
The Free
Harvard/Fair Harvard slate is proposing the abolition of undergraduate tuition
at Harvard College and more transparency in the admission process. You can learn more about it here.
In the
cover e-mail returning his answers to the questionnaire, Mr. Taylor writes:
“I
attach my responses to your questionnaire, which I spent several hours
preparing out of respect for the integrity of the election process.
“The questionnaire offered this assurance: "Your answers to the following questions will help
guide us in our recommendations to our members regarding the vote."
“I note that at least one of the ten organizations
sponsoring the questionnaire (listed below) proceeded to publicize its
opposition to my candidacy, and to that of my colleagues, without awaiting
responses.
“This tells me all I that need to know about that organization's
respect for the integrity of the election process. It also raises questions
about the other nine allied organizations.”
Here is the complete questionnaire:
Dear Candidates,
Issues of diversity at Harvard and beyond have been pushed to
the fore of the upcoming Overseers election. Our organizations care
deeply about these matters. Your answers to the following questions will help
guide us in our recommendations to our members regarding the vote. Please send
your answers to [our e-mail address] by 5
p.m. on Thursday, March 10th. Responses may be edited for length when
shared with our members.
1. How important should student diversity be at Harvard? What
strategies should the University pursue regarding this?
2. Please state your views on affirmative action.
3. Please state your views on race-conscious college admissions
(if not specified in your answer to question #2).
4. Please state your views on whether Harvard should be more
transparent about its college admissions process, particularly about how the
mix of students is created.
5. What steps have you taken to bring diversity to your workplace
or to an organization that you have participated in?
Thank you.
Here’s
what Stuart Taylor had to say in response to these questions:
Harvard University
2016 Board of Overseers Election
Candidate Questionnaire: Stuart
Taylor, Jr., J.D. 1977
1. How important should student diversity be at Harvard?
What strategies should the University pursue regarding this?
There are many diversities, and the most critical
of them in my view are diversity of socioeconomic background, intellectual
(including ideological) orientation, and racial (including ethnic) background.
Socioeconomic
diversity. In this era of persistent and growing economic
inequality, it is critical that Harvard to be a beacon of opportunity for
promising people who were not born rich, privileged, or even upper-middle
class. So socioeconomic diversity is critical. It also fosters racial diversity because the traditionally disadvantaged
minorities are disproportionately of modest means. Indeed, affirmative action
was originally -- and still should be -- designed to increase socioeconomic as
well as racial diversity.
The promising children of schoolteachers, grocers,
construction workers, laundry workers, factory workers, cops, firefighters,
taxi drivers, janitors, and structurally unemployed parents deserve
opportunities to improve their lives. And many could do well at Harvard. They
also have much to teach their more prosperous classmates, and vice versa. In
addition, experience shows that students of modest means may well gain ground
on or even surpass wealthier classmates, from better schools, who enter college
with somewhat higher test scores and high school grades.
Of course, it would a student of modest means -- or
any student -- no favor for Harvard to to admit her, in pursuit of a numerical
target, if she lacks the academic preparation to do well. This would and thus
to set her up for academic struggle or failure by. And most entering students
want to do well enough to pursue aspirations for careers that require
challenging undergraduate courses and good grades. Harvard must strike a
careful balance to extend opportunity broadly without using academically
underprepared students as pawns, while misleading them about their academic
prospects.
My impression is that Harvard has done far too little
to attract and admit promising students of modest means. If elected, I will
have access to much more information to test this impression. I will hope to be
proved wrong. If proved right, I will do my utmost to change that.
Both the "Free Harvard" (abolishing
tuition) and the "Fair Harvard" (admissions transparency) planks of
our five-candidate slate would greatly foster socioeconomic diversity. Making
Harvard tuition-free would attract countless well-qualified applicants from
families of modest to average means who would now have great difficulty paying
for a Harvard education, even with relatively generous financial aid. Free
tuition would also attract countless more people, especially from small-town
America, who now assume that Harvard is for the rich. Admissions transparency
would also help bring in more students of modest and average means, for the
reasons given in my response to question #4.
Intellectual
diversity. It is vital for any university to welcome
outstanding students and faculty with a wide range of intellectual
orientations. Intellectual dialectic that challenges one's views is vital to
clear thinking and progress. We all learn much from civil discourse with people
whose intellectual orientations and opinions are unlike our own. Intellectual
homogeneity makes potentially smart people stupid by fostering groupthink, herd
behavior, and complacency. I rarely feel that I am learning much of value about
important public issues unless I am in touch with, or at least reading,
thoughtful conservatives, liberals, and moderates, ideally ranging from end to
end of the ideological spectrum of opinion.
