Drum notes a program at Santa Clara University to give preferential treatment to male students and huffs:
I’m hopeful that the principled folks over at National Review will condemn this practice. And please: not just a desultory acknowledgment or two to prove you care. I expect a stream of outraged posts and crosstalk at least equal to the recent torrents about Arlen Specter, the lack of conservatives among humanities faculties, and the shocking tolerance of liberalism at the University of Chicago.
I’m counting on you, Cornerites. The eyes of the blogosphere are on you.
Well, if Drum wants us conservatives to say that preferences for less-qualified male students in university admissions are bad, he can relax; obviously, this kind of discrimination is not justified. But, in the Kleiman style, he wants instead to paint conservatives as hypocrites for not dropping what they are doing and writing what Drum tells us to write.
But he can’t be serious; this is one isolated and possibly unique feature of one not terribly prominent university. To say that it is deserving of the same attention as the chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee – a matter that affects the court system and legal reform issues as a whole – is unserious at best and disingenuous at worst. Even to compare this to conservatives’ principled opposition to racial preferences misses the fact that the latter are pervasive, perhaps universal, in higher education admissions. That doesn’t make one more or less wrong than the other, but it certainly suggests why the emphasis falls naturally on the more prevalent program. A little perspective would go a long way.
You don’t really think he would understand your point, do you?
In the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ folder, this sorta makes me ponder if someone should demand that Mr. Drum drop everything and revisit his (now, upon reflection, the rather fruitcakish) obsession with Bush being AWOL.
But, many of those folks are still crying in their beers over the election results and I’ve always been of a mind that we should give losers some time to gather themselves.
However, four weeks is long enough, don’t you think?
“But he can’t be serious; this is one isolated and possibly unique feature of one not terribly prominent university.”
It only looks “isolated and possibly unique” because no one has a vested interest in examining it. Liberals want to keep affirmative action, and conservatives don’t look out for things that help men. So it just goes unreported and people can think it is “possibly isolated”.
Click my name for a 2001 CSM article. It happens absolutely EVERYWHERE, but no one talks about it.
Interesting article; this bears further study. I do think opponents of affirmative action should be opposed to this and that many more would be if they were aware of this issue.