Author Archives: James Bacon

Setting the Stage for the Great Race-in-Admissions Debate

Posted on June 30, 2023 | 7 comments

Should admissions be color blind?

by James A. Bacon

People have been asking me what I think about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting colleges and universities from using race as a specific basis for admitting students. I’m not a legal scholar, so I won’t offer any opinions on the legal or constitutional merits of the decision. I speak as a citizen.

My sense is that the Court has made a huge step forward in the generations-long campaign to build a color-blind society. If you share the ideal that a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin, you will applaud the ruling regardless of its legalities. And if you believe that the condition of Blacks and Hispanics can be elevated in American society only through preferential treatment of their race and ethnicity, you will see it as a blow in furtherance of White supremacy.

The immediate impact will be to generate waves of punditry on how colleges and universities should implement the ruling — or evade it. Prevailing commentary seems to hold that most university administrators will “take a hard look” at their admissions policies, then tweak them to accomplish what they want — higher percentages of Blacks and Hispanics — without triggering lawsuits.

That certainly seems to be the case at the University of Virginia, where President Jim Ryan and Provost Ian Baucom have said in a statement to the university community that they will follow the law but also “continue to do everything within our legal authority to recruit and admit a class of students who are diverse across every possible dimension and to make every student feel welcome and included here at UVA.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Admissions, Race, Equity and Diversity

Jefferson Council Welcomes Four New UVa Board Members

Posted on June 29, 2023 | 6 comments

CHARLOTTESVILLE (June 29, 2023)—The Jefferson Council applauds Governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointment of four fresh faces to the University of Virginia Board of Visitors. With Youngkin appointees now numbering eight on the 17-person board, we look forward to changes at UVa that reflect the Governor’s priorities and address the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on racial preferences in admissions.

The four individuals include:

  • Paul C. Harris of Richmond, Executive Vice President, Chief Sustainability and Compliance Officer, Huntington Ingalls Industries
  • Paul B. Manning of Charlottesville, Chairman and CEO, PBM Capital Group
  • John L. Nau, III of Houston, Texas, Chairman and CEO of Silver Eagle Beverages
  • Rachel Sheridan of McLean, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis

The Governor offered no comment on the logic behind his selections, and we are not privy to his thinking. Manning and Nau are both generous benefactors to UVa as well as major donors to Republican candidates and PACs. Harris and Sheridan bring welcome diversity to the Board.

Presumably, the appointees share the Governor’s philosophy of reframing “Diversity, Equity & Inclusion” as “Diversity, Opportunity & Inclusion” in state government, and are comfortable with the statement by his chief diversity officer Martin D. Brown, who declared DEI to be “dead” at the Virginia Military Institute. In a ruling that appears to be consistent with the Governor’s vision, the U.S. Supreme Court has just declared that higher-ed institutions may not use race as a criterion in admitting students. Continue reading →

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Posted in Board of Visitors, Press releases

Speak Softly… and Listen to Mike Pompeo

Posted on June 28, 2023 | 3 comments

Save the date: Monday, September 25
Time: 7:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m.
Location: Newcomb Hall Ballroom

Former Secretary of State and Director of the CIA Mike Pompeo will speak on the topic, “Talk softly but carry America with you: Inside negotiations on the world stage.”

Michael R. Pompeo served as the 70th Secretary of State of the United States, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was elected to four terms in Congress representing the Fourth District of Kansas. Mike graduated first in his class from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1986. He served as a cavalry officer in the U.S. Army, leading troops patrolling the Iron Curtain. He left the military in 1991 and then graduated from Harvard Law School, having served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Up next was almost a decade leading two manufacturing businesses in South Central Kansas – first in the aerospace industry and then making energy drilling and production equipment.

Please join us for what promises to be an exciting evening listening to one of America’s premier statesmen of the last half century.

SPONSORS: The College Republicans, The University of Virginia Center for Politics, The Jefferson Council for the University of Virginia, Young America’s Foundation.

We will post a registration link shortly.

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Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events

Colleges Should Compete on Free Speech

Posted on June 28, 2023 | 2 comments

Credit: Bing Image Creator. Students engaging in civil free speech in the style of Norman Rockwell.

by James A. Bacon

The U.S. News & World-Report ranking of best U.S. colleges and universities is coming under assault from the left on the grounds that the publication’s methodology gives insufficient weight to social justice considerations. That may be a valid concern… if your priority in selecting a college is social justice. But U.S. News and its lefty alternatives are worthless if your No. 1 concern is ensuring students are exposed to diverse views and feel free to explore ideas that cut against the mainstream.

