n
interesting front-page article in the Wall Street Journal earlier
this week reported that many universities are making special efforts "to
boost Jewish enrollment." Says Chancellor Gordon Gee, recently arrived
at Vanderbilt University from Brown, and seeking to lift Vandy to Ivy
League status: "Jewish students, by culture and by ability and by
the very nature of their liveliness, make a university a much more habitable
place in terms of intellectual life."
The article immediately
asks the obvious question and draws the obvious parallel. Is this "a
questionable new form of ethnic profiling"? Is this like affirmative
action, or is it different because blacks and Latinos have been targeted
"to promote diversity or to increase opportunity for the economically
disadvantaged," while Jews are sought "to raise [a school's]
academic standing"?
Regarding the latter
point, the article stresses that Jews are the second-ranking religious
group when it comes to SAT scores, beaten out only by those smarty-pants
Unitarians. (My denomination, Methodists, doesn't even make it to article's
top-ten bar graph. On the other hand, the article points out that Vanderbilt
was founded by Cornelius Vanderbilt, a filthy-rich Methodist. So there.)
Thus, it is not exactly clear that the schools involved are giving Jews
any preference in the selection process, as opposed to making special
efforts to recruit them.
But even if the preference
is only in recruitment, it raises troubling questions. If you are making
special efforts to recruit a particular group, it inevitably means that
you will be giving them a special look when it comes to selection, and
indeed a quote like the one from Chancellor Gee in the first paragraph
confirms that. Besides, if you have two equally qualified sets of students
— one Jewish and one not — and you make special efforts to recruit
the former and not the latter, that's still discrimination. Imagine if
the shoe were on the other foot. And, of course, not so long ago the shoe
was on the other foot, and quotas were used to discriminate against
Jews in university admissions.
It is one thing for
a school to try to counteract a belief that Jews aren't welcome by, for
instance, helping establish a Hillel House — which Vanderbilt did
a couple of years ago — but if your aim is not to encourage everyone
to apply but, instead, to encourage applications from certain groups in
order to boost their enrollment, then there's a problem.
And if discrimination
is taking place, it certainly doesn't help matters to say, as the Vanderbilt
chancellor did, that there's something special about Jewish "culture,"
"ability," and "liveliness." It is certainly true
that such generalizations can be made, but they are just that — generalizations.
Thus, while there are plenty of blacks and Hispanics who are "economically
disadvantaged" — one justification the article lists for affirmative
action in these groups' favor — there are plenty who aren't, and
plenty of whites and Asians who are. Likewise, there are Jews who are
quite secularized, of indifferent ability, and perhaps even not particularly
lively, and there are gentiles who have something special about their
culture, ability, and liveliness.
It should also be
obvious that even positive generalizations can have their negative side.
One man's "liveliness" is another's "pushiness." There's
"smart," and then "clever," and then "smart-ass."
And suppose a school decides that one cultural viewpoint is already "overrepresented"
— is it then justified in also deciding to avoid recruiting those
from that culture? The article points out that, at Ivy League schools,
about 23 percent of the students are Jewish, even though Jews make up
only two percent of the U.S. population — their share, if not more,
even at Vanderbilt, as it turns out.
The point is that
students should be judged as individuals, and that racial, ethnic, and
religious stereotypes about a student's outlook and experiences —
let alone his or her ability and other qualifications — should not
be used. If you are troubled by the use of religious stereotypes and preferences,
then you should be at least as troubled by the racial and ethnic preferences
used by nearly all selective universities in the name of "diversity."
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n
interesting front-page article in the Wall Street Journal earlier
this week reported that many universities are making special efforts "to
boost Jewish enrollment." Says Chancellor Gordon Gee, recently arrived
at Vanderbilt University from Brown, and seeking to lift Vandy to Ivy
League status: "Jewish students, by culture and by ability and by
the very nature of their liveliness, make a university a much more habitable
place in terms of intellectual life." 
