RUTHFULLY YOURS

On June 23, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a four-to-three decision in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The majority opinion, written by Justice Kennedy, gave the victory in the case to the University of Texas. The decision allows the university to continue to grant strong preference in admissions to minority students based on their race.

The National Association of Scholars deeply regrets the Court’s final decision in this case, which has endured more than eight years of litigation. Along with many others, we had hoped the Court would at last hold the University of Texas to the standard of “strict scrutiny” for its use of racial classifications. Instead, Justice Kennedy’s opinion cobbles together rationalizations, excuses, averted glances, circumventions, and just-so stories that add up to permitting the University of Texas to persist in racial discrimination among applicants.

Racial Favoritism

Kennedy’s twenty-page opinion, also signed by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor, ends the case in which Abigail Fisher claimed that she was unjustly refused admission to the University. Her complaint centered on the University’s practice of using racial preferences among its criteria for selecting students among those who were not automatically admitted under Texas’s so-called “Top Ten Percent Plan.” That plan grants students graduating in the top ten percent of each Texas high school class automatic admission to the state’s public universities. Fisher, who is white, finished high school just outside the top ten percent of her class. She then applied for regular admission. The University, however, used a system of racial favoritism to select among students in this category.

The U.S. Supreme Court has now certified that this system of favoritism passes muster with the Court’s previous rulings on when race can and cannot be used in distributing public benefits. The Court’s “strict scrutiny” rule generally restricts the use of racial classifications to cases where there is a “compelling public interest” and where no less intrusive measure exists to achieve that interest.

The Make-Believe University

But there is no compelling public interest for the use of racial classifications or racial preferences in admissions at the University of Texas. And other means of increasing the numbers of black and Hispanic enrollees are easily at hand. Because these facts are plain, Justice Kennedy and his majority colleagues enrolled themselves in a make-believe university where:

The university employs racial preferences not for the sake of increasing black and Hispanic enrollment but to obtain “the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity.”
The university does not employ numerical quotas, but seeks to maximize “diversity.”
The university does not have “elusory or amorphous” goals in its racial preference policy, but has “articulated concrete and precise goals,” these being:
Ending stereotypes
Promoting “cross-racial understanding”
Preparing students for “an increasingly diverse workforce and society”
Cultivating leaders with “legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry”
The university adopted so-called “holistic review” not to evade accountability for using race in admissions but because none of the “alternatives was a workable means of attaining the University’s educational goals.”

Outside the make-believe of the Supreme Court’s sorry record of jurisprudence on race in college admissions, these claims are sheer nonsense. The University of Texas uses race in college admissions simply for the advantages that racial politics provides.

For nearly a decade, incidents of antisemitism have been on the rise in the University of California system and numerous other colleges in the Golden State. Some say that California colleges make more headlines about incidents of antisemitism than for academic or athletic achievements. The most recent academic year was no exception.

According to the antisemitism watchdog group AMCHA Initiative, 69 antisemitic incidents occurred on 20 different California campuses during the recent academic year. UC Berkley led the way with eight instances, followed by UC Irvine and UC Santa Cruz with seven each.

“When it comes to antisemitism, California schools continue to top the list, both in number and severity. To those of us closely monitoring the rise of campus antisemitism over the past few years, this comes as no surprise since many California schools were ground zero for the campus anti-Zionism movement,” explained AMCHA Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin. “Examination after examination demonstrate a direct connection between anti-Zionist activities on campus and acts of anti-Jewish hostility. The problem is not going away. In fact, it’s picking up steam and must be addressed immediately.”

AMCHA tracks all reported incidents of antisemitism on college campuses throughout the US. To be classified as antisemitic, an incident must meet the definition established by the US State Department.

In 2015, 464 antisemitic incidents on campus were reported across the country. The first half of 2016 has seen 254 occurrences. At the current pace, 2016 will see an increase of nearly 10 percent in antisemitism on college campuses nationwide.

A 2015 study performed by AMCHA of antisemitic activity on campuses across the country revealed that four of the five most active anti-Jewish campuses are part of the UC system. The same study showed that “99 percent of schools with one or more active anti-Zionist groups had one or more incidents of anti-Semitic activity, whereas only 16 percent of schools with no active anti-Zionist student group had experienced anti-Semitic activity.”

This special edition of The Glazov Gang presents The Brigitte Gabriel Moment with Brigitte Gabriel, the founder of ACT for America.

Brigitte discusses What is Really Driving the Terrorists, unveiling what really inspired Omar Mateen — and why Obama and the media don’t want you to know it.

Don’t miss it!