In an article in RealClear Politics, Edward Yingling and Stuart Taylor suggest that higher-ed institutions should begin differentiating themselves by their commitment to academic freedom. Yingling and Taylor are founders of Princetonians for Free Speech and co-founders with the Jefferson Council of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance.

As the duo observes, many of America’s elite universities have low ratings for free speech in the annual survey conducted by the Foundation for Rights and Expression (FIRE).

“The lists of ‘top colleges’ have varied little in many years. They always include the Ivies, Stanford, MIT, Cal Tech, etc.,” write Yingling and Taylor. “But that could change. Colleges of all types can differentiate themselves on the core values of free speech and academic freedom, and those that do will increasingly attract more and better students, faculty, and employment opportunities for their graduates.” Continue reading →

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Posted in Freedom of speech and expression

Who Guides the Guides?

Posted on June 23, 2023 | 10 comments

Credit: Bing Image Creator. Sacagawea scratching her head, in the style of Frederick Remington.

by James A. Bacon

In the spring of 2022 University of Virginia alumnus Warren Lightfoot emailed Rector Whitt Clement, a fraternity brother, to share the experiences of a friend and friend’s daughter during a university tour. Among other negative observations about UVa, reported Lightfoot, the student tour guide had made a point of noting that the university was built on land taken from Indians, that it was built by slaves, that its plans were “stolen” from slaves, and that the University had caused little but harm to the residents of Charlottesville over 200 years. “Needless to say, my friend and his daughter were unimpressed, shocked and offended,” recounted Lightfoot, who, as a former student tour guide himself, had been proud of the institution he represented.

Clement thanked his frat brother for the email. “I have heard similar, but less disturbing, accounts. I am going to look into this — totally unacceptable.”

True to his word, Clement talked to Greg Roberts, associate vice provost of enrollment and undergraduate admission. The Office of Undergraduate Admissions coordinated with the independent, student-run Student Guide Service to brief prospective students about the university. Typically, officials with the university would meet with prospects and their parents, and then turn them over to guides for tours of dormitories, student amenities and Thomas Jefferson’s architectural masterpiece of the Lawn.

Reporting back to Lightfoot, Clement reiterated his concerns. “I have expressed my dismay about this tour guide and am told it is an isolated event and that the guide is gone. This episode is totally unacceptable. Even if the tour guide program is part of student self-governance, which I am told is the case, then they must do a lot better job in self-selection and with the content of their tours; otherwise, serious intervention and changes would be in order in my opinion.”

But by August 2022 nothing had changed. Frustrated by the lack of concrete action, Lightfoot got back in touch with Clement to say that “the nonsense with the student guides has not stopped at all.” Continue reading →

10 Comments

Posted in Admissions

Tagged

How Wokeism Is Ruining Medicine

Posted on June 22, 2023 | 4 comments

Stanley Goldfarb

by James A. Bacon

The Woke Revolution’s takeover of K-12 schools, the criminal justice system, higher ed, the media, the military, the C-suite, museums other cultural institutions has been highly visible, playing out in blogs and the media for all to see. The conquest of the healthcare system has attracted far less attention, though arguably it is the most consequential. After all, human lives are at stake.

Many U.S. medical schools have embraced the idea that American healthcare is systemically racist, that White physicians and other providers are infected with racial bias, that racism accounts for the disparities in health outcomes between Blacks and Whites, and that the only antidote to racism is “anti-racism,” warns Stanley Goldfarb, author of “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors Is Destroying American Medicine.”

Goldfarb bases his critique on his own experiences as a nephrologist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, an extensive review of the academic literature on racial disparities, and his role as founder of Do No Harm, a nonprofit formed to combat racial essentialism in medicine. Wokeness, he argues, is profoundly destructive. By misdiagnosing racial disparities in health outcomes, the anti-racism movement focuses attention on a nearly non-existent problem and distracts from real causes and solutions.

The predictable result: Woke medicine will harm African Americans and other marginalized groups it purports to help. In that regard, it is similar to woke K-12 education, where the racial achievement gap is getting worse; woke criminal justice, which leads to more African American homicides; woke colleges and universities, where African Americans feel less sense of acceptance and belonging than in years past; and woke everything else, the poisoned fruit of which is grievance, resentment, and alienation. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Posted in Leftist orthodoxy, Race, Equity and Diversity

Goldfarb to Dissect DEI in Medical Schools

Posted on June 20, 2023 | Leave a comment

Stanley Goldfarb. Photo credit: Do No Harm

In no field of scientific endeavor has the woke revolution made greater inroads than medicine. Militant leftist ideology and its administrative handmaiden, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, are transforming the practice of clinical medicine and medical research into subsidiaries of the “social justice” movement.

