The voters of Michigan have screwed their own law school. We will now admit lesser qualified whites, who will be less employable than the minorities who were here. And we will have virtually zero minority representation in class and outside class. Awesome, isn't it?

How much of the vote do you think can be explained by simple, plain, good ol' racism? You know--the "I hate black people" kind? I doubt prop 2 would've have passed without it. Puts the law on morally deficient ground if you ask me.

Huh? How does a law that prohibits racial preferences require the admission of "lesser qualified whites, who will be less employable"? I'm not following you.

Lesser qualified than the whites currently enrolled. Presumably, this new group will underperform the current group of whites, and will be less desirable to employers.

As Scalia pointed out, if they want a more diverse class at UM law school, all they have to do is lower the overall academic standards until they can admit a diverse class without giving minority applicants special treatment.

Spaceman's comments assume a correlation between admissions standards and the "employability" of graduates. I don't believe any such correlation has ever been shown. In any case, the data I've seen suggests that Michigan law grads, regardless of race, aren't having trouble finding employment. I doubt that eliminating racial preferences in the admissions process would change that, and I'm certainly not aware of any evidence that suggests eliminating racial preferences in law school admissions is correlated with declines in employment among graduates. Even if that is the case, however, does it justify the use of such preferences?

David,

Posted below is Dean Caminker's statement e-mailed this morning to the law school. Perhaps you should update your post to read:

"One thing obviously missing from [both] President Coleman[ and Dean Caminker's statements] is a are commitment[s] to obey the law. Hopefully, she they will make it clear that future diversity efforts will be pursued in accordance with Michigan law. To his credit, Dean Evan Caminker of the law school made it clear many months ago that the law school intends to obey the law: "

——-

As many of you know by now, Michigan’s ballot proposal 06-2, also known as the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, has been approved by the electorate and will become law with an effective date likely in mid-December. This proposal amends the state constitution to prohibit affirmative action programs that give preferential treatment to individuals or groups based on race, gender, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the realms of public education, employment, and contracting.

For quite some time, the University of Michigan Law School has embraced a deep institutional commitment to diversity. As one of many aspects of the diversity we value, our admissions policy has long taken race into account to some degree, and this policy was upheld against legal challenge by the United States Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger. The merit of our goal of diversity has consistently been validated in terms of the performance of our students in class; their recruitment by prestigious law firms, corporations, and governmental agencies; and their ultimate success in the legal profession or their chosen careers. In our institutional view, and as affirmed by the Supreme Court in Grutter, racial diversification of our student body (along with diversification along other lines) improves the quality of the educational experience at the Law School, inside class and out; enables integration of the leadership of the bar, the bench, government, and the corporate sector; clearly demonstrates to our own citizens and the world that the pathways to leadership are transparent and accessible to the suitably gifted and committed; and allows us to graduate a diverse group of superbly prepared professionals who will serve an increasingly diverse nation and world. Consistent with these goals, every student admitted to Michigan Law deserves to be here – and our track record clearly demonstrates this fact.

Proposal 2 will likely require the Law School to modify some of its specific admissions policies and practices, and options will be considered carefully over the next few weeks and beyond. But Michigan Law remains committed to its longstanding goal of admitting and matriculating an absolutely outstanding student body that is brilliant, energetic, multi-talented, and diverse along a wide variety of dimensions, including race. And while what we might do is as yet undetermined, I’m confident that how we respond will follow the proud and equally longstanding tradition at this Law School of addressing important and potentially controversial issues in a civil and collegial manner.

Hans Gruber, Michigan schools (and all schools applying racial AA) should welcome the chance to apply color-blind socio-economic affirmative action. If AA is really about helping the disadvantaged, it'll be nice to see AA proponents actually focus on the disadvantaged and not some racist proxy for it.

Long before there was such a thing as affirmative action, the University of Michigan Law School admitted Amalya Kearse and Harry Edwards. Each graduated near the top of his or her class and went on to become highly regarded judges on the US Court of Appeals (Kearse on the Second Circuit and Edwards on the DC Circuit). Both are black, a fact that played no, as in zero, role in their admission to Michigan and their subsequent success their.

Alas, many of the black students admitted to Michigan since then with the aid of affirmative action have not done so well.

Malor,

I have no strong feelings about the use of socio-economic standing in admissions, though I would tend to disfavor it. Suffice to say that universities will not "embrace" it in concept but merely utilize it as a means to acheive the so-called "critical mass" of minority students. If the California example is followed, race will remain a factor, though a less prominent and unofficial one.

