By Joel Thurtell
What do the felon Kwame Kilpatrick and the University of Michigan Alumni Association have in common?
Both the disgraced Detroit mayor and the UM alum group have behaved tried to act as if the 2006 Michigan constitutional amendment banning discrimination by race, sex, ethnicity and national origin did not happen.
Fifty-eight percent of Michigan voters in November 2006 approved a state-wide ban on discrimination by the state and by public universities and colleges.
In 2006, Kilpatrick was not yet in jail. He was still running Detroit when he vowed to break the new anti-racism law and “continue doing business as (Detroit) has been.”
Now the UM Alumni Association, like Kwame, is trying to evade the constitutional mandate against discrimination. The alumni group believes that because it is is privately organized, it can use race to discriminate in ways that the state-chartered university is not allowed.
As a member of UMAA, I receive promotional messages from the Alumni Association. Mostly, they have to do with alumni gatherings, tickets to athletic events, regents’ actions and general press releases.
But the e-mail that came on May 30, 2012 was different.
It was defiant.
A call to action.
Voters be damned: We alums will help our alma mater circumvent the Constitution.
UMAA President Steve Grafton: “Since the 2006 Michigan law (Proposal 2) which prohibits the considerations of race or gender in university admissions or scholarship decisions does not apply to the Alumni Association, we are uniquely positioned to build an alternative pathway to a broader experience for all students.”
The association website repeats: “The Alumni Association (separately incorporated from the University) will generate private support for and administer these scholarships to enhance the diversity of University of Michigan student enrollment in terms of race, gender, ethnicity or national origin.”
Here is the essence of Proposal 2, the constitutional amendment alums want to evade:
1. The University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University, and any other public college or university, community college, or school district shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
2. The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.
What is so bad about that? Everybody gets judged on merit, nobody gets special consideration because of their gender or genetic makeup.
But it’s evident the UM administration wants to keep discriminating. It is just turning to its private wing, the alumni association, to promote banned activity.
According to Grafton, “the Alumni Association has committed itself to supporting the University’s diversity goals by utilizing scholarship awards and engagement activities to recruit underrepresented students. (My emphasis.)
What exactly does “diversity” mean, anyway?
Does it mean balancing academic departments so professors’ politics accurately reflect, say, the representation of Republicans and Democrats in the Michigan Legislature?
Does it mean that the number of professors in a UM department won’t disproportionately represent one school of thought or methodology over others?
Neither political persuasion nor variety in training and academic belief systems is what UM means by “diversity.”
Nor, for that matter, were these things mentioned by voters.
I mention them only to show that there are many ways to consider “diversity.”
Taste in automobiles, maybe, or art, or cuisine.
“Diversity” is a vague word.
But the amendment is clear: It forbids discrimination by race, gender, ethnicity and national origin.
Yet “diversity” is still part of UM’s official set of values: “As members of the university community, students are expected to uphold values such as civility, dignity, diversity, education, equality, freedom, honesty, and safety,” according to “The Gray Book, A Guide to the Graduate Program in History.” (My emphasis)
Recently, I noticed on an interior wall of a UM building a glass-covered, framed poster promoting “diversity.”
Regardless of what the voters ordained, and however it is defined, “diversity” is still part of the official creed at UM.
The alumni association lists seven scholarships meant to bypass the constitutional ban.
If you donate money to these scholarships, you can be sure that your dollars will benefit someone in a category the alums designate as contributing to university “diversity,” regardless of overall comparative merit.
“Diversity” is a cloak the university hopes will fool us into believing they are not erasing the concept of equal opportunity and replacing it with a system that would apportion college admissions and scholarship money according not to merit, but to some vaguely-defined criteria of UM’s choosing.
At UM there is groaning because, since Proposal 2 took effect, admissions of African-Americans have declined by 15 percent in the undergraduate college and by 28 percent in the law school.
What that tells me is that before Proposal 2, better-qualified students were being rejected by UM at the rate of 15 percent among undergraduate applicants and 28 percent among law school applicants. Their places were being given to less-qualified people whose claim to superiority was something other than academic credentials.
When criteria for making those selections are skin color and gender, when an institution such as the University of Michigan or its affiliated alumni association bestow things of value such as scholarships on some people and exclude others based on factors other than merit, I call that discrimination.
If the criteria for discriminating are race, then we’re talking about racism.
If it’s sex, then we’re talking about sexism.
“Diversity” must be made deliberately murky. Otherwise, its aim would be evident. It is discrimination just as racist as excluding black people from voting or keeping some people from jobs because they bear children.
Want to read more about academic promotion of racism?
I recommend Carl Cohen’s Affirmative Action and Racial Preference: A Debate, with co-author James Sterba, Oxford University Press, 2003.
Here is the UMAA’s e-mail:
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