The ABA’s ‘Diversity’ Diktat
| AR Articles on Race and Universities |
|---|
| More news stories on Race and Universities |
{snip}
[George Mason University’s law school’s] problems began in early 2000, when the American Bar Association visited the law school, which has a somewhat conservative reputation, for its routine reaccreditation inspection. The site evaluation team was unhappy that only 6.5% of entering students were minorities.
Outreach was not the problem; even the site evaluation report (obtained as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests) conceded that GMU had a “very active effort to recruit minorities.” But the school, the report noted, had been “unwilling to engage in any significant preferential affirmative action admissions program.” Since most law schools were willing to admit minority students with dramatically lower entering academic credentials, GMU was at a recruitment disadvantage. The site evaluation report noted its “serious concerns” with the school’s policy.
Over the next few years, the ABA repeatedly refused to renew GMU’s accreditation, citing its lack of a “significant preferential affirmative action program” and supposed lack of diversity. The school stepped up its already-extensive recruitment efforts, but was forced to back away from its opposition to significant preferential treatment. It was thus able to raise the proportion of minorities in its entering class to 10.98% in 2001 and 16.16% in 2002.
Not good enough. In 2003, the ABA summoned the university’s president and law school dean to appear before it personally, threatening to revoke the institution’s accreditation.
GMU responded by further lowering minority admissions standards. It also increased spending on outreach, appointed an assistant dean to serve as minority coordinator, and established an outside “Minority Recruitment Council.” As a result, 17.3% of its entering students were minority members in 2003 and 19% in 2004.
Not good enough. “Of the 99 minority students in 2003,” the ABA complained, “only 23 were African American; of 111 minority students in 2004, the number of African Americans held at 23.” It didn’t seem to matter that 63 African Americans had been offered admission, or that many students admitted with lower academic credentials would end up incurring heavy debt but never graduate and pass the bar.
GMU’s case is not unique. In a study conducted several years ago, 31% of law school respondents admitted to political scientists Susan Welch and John Gruhl that they “felt pressure” “to take race into account in making admissions decisions” from “accreditation agencies.” Several schools, like GMU, have been put through the diversity wringer.
{snip}
As the Education Department’s designated law school accreditor, the council decides whether a law school’s students will be eligible for federal loans. As state accreditor, it decides which schools’ graduates may sit for the bar examination. It is thus part of the governing bureaucracy—the kind of institution academic freedom is supposed to protect universities from.
{snip}
So now it is up to the Education Department to bring the ABA to heel. In 2006, when the ABA’s status as accreditor was itself up for renewal, opposition came from many quarters on many grounds. Surprised, the Education Department put the ABA on a short leash, giving it only 18 months before its next renewal, and requiring it to submit its official correspondence for inspection.
{snip}
(Posted on April 28, 2008)
Comments
A law school that the ABA rejects might be the kind of law school to attend. Don’t forget, in some states, public law schools cannot engage in affirmative action in admissions. The law itself, or the ABA (a private org). Easy choice.
Posted by Question Diversity at 5:39 PM on April 28
When I read stories like this, the solution for caucasians heading to college is obvious: Claim Hispanic ancestry.
First, consider the desperation so freely expressed on the part of George Mason in this story. My bet is that the admissions office would turn a blind eye to somebody trying to pass. And as far as ‘visibiity’ or family name goes, there’s no shortage of white-skinned Mexicans (even moreso in parts of South America). And the token Hispanic in the Democratic presidential primaries this year went by the ridiculously white-bread name of Bill Richardson.
The stupidity (if not outright evil) of racial set-asides deserves no honesty in return.
Posted by at 6:04 PM on April 28
So the ABA wants more “diversity” at George Mason University? Too bad the NBA (National Basketball Association) isn’t as worried about its racial balance — or rather, imbalance — which is about 80-20 in favor of blacks.
If the ABA simply wants more blacks at GMU, which it obviously does since increasing the numbers of minorities was considered “not good enough” two times in a row, why doesn’t it just specify that no minorities count except blacks? We use too many euphemisms in this country, and one of the most overused ones is “minority” when we mean “black.” Let their disfunctionality shine for all the world to see.
Posted by Wayne Engle at 6:16 PM on April 28
Any one should be able to practice law. You go into a lawyer’s office. Look for his law degree. Call up the school for verification if you want. If you like what information you get you hire the guy.
You don’t need the Bar or any accreditation outfits. Abe Lincoln was a pretty fair lawyer without all the scam artists protecting folks from bad lawyers. You have to be particularly stupid to think that a bunch a lawyers got together to help people not get taken in by lawyers.
America would be better off if Supreme Court Justices just knew how to read the Constitution.
Posted by P Noctura at 6:32 PM on April 28
It’s easy to see that this is about protecting modern liberal ideology, first and foremost, with prejudice to whether or not the best scoring candidates are accepted. When will it end?