As a moderate -- with views to the left of most of
the general public and to the right of most academics and journalists -- I have
long believed that America's top universities, including Harvard, are sorely
lacking in intellectual diversity and getting worse. I was especially shocked
when coauthoring (with KC Johnson) my first book, Until Proven Innocent. It focused on (among other things) the
unthinking, disgraceful, mob-like rush to judgment in 2006 and 2007 by more
than activist Duke professors from the far Left -- and the university's
leadership, which feared far left professors and their media allies -- against
Duke lacrosse players who were falsely accused of gang rape. I was even more
horrified that virtually all of the more fair-minded Duke professors were too
intimidated by the far-left mob to speak up for due process and the presumption
of innocence.
Worse, I have been told that it would be almost
impossible today -- in part because of thinly veiled discrimination -- for an
academic with conservative or even
moderate ideological views to get tenure at Harvard in any field outside
the STEM disciplines and perhaps economics. (I would be very glad to see this
proved wrong.) Students would learn much more from an intellectually diverse
faculty.
"Free Harvard" would indirectly increase
intellectual diversity by attracting applicants from a broader range of
backgrounds. "Fair Harvard" could indirectly increase intellectual
diversity by exposing any ideology-based discrimination against applicants. It
could also shed light on whether admissions preferences based on race, legacy
status, or athletic talent foster undue ideological homogeneity. And although
intellectual diversity is not part of the "Freer Harvard, Fair
Harvard" platform, it will be a personal priority of mine if I am elected.
Racial
diversity. This is important both to the (limited) extent that
it still fosters socioeconomic diversity and because, ideally, Harvard should
look more like America and the world. For this reason, I have long supported
affirmative action in the original and most healthy sense: energetic outreach,
recruitment, and talent-development efforts to extend opportunity to
traditionally underserved groups and to break down historical hierarchies. I
support such programs in walks of life ranging from the construction trades to
Harvard admissions. Harvard should, to the
extent possible, work directly with inner-city schools to improve their
students' academic preparation and competitiveness.
2. Please
state your views on affirmative action.
I incorporate by reference my support for the kinds
of affirmative action discussed in the last paragraph of my response to
question #1.
At the same time, as detailed below, I have grave
concerns about the excesses associated with large racial preferences. By that I
mean preferences that lead to large racial gaps in the entering academic
credentials, and consequently in the academic performance, of students at
Harvard or any other school. Such racial preferences should not be made a
permanent feature of American life, a goal of many racial-preference
supporters.
I also oppose have grave concerns about the use of
"affirmative action" -- and of "diversity" -- as euphemisms
for excessive use of large racial preferences and quotas. This is unfortunate
and misleading because a great many Americans do not equate "affirmative action" with racial preferences.
The evidence is that while polls have for decades consistently shown
overwhelming public opposition to "racial preferences" and even to
"consideration of race in admissions," the polls are much more
closely divided on "affirmative action."
Describing racial preferences as "affirmative
action" is also misleading as a historical matter. The Kennedy and Johnson
executive orders that popularized the phrase did not endorse -- indeed, they
forbade -- preferences for, as well as discrimination against, any racial
group.
Please see also my responses to questions #1 and
#3.
3. Please
state your views on race-conscious college admissions (if not specified in your
answer to question #2).
I again incorporate by reference my support for the
kinds of affirmative action discussed in the last paragraph of my response to
question #1.
But excessively large racial
admissions preferences for favored minorities have very large social costs. The
most obvious are unfairness to well-qualified Asian American and white
applicants, especially the former, and the resentments that unfairness
inevitably creates.
Indeed, in most selective universities -- including
Harvard, I suspect -- the academically strong child of two Asian American or
white cab drivers is almost certain to be passed over to admit the academically
less strong child of two wealthy black or Hispanic lawyers. Again, as I said in
my response to question #1, I will hope to be proved wrong. And again, if
proved right, I will do my utmost to change that.
Less well-known but perhaps even more important is
the powerful evidence that large racial preferences have backfired both against
their supposed beneficiaries and against socioeconomic diversity.
Many of the most severely damaged victims of large
racial preferences are, ironically, black and Hispanic students who have been
misled about their academic prospects and thereby set up for struggle or even
failure. Much of this evidence is detailed in Mismatch, a 2012 book that Richard Sander and I coauthored. It
cited copious empirical research, and a number of individual stories, showing
that large admissions preferences often have dire effects on recipients'
academic performance, self-confidence, and career options.
Many very good African American, Hispanic American,
and Native American students who would do well at most prestigious colleges are
not academically prepared to compete at Harvard against some of the world's
most brilliant and best-prepared students. This "mismatch," and the low
grades that it causes, often forces such students to abandon challenging
courses, especially in the STEM disciplines, that are gateways to the
professions that many students of all races want to pursue. Mismatch also
fosters self-doubt, self-segregation, understandable (if incorrect) suspicions
that discrimination must be at work, unhappiness, and a sense of betrayal among
students who were promised that they would do well. It also reinforces racial
stereotypes about intellectual capacity.
