Reply to Over 280 University of California STEM faculty members have signed an open letter calling on the UC Board of Regents to

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[quote=Anonymous][quote]In the past year a full-blown conservative reaction, exemplified by Dinesh D’Souza’s Illiberal Education, has depicted the new claims of ethnic pluralism precisely as a liberal or radical plot. In its most mechanical form, the conservative argument pictures elite colleges as admitting unqualified students through affirmative action. These students, once there, lower standards, frustrate faculty, and develop an ideology of cultural separatism to justify their own incompetence. The demand for more representative or non-traditional curricula is one more, mostly illegitimate, offshoot of their presence on campus. Affirmative action is thus the source of a new and sinister ideology called “multiculturalism,” which undermines not only higher education but also the very cohesion of America.

The tragedy of this attack is that it treats complex demographic shifts as if they were merely manufactured by ideologues. In California, New York, Texas, and elsewhere, good-faith efforts by college administrators to accommodate these shifts, often with quite dissimilar strategies, now carry a similar political burden. The further tragedy is that this attack has polarized discussion of such profoundly important and subtle questions as who shall be educated, what is worthy of study, how to conceive of “merit,” and how best to reconcile diversity, achievement, democracy, and nationhood.[/quote]
This was written in 1992. You people truly never freaking change.

[quote]Since 1964, admission to the University of California has been structured by a legislatively adopted Master Plan. Entering students must be in the top one-eighth of their graduating class. That requirement translates into a 3.25 grade point average (B plus) for students in California’s 1200 high schools. In the actual admissions process, students must also have taken a series of specific high school courses, and done well on their SAT’s. These measures are combined in an “academic index,” and used at all U.C. campuses. The overwhelming majority of racial and ethnic minority admissions at Berkeley are drawn from this top one-eighth eligibility pool, yet a common misconception is that most minority students do not meet the published criteria.

One charge is that many minority students, African Americans in particular, may technically qualify because they receive good grades from mediocre high schools. But whatever the case in other states, minority applicants who qualify for the University of California are not drawn primarily from racially isolated inner city schools; many, if not most, are drawn from high schools that are already extraordinarily diverse. Furthermore, the State of California’s Post-Secondary Education Commission continually audits the University’s admissions procedures and the comparability of high school coursework, to ensure compliance with denned criteria.[/quote][/quote]

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