Posted by Unemployed WASP at 7:16 PM on April 28
Sometimes it seems like the parallel with the kind of suffocating bureaucracy that existed under the Soviet Union is frightening. I think it’s time to realize that the government agencies in the U.S. are now a law unto themselves, and they are the new enforcers of the “totalitarianism light” which presently exists in this country.
When will things change? It’s unlikely they will until a serious economic collapse occurs - something that has been long overdue -and at that point those of us who have been shouting that “the emperor has no clothes” will finally see enough people realizing that there are real racial differences in inherited intelligence and the political process will have to respond.
Posted by Paul Jones at 7:56 PM on April 28
I have long advocated that conservative private schools develop their own accrediting agencies. I have twice had to participate in fraudulent exercises intended to demonstrate that my school was meeting some standard or other. All we did was plagiarize another school’s passing presentation, which had been copied from some other school’s equally unoriginal compilation of bureaucratic rote work. That’s right, we cheat, and we’ll hammer any kid who tries the same thing on any assignment we give.
Posted by Schoolteacher at 8:48 PM on April 28
What is the point of lowering standards to increase diversity in these Law Schools? It just means many of these people won’t graduate and even fewer will pass the bar. What about after? What kind of clients would want one of these affirmative action jacksons working for them?
Posted by at 9:13 PM on April 28
It is vitally important to dismantle the ABA completely, and create an organization that is not made up of people who are predisposed to totalitatian concepts. But most importantly those who are mentally deficient have to go. Unfortunately that will severely deplete their ranks, but it must be done.
It wouldn’t be feasible at this time to purge ABA ranks of those mentally or emotionally ill, since there would be no one left if that happened. That has to be placed on the agenda after the new association members are in place.
Posted by w.r. at 9:22 PM on April 28
Unfortunately, graduation from an accredited law school is a requirement for becoming an attorney in the vast majority of states. The ABA’s actions here are a raw exercise of power on behalf of a political agenda, because there’s no way it can credibly argue that students who attend law schools that aren’t sufficiently diverse for the ABA somehow cannot receive the education they need to practice as lawyers. And if law schools are forced to comply to maintain their accreditation, the only way for them to do so is to lower their standards so far that they’re admitting students who have no hope of passing the bar exam.
How anyone can defend a policy like this is incomprehensible to me.
Posted by Fletcher at 9:31 PM on April 28
The way to deprive the ABA of power is to attend law schools not accredited by them. In California many schools are not ABA accredited but their grads are all able to sit the CA bar. There are definitely options outside of the ABA.
Posted by at 9:44 PM on April 28
I thought law was about reason and justice and that law schools were free to set their own criteria for entrance? Sounds to me thet the ABA is discrediting itself in the eyes of intelligent people by attempting to strong arm independent university’s into lowering standards according to race or gender! Marxism is always at the door, tempting the weak and envious! NO ONE’S dignity is improved by lowering standards! The dignity of our country is lowered by this however!Justice should be color and gender blind like the statue in front of every courthouse in this nation. By unjustly rewarding the unworthy you punish the worhty, by devaluing the particular diploma. The more huddled masses we let in here the more we’ll become a huddled mess!
Posted by Petrarch at 10:07 PM on April 28
Reminds me of a Canadian university, where they put a poorly-educated Somali women on the faculty just to round out the diversity quotient.
Posted by at 10:33 PM on April 28
What about IDEOLOGICAL DIVERSITY being a criteria applied to these universities that are nearly uniformly leftwing?
Posted by at 12:03 AM on April 29
Since it’s clear that black lawyers can’t get their law degrees without drastically reduced standards being applied the only defense we have is to never hire them. Unfortunately that won’t stop Obama from appointing lots of them to Federal courts.
Posted by WR the elder at 12:12 AM on April 29
>>>ABA withholds accreditation from law schools not sufficiently “diverse.”
With lawsuits, of course, PUNISHING schools for refusing to LOWER THE BAR (educational tests and requirements) for minorities.
You can only laugh at this absurdity. When Priscilla Slade, a Black, serving as Regent for TSU was charged with misuse of school funds (THEFT of nearly $200,000)… she hired a WHITE criminal attorney, Dick Degurin, to represent her. Now with Slade being Black, might one not wonder WHY she did not hire herself a Black attorney? Or as Regent of Texas State University, was she only too aware of the lowered educational standards and thus limited professional abilities of Blacks? Makes one wonder, doesn’t it?
Posted by Fed Up at 7:57 AM on April 29
Discrimination and racism have become worse than murder and theft. Then of course non-whites get to discriminate agaist whites for real at the same time official pronouncements delare that it is whites who are the ones discriminating. Anyone who might object is ‘intolerant’.
