Given that Judge Sonia Sotomajor’s confirmation hearings are just getting underway, you might be interested in an essay by Prof. Robert Weissberg just posted at Taki’s Magazine. It makes a point that has not received the wide attention it deserves: Her “empathetic” agenda may be toxic to the intended beneficiaries. In an e-mail, Weissberg describes this agenda as “disastrous for them but that they just cannot resist its lures.”

The essay contains no explicit higher-education angle but one is strongly implied — namely, the “mismatch” thesis, which holds that granting admission to minority students at campuses where they are over their heads and bound for failure is harmful to them, whereas they would flourish at less demanding schools.