There's a bit of an empirical falsity implicit in some of the comments above. It is not the case that class-based affirmative action (or a preference for economically disadvantaged students, or whatever you want to call it) will produce a racially diverse student body. In fact, as I recall, whites from families with incomes of $20,000 have higher SAT scores than blacks from families with incomes of $70,000.

Since the faculty at Michigan and elsewhere badly wants a goodly number of black students admitted, and since they are smart people, I am sure they will find a way, but class-based affirmative action isn't it. Possibly, a la Texas, a regional diversity program, such as the Ivies used to employ to keep Jewish percentages down.

WM13,

I think you are probably correct if the formula was rigid and keeping with the spirit of the initiative. But all they need to do is admit enough disadvantaged whites and asians as to create a plausible claim the result is achieved by race-neutral means.

"But, they're more qualified than the current AA admits. Under the same presumption, they'll outperform said AA admits and be more desirable to employers."

If blacks perform worse in the class, the few extra whites who are now accepted will (on average) fill these lower spots. An employer may not be willing to hire them. The difference being that the employer would have been willing to hire the black who was displaced.

I saw Dean Caminker (before he was dean) speak about the Michigan litigation several years ago. He stated that Michigan had looked into every possible alternative to race preferences, and none of them would result in a significant number of minority matriculants. I believed him then (at least in the sense that none of the alternatives would work)), but this means that if Michigan Law manages to matriculate a significant number of minority students in the future with a general change in its admissions standards, it will likely be "cheating."

Not just that, but the "dirty little secret" of RACIAL PREFERENCES is that it disproportionately (in CA) hurt asians FAR more than whites before it was outlawed.

the proponents of Rac. Pref's liked to frame it as a way to keep "privileged white males" from dominating the UC system.

However, the stats showed the most "overrepresented" group in Cali was asians. iow, far greater %age of the class at top tier UC schools was asian, than their representation in the greater population.

that was left out, because it's hard to argue that first and second generation asian immigrants are the "privileged". otoh, they are clearly the "work hardest and deserve college" class.

Asians were hurt most by racial preferences in Cali (had to score much higher than whites or blacks to get in).

The 'diversity' people rarely mentioned that.

In joining California and Washington, Michigan has simply embraced an admirable principle that forbids agencies of government, including our public universities, from engaging in racial discrimination. The resolve that our government (including our universities) may not brand us by "race," stereotype us by "race," divide us by "race" (and, indeed, presume to tell us which racial queue is "ours" and which racial queue is "theirs")deserves one's wholehearted embrace, an unreserved commitment we make to one another, as much so as anything else we can do for each other in this limited life. All of the shifting apologia offered by the tinkerers of racial regimes cannot escape the essential vice of their programs, even as many of them they know it to be.
Other commentators have expressed skepticism that the University of Michigan will abide by the electoral outcome in good faith. There is no doubt considerable reason for their skepticism, but may we not also hope that they are wrong? Surely, we may....
Wm. Van Alstyne.

"I tend to think that measures like the MCRI are too heavy-handed."


Why would prohibiting state preferences based solely on race or gender be "too heavy-handed?" I guess it all depends on how seriously you take the 14th Amendment.

Jim:

The intentions imputed to MCRI by its opponents (not to mention the doomsday scenarios) seem to have overtaken its actual langauge.

Back in the 70's. if you asked people whether they agreed with the statement "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," most people would say yes. But when you asked them if they supported the ERA (where that language came from - verbatim), the numbers went down significantly.

The same is true with the MCRI. If you ask people whether they agree with the language in the MCRI (which you quoted), they say yes. But when you ask them if they support the MCRI, the numbers go down (though fortunately, not below 50% yesterday).

I suppose the explanation is that the campaigning behind the "No on 2" side was misleading enough that people who said yes to the language and no to the initiative forgot about what the initiative actually said. But is is disturbing nonetheless. Those numbers should not be significantly different - and the only difference should be from those who don't know what the MCRI says.

"Back in the 70's. if you asked people whether they agreed with the statement "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex," most people would say yes. But when you asked them if they supported the ERA (where that language came from - verbatim), the numbers went down significantly."

The failure of ERA came down to not trusting courts to interpret it within its original meaning. It could be interpreted to eliminate the exclusion of women from the draft, something most people don't want. One interesting textual objection to ERA was that it would give an in to legalizing same-sex marriage. That was considered ridiculous fear-mongering by ERA supporters, but Hawaii, which adopted its own ERA (word for word, I believe), had their Supreme Court rule precisely that!