Posted by at 8:58 AM on April 29
I went to Widener Law School in Delaware. There was a group of black students who were very obviously, to me, academically and intellectually inferior. As I recall, they received special “prep” classes, they received “special assistance” from professors, and were seemingly never called upon to answer difficult inquiries. In my opinion, if you were black, you skated through law school and the white students had to compete against a stacked deck. Fortunately, being that they were black, the white students still graduated ahead of them even with the advantages. My further recollection is that few passed the bar exam.
Posted by DELawyer at 9:01 AM on April 29
Yeah, I don’t think attending an accredited school is a requirement to practice law. All you really have to do is pass the bar exam. If an “unaccredited”
And tell me, how does Howard University Law School manage to maintain its accreditation, if it does? Is 100% black considered 100% diverse?
The Association of American Law Schools, an organization of 170 law schools, has also put pressure on its members in other ways. It requires them to ban discrimination based on sex orientation. And if that’s not enough, it practically requires them to ban recruiters who do so.
The AALS requires its members to follow a nondiscrimination policy regarding “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation,” and for member law schools to require this of any employer to which it gives access for recruitment.
When the military sued, it started to force disclaimers, requiring the group to say it discriminates based on gender orientation.
There is one simple way to get around most of this: ban affirmative action in enough states to keep the ABA from making it part of the criteria. At leats 4 or 5 states will have them on the ballot this fall.
Posted by Alan at 2:58 PM on April 29
“…Since most law schools were willing to admit minority students with dramatically lower entering academic credentials, GMU was at a recruitment disadvantage.”
Do readers of this article fully understand the upside-down, backward, destructive looniness of what is routinely going on here?
The ABA, a long recognized far-left political cabal masquerading as a lawyers association, is using its power of accreditation to debase the quality of a law degree in America - as a ritual sacrifice to its diversity god.
Liberalism is an ever-spreading disease.
Posted by Gary at 3:37 PM on April 29
The stupidity (if not outright evil) of racial set-asides deserves no honesty in return.
Posted by at 6:04 PM on April 28
Excellent suggestion. Use the terrible system set in place by these do-gooders against them. Make it so law schools become 95% minority (at least on paper). Probably still would not be enough for these diverstiy nuts who seem to think diversity can only be achieved through the removal of all whites. Their duplicitous thinking is amazing. “Let’s reduce discrimination by discriminating”.
Posted by at 5:17 PM on April 29
Don’t these idiots ever think that maybe people will realize that the standards are lower for blacks, therefore, given a choice between a black lawyer or a white lawyer who come from the same school and have the same grades, anyone will pick the white lawyer, becase odds are that he’s actually better?
Affirmative action is going to harm blacks in the long run (and it’ll be funny to see the whine about ti, of course).
Posted by Aaron at 9:52 PM on April 29
“And tell me, how does Howard University Law School manage to maintain its accreditation, if it does? Is 100% black considered 100% diverse?”
Actually, Alan, it is! I remember reading a prominent college guidebook a few years ago that had little summaries of every college for prospective students. For school after school it would mention “lack of diversity” as a drawback, when such schools were about 60-70 percent white, with most of the rest Asian, and perhaps 5-10 percent black.
When it came to Howard, though, a school which is over 90 percent black, it praised the “close-knit” feel of the student body, and touted the “diverse cultural atmosphere.”
The ABA’s definition fits right into this mold: simply put, “Diversity” = black people. Many of these stories make much more sense when read with this definition in mind.
Posted by Dave at 10:40 PM on April 29
So let me see if I have this straight - if a school doesn’t have enough warm bodies with the right skin color, they don’t get accredited even if the colored ones are so retarded their actions and words are fodder for a Marx Brothers comedy?
Affirmative action at it’s ‘best.’
Posted by Dark-Star at 5:14 PM on April 30
The ABA’s definition fits right into this mold: simply put, “Diversity” = black people. Many of these stories make much more sense when read with this definition in mind. - Dave
When I gradidliated from high school a few years back we had an awards ceremony for all the seniors. This was a big school - about 700 graduating seniors. At some point in the ceremony a black teacher got up to give an award to the “highest ranked minority student.” The logical and obvious choice would’ve been the valedictorian, a Chinese dude (and friend of mine) admitted to Yale. Instead, the highest ranked “minority” was a black girl ranked 80-something (and also a friend of mine). Every single one of the 700-plus students there got the joke, and there was chuckling all over the place.
Posted by Alan at 5:09 AM on May 2
So if we lower the standards for admission and that does not satisfy the diversity police. And we pass more students from law
school whom should not pass and that does not satisfy. Will we
lower the Bar exam? Or has that already happened? If we then produce lawyers whom are not qualified is the next step to expect that the diversity police will decide what colour our lawyer of choice will be? Back in the USSR…
Posted by Scared for my G-children at 4:52 PM on May 2