Inez and I begin by discussing two major Supreme Court cases from last week, SFFA v. Harvard, on affirmative action, and 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, on whether a private business can be forced to create a website for a gay wedding. We talk about how the affirmative action decision impacts the incentives of universities, and how its holdings might find their way into other areas of law.
"As soon as you start to accept any arguments for government intervention, it’s the first step towards communism/civil rights, or god forbid, industrial policy." Good God, are you actually equating civil rights with communism?
I can understand Inez's pessimism but I think she is excessively pessimistic. UC Berkeley is in a liberal state but California voters have repeatedly passed ballot initiatives to ban affirmative action. Though UC Berkeley has tried its best to advance racial quotas it has been unsuccessful. For the 2021 incoming class, it was 2% African American, 15% Latino and more than 50% Asian, while Stanford which could consider race has 7% African Americans in 2021 class.
Many good universities are state universities in red states - UIUC, Purdue, GaTech, UNC etc and republican legislatures are not going to tolerate any affirmative action policies. Given UC Berkeley could not implement backdoor affirmative action even though it is in a state run by most ideological democrats there is no way other universities can get away with continuing race based admissions.
Strange to not mention Substack when it comes to building social networks for the culturally sidelined audience. Sure it doesn't have Twitter's reach, but it has been leaking into the mainstream (with links from the NYT and other places) long before Twitter got musked.
Social networks sure have network effects, but overall they make a weak case for "common carrier" treatment with regard to non-discrimination: It would require one to make a solid point of what exactly one gains from a place that is called "hellsite" by half its userbase. Banking, hospitality and law are much better battlegrounds. Here is a European case that looks bad even from Politico's viewpoint (arguably, politico.eu doesn't have the left slant of politico.com): https://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-and-the-great-anti-brexit-unbanking-plot-coutts/ . Note that the most "harmless" explanation (AI going overboard) is actually the scariest one!
As a completely innocent/ignorant/questioning person for the left who contest the other side of the Civil Rights decision, what does success look like?
From what I understand the discrimination policies didn’t actually help those intended? Or in the case of Harvard lots of privileged people got an advantage.
If that is correct then if data isn’t showing any positive effects what do the left get happy about? What am I missing?
On your point #2, I'm skeptical that Harvard is making many decisions on the basis of maximizing the left's political power (as opposed to its own power as a part of the left's coalition). But I do believe your last sentence is true.
I recall a post from Education Realist observing that every now and then, a teacher will have a student who completely aces the standardized tests, yet is just a complete nonentity in the classroom. Never says anything interesting, funny, or clever. Doesn't display any curiosity about the world and is generally ignorant, perhaps shockingly ignorant, when it comes to general knowledge that isn't currently being tested. And without exception, every one of these students is Asian. The implication wasn't that all Asian students are this way, but it's definitely a type, and Harvard wants to exclude that type by all means necessary.
"As soon as you start to accept any arguments for government intervention, it’s the first step towards communism/civil rights, or god forbid, industrial policy." Good God, are you actually equating civil rights with communism?
I can understand Inez's pessimism but I think she is excessively pessimistic. UC Berkeley is in a liberal state but California voters have repeatedly passed ballot initiatives to ban affirmative action. Though UC Berkeley has tried its best to advance racial quotas it has been unsuccessful. For the 2021 incoming class, it was 2% African American, 15% Latino and more than 50% Asian, while Stanford which could consider race has 7% African Americans in 2021 class.
Many good universities are state universities in red states - UIUC, Purdue, GaTech, UNC etc and republican legislatures are not going to tolerate any affirmative action policies. Given UC Berkeley could not implement backdoor affirmative action even though it is in a state run by most ideological democrats there is no way other universities can get away with continuing race based admissions.
The Harrison Bergeron allusion was laughable.
Strange to not mention Substack when it comes to building social networks for the culturally sidelined audience. Sure it doesn't have Twitter's reach, but it has been leaking into the mainstream (with links from the NYT and other places) long before Twitter got musked.
Social networks sure have network effects, but overall they make a weak case for "common carrier" treatment with regard to non-discrimination: It would require one to make a solid point of what exactly one gains from a place that is called "hellsite" by half its userbase. Banking, hospitality and law are much better battlegrounds. Here is a European case that looks bad even from Politico's viewpoint (arguably, politico.eu doesn't have the left slant of politico.com): https://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-and-the-great-anti-brexit-unbanking-plot-coutts/ . Note that the most "harmless" explanation (AI going overboard) is actually the scariest one!
As a completely innocent/ignorant/questioning person for the left who contest the other side of the Civil Rights decision, what does success look like?
From what I understand the discrimination policies didn’t actually help those intended? Or in the case of Harvard lots of privileged people got an advantage.
If that is correct then if data isn’t showing any positive effects what do the left get happy about? What am I missing?
On your point #2, I'm skeptical that Harvard is making many decisions on the basis of maximizing the left's political power (as opposed to its own power as a part of the left's coalition). But I do believe your last sentence is true.
I recall a post from Education Realist observing that every now and then, a teacher will have a student who completely aces the standardized tests, yet is just a complete nonentity in the classroom. Never says anything interesting, funny, or clever. Doesn't display any curiosity about the world and is generally ignorant, perhaps shockingly ignorant, when it comes to general knowledge that isn't currently being tested. And without exception, every one of these students is Asian. The implication wasn't that all Asian students are this way, but it's definitely a type, and Harvard wants to exclude that type by all means necessary.
I follow now. That's plausible.