Fight about affirmative action in school admissions all about context

Chris Rickert:

The most striking thing about Tuesday's press conference on UW-Madison's alleged affirmative-action-driven bias against white and Asian applicants was not the loud, mildly violent protest that overran it.

It was the university professor who publicly touted the rising admission rate for white students and the declining rate for blacks. This from an institution that only 11 years ago was so worried about its less-than-diverse image that it Photoshopped a black student onto an admissions catalog.

That aside, nothing about the presser/protest was all that ground-breaking, and Roger Clegg, president of the conservative outfit that did the study showing UW's bias, got to the nut of the whole affair in only about 35 minutes.

"I view discrimination as something that happens to individuals, rather than something that happens to aggregate groups," he said.

Read more: http://host.madison.com/wsj/news/local/chris_rickert/article_af9f024e-df35-11e0-a10f-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1Y4bqeYTM

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 17, 2011 1:38 AM
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