This brief common-sense opinion is intended to encourage thoughtful civil discussion at MIT of one of the most fraught topics of the contemporary academy.
Giving special preference to applicants belonging to certain minority groups, because of historic discrimination against those groups, has long been the major part of so-called Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs. It nevertheless amounts to reverse discrimination, and therefore, on its face, appears to violate the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that prohibits discrimination on the basis of “race, color, sex, religion, or national origin.” “Affirmative action” was originally promoted by executive orders of Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, in which it simply means ensuring that discrimination does not occur. Its evolution into a system of racial quotas was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1978. Since then, Affirmative Action has continued in less explicit forms where politicians, justices, and the American populace have been willing to tolerate the apparent legal contradiction. It is rationalized by asserted benefits to the employer or university of “diversity,” and as a means to overcome the lingering disadvantage suffered by (e.g.) black Americans because of prior organized discrimination.
But the question has always been “for how long?” In the past few years an answer seems to have arrived for a majority of Americans: “no longer.” The new Presidential Administration has surprised many by its abrupt and often chaotic actions to end DEI. Many critics justifiably doubt that conforming to the rule of law could be President Trump’s major motivation. Yet for the majority of us, it ought to be a substantial reason to welcome the removal of the legal self-contradiction. In recent years the bureaucratic bloat of DEI, and the expectation that everyone must endorse DEI activities including Affirmative Action, has seriously threatened academic freedom of thought and greatly impeded free expression. Affirmative Action as preferences was always an inconsistent approach to civil rights. It does not seem extreme for government agencies to be told not to fund it.
Justice John Roberts’ aphorism that the best way to overcome discrimination is not to discriminate introduces the second question. Does (or perhaps did) Affirmative Action work?
One does not have to deny the progress achieved by affirmative enforcement of equal Civil Rights to ask questions about the effectiveness of today’s Affirmative Action. Here answers differ because opinions differ about what the objective is, what it would mean for it to work. If one considers the objective to be producing “proportional representation” in colleges, professions, and across hierarchies, then perhaps that could be achieved by continuing reverse discrimination; but at a substantial sacrifice of attention to the actual mission of organizations, and at a substantial disadvantage of provoking ill feeling toward the beneficiaries of the special preferences on the part of those who do not share those preferences. Alternatively, if one considers the objective to be to encourage a well-integrated society in which individuals are respected appropriately on the basis of their “character”, regardless of their race, sex, or religious or ethnic identity, then the past 60 years, and especially the severe political polarization evident today, appear to demonstrate that Affirmative Action does not work. Indeed, it is perhaps surprising that a country as heterogeneous as the US, with centuries of assimilating different immigrant ethnicities together with some of their cultural traditions into the society at large, has (according to the DEI advocates) failed in respect of today’s minorities. Assimilation seems generally to take a couple of generations before it is relatively seamless. But two generations have passed since the Civil Rights Act, so it makes sense now to wonder why integration has proven so difficult for black Americans.
The reason often implied, that it is prevented by white supremacism, is too facile, despite the continuing existence of racists and supremacists. And the supremacist explanation is ludicrously implausible in the US academy, which draws faculty from across the Globe. But one contributing factor may well be DEI and Affirmative Action itself. In surveys at the University of Michigan, after their massive DEI efforts (costing over a quarter of a billion dollars) “. . . students actually reported feeling less included, less of a sense of belonging, less likely to engage across racial, religious, political differences, not more . . . .” This result supports what many people have observed about DEI’s influence on the campus climate: if anything it promotes sensitivities that undermine a feeling of belonging, and cross-cultural engagement, rather than enhancing them. So maybe Affirmative Action and related DEI activities, however well intentioned, are in part responsible for delaying or even preventing the achievement of a well-integrated society. At the least the evidence does not show it produces the benefits that are asserted in its defence.
MIT, and individuals in it, have their faults; but I have found over many decades that there is an enormous store of good will at MIT toward people who don’t look or speak or live like us. That is what can become the driving force for integration and mutual respect; but only if it is not undermined by a false ideology that, contrary to Academic Freedom, insists we must affirm MIT as a place of ongoing “systemic racism” to justify the unwise and often counter-productive over-reach of DEI and Affirmative Action.
Ian Hutchinson is Co-President of the MIT Council on Academic Freedom.