From locking down society during COVID-19, to promoting transgender surgery for minors, to agitating against “systemic” racism, America’s healthcare system has become thoroughly politicized.

We know what many of you are thinking – “I agree it’s terrible, but what can I do about it?”

Here’s a place to start. Attend a July 12 speech by Stanley Goldfarb, founder of Do No Harm and author of “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors is Destroying American Medicine.” He will address the topic, “How to Save Medicine from Identity Politics.”

The event will begin 6:00 p.m. with a reception at the Boar’s Head Inn, followed by Goldfarb’s speech. Click here for details. Continue reading →

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Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events

“The Worst Tour of the 14 Colleges We Have Been on This Year”

Posted on June 17, 2023 | 9 comments

A UVa college tour, circa 2019. Photo credit: UVA TODAY

by James A. Bacon

This past April a University of Virginia alumna took her son for a tour of the university conducted by a student-run organization, the University Guide Service. The woman had been a University Guide herself 25 years previously, an activity that accounted for some of her best memories and most enduring friendships at UVa. “We prided ourselves on the Guide Service being all volunteer, student led, and unaffiliated with the Admissions Office,” she wrote in an evaluation form obtained through the Freedom of Information Act.

The alumna and her son, a high school junior, made the rounds of some 14 universities this spring. As a former Guide, she wrote, “naturally I expected the Virginia admissions tour to be head and shoulders above the tours at other schools. Unfortunately, I was completely wrong and so disappointed.”

It’s important for university guides to be candid and honest, she wrote, but one also expects them to represent their institution in a positive light. “A prospective student should come away with the impression that the guide loves the school and is proud of it.” Sadly, her guide was negative and apologetic about the school. She complained about the large class sizes, the terrible advising system, the lousy food, and inadequacies of the mental-health services. Continue reading →

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Posted in Admissions

Tagged

Men Need Not Apply

Posted on June 15, 2023 | 5 comments

Mark J. Perry

by James A. Bacon

Mark R. Perry, a senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has filed 841 complaints over the years against universities whose policies and practices discriminate against men. So far, the Office of Civil Rights has opened 28 investigations just based on more than 100 complaints he’s filed for Do No Harm, a Virginia-based organization formed to fight identity politics in medical schools.

In one of his earlier complaints, filed in 2018 against UVa’s Darden School of Business, Perry argued that the existence of eight scholarships (and an external fellowship) reserved exclusively for women violated the School’s own internal discrimination policies.

UVa argued that the scholarships were “independently selected, funded, and awarded by the UVA Darden School Foundation, and do not involve federal or state funds.” Because the female-only scholarships were privately funded, the university argued, they didn’t violate UVa’s internal anti-discrimination policy.

Perry didn’t buy it. “I thought it was a weak defense given the fact that the Darden School Foundation is physically located in the Darden School of Business and uses UVA Darden emails and UVA Darden phones, etc. … It’s probably the case that the Darden School and NOT the Darden School Foundation decides on who gets the scholarships. In that case, UVA is administering the scholarships and that would violate Title IX.” He recently re-filed the complaint, originally lodged with the university’s Title IX office, with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

In previous posts, I remarked upon the 56/44 ratio of women to men at the University of Virginia and asked why, at a university dedicated to “equity,” such an unbalanced sex ratio would prevail. The reasons are unclear. Any analysis based upon publicly available data leaves many unanswered questions. But two things are indisputable: (1) UVa provides many women’s-only scholarships, awards and programs, and (2) the administration has evinced no concern about the gender imbalance or discrimination against males. Continue reading →

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Posted in Admissions

Probing UVa’s Gender Gap: Is It an Admissions Problem?

Posted on June 13, 2023 | 1 comment

First-time, first-year applicants, offers and yields by gender, 2016-2021. Click for more legible image.

by James A. Bacon

As highlighted in our last post, the University of Virginia admits significantly more women than men. The split in the undergraduate student body is roughly 54/46. My aim in pointing out the disparity was not, as some readers presumed, to argue for special preferences for men; admission to UVa should be based on merit. I was exploring the question of whether the goal of achieving “equity” (whether defined as equal “outcomes” or equal “opportunity”) applies to all under-represented groups, including men, or just to so-called “marginalized” groups favored by progressive ideology.

Having documented that males are comparable to females in academic aptitude, at least among those who take the SATs, I suggested that some other factor might account for the disparity in their numbers at UVa. One possibility is that more women than men apply to UVa. All other things being equal, one would expect more women to be admitted if more women applied. Another possibility, which I raised in a previous post, is that UVa is suffused with subtle but systemic anti-male bias.

In this post, we’ll examine the role of the admissions process. I will delve into the issue of campus culture in a future post. Continue reading →

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Posted in Admissions, Sex and gender