A second irony of large racial preferences is that
they ultimately undermine the beneficial effects of racial diversity itself.
They do this by causing preferred minorities to cluster in easily graded
courses, to sit at separate tables in dining halls, to live and socialize primarily
with other academically mismatched minorities, and to demand more "safe
spaces" where they can minimize contact with members of other racial
groups . For these reasons, studies have shown, students tend to become friends
mainly with academic peers.
A third irony has been the drift away from the
original affirmative-action goal of advancing poor and blue-collar students
whose families have been held back in life by racial discrimination or other
forces. In order to avoid even larger racial gaps in academic performance than
now, the black and Hispanic that students whom Harvard chooses to admit come
very disproportionately from families that are either wealthy or foreign-born
or both. The reason is that these students tend to have stronger academic credentials
than the disproportionately poor and badly educated descendants of slaves.
"Free Harvard" would improve these
problems by increasing the pool of well-qualified, socioeconomically diverse
minority applicants and therefore reducing the pressure to use large racial
preferences to reach numeral targets. Meanwhile, "Fair Harvard" would
expose the costs as well as the benefits of large racial preferences, as
detailed in my response to question #4.
4. Please
state your views on whether Harvard should be more transparent about
its college admissions process, particularly about how the mix of students is
created.
Harvard should become much more
transparent about its college admissions process, and about how the mix of
students is created. This might be the single most healthy policy change that
Harvard could adopt, especially in light of the deep suspicions among Asian
Americans (and others, including me) that Harvard may systematically
discriminate against them.
If transparency shows this suspicion
to be unfounded, it will be good news for everyone. If transparency shows it to
be true, it should lead immediately to ending an indefensible violation of
Harvard's professed principles. Sunlight, in the wise words of Justice
Brandeis, is the best of disinfectants.
Perhaps equally important,
admissions transparency would serve a vital consumer-protection purpose for
students from preferred racial minority groups, as well as the recruited
athletes, children of large donors, and legacy applicants who also receive
preferences. Harvard does not now give such preferred applicants an honest
appraisal of what they are getting into. It does not tell them how their
academic credentials compare with those of their median classmates. It does not
tell them how well or poorly Harvard's own admissions people predict they will
do, based on the academic indices -- a mix of high school grades and test
scores -- that virtually all selective universities use to rank applicants by
academic potential. It does not tell those who hope to take tough pre-med
courses the success rates of past students with similar academic preparation.
Preference recipients, and
everyone else, could figure out such questions for themselves if there were
adequate transparency. That could mean public disclosure of all admissions
policy documents and data that can be disclosed without violating the privacy
of individual students. The data could include the average and median academic
index scores all admitted students; of recruited athletes; of legacies; of
those whose parents or grandparents have made large gifts or pledges during the
three years preceding the admissions decisions; and of those in each identified
racial group. The data could also include the average Harvard grades, the
STEM-discipline retention rates, the most popular majors, and the graduation
rates of students whose admissions-office academic index scores were in the
10th, 20th, 30th, and so on up to 90th percentiles.
Admitted applicants should
privately be told their own academic index scores so that they can check how
well past students with similar scores have done, on average. This would also
allow those with relatively low academic index scores to focus on whether, in
the long rung, they would be better off at Harvard, perhaps ending up near the
bottom of the class, or at another, prestigious but less competitive school,
where they could be academic stars.
Such transparency would also
confirm or dispel myths about some closely guarded secrets that should not be
secret: the extent and size of all forms of preferences -- athletic, legacy,
and large-donor as well as racial -- and the related gaps in academic
achievement. Transparency would thus enable informed debate over proposed
policy changes.
Some people fear that transparency would create
pressure to reduce somewhat the size of the racial gaps in the academic
preparation of admitted students. They may prove to be wrong, at least at
Harvard, because the racial gaps behind the current veil of secrecy may prove
to be smaller than those at any other selective college. That is the inference
to be drawn both from the best available data (which are dated and sketchy) and
from Harvard's well-known ability to attract a lion's share of the top students
in all racial groups. This will be all the more true when Harvard becomes both
free and fair.
5. What
steps have you taken to bring diversity to your workplace or to an organization
that you have participated in?
As a career journalist and author,
I have never been involved in hiring decisions and thus have never been in a
position to bring diversity to my workplaces. In addition, all of my employers
have been so sensitive to the benefits of diversity that they appeared to be
taking already whatever steps I might recommend. I am not (yet) an active
enough participant in any organization to make policy proposals. If that
changes -- and certainly if I am elected to be a Harvard overseer -- I will
make special efforts to push for as much socioeconomic, intellectual, and
racial diversity as can reasonably be achieved.
