As part of their settlements with the Trump Administration, Columbia and Brown Universities have agreed to provide applicants’ grade point averages and standardized test scores. The New York Times is appalled (link below).

I am not.

Large swaths of American higher education refuse to let DEI — diversity, equity, and inclusion — die, even after the Supreme Court ruled two years ago in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that racially-based affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. Those schools enjoyed a respite because the Biden Administration, itself a votary of DEI, did little to enforce the decision. As of January 2025, that honeymoon was over. The Administration has demonstrated seriousness about eradicating reverse discrimination from college admissions. Not only has it voiced that as a principle but has brought the full weight of federal law enforcement on schools to demonstrate compliance. Following the law will not be assumed; it needs to be proven.

That’s the reason for access to objective metrics about students.

Undoubtedly, the usual suspects will claim that data access is more evidence of the creeping “fascism” and “authoritarianism” of the current Administration. That’s just not true. The federal government has long insisted that parties demonstrate, not just claim, nondiscriminatory behavior. (Indeed, they are also often required to show nondiscriminatory intent in addition to outcomes). So, if the Administration is enforcing fairness in college admissions, it stands to reason that evidence — the cold, hard numbers about students, grades, and standardized test scores — should be out there to corroborate claims of discrimination or nondiscrimination. Transparency about admissions decisions — something Harvard fought all the way to the Supreme Court to keep in a black hole — should be expected. What have you got to hide?

Does anybody have any doubt that, whenever the federal government has hitherto pursued civil rights antidiscrimination cases — discrimination in schools, employment, or voting — it didn’t require hard factual data to document its or its respondent’s claims? Why, then, should the present situation be any different?

DEI always operated on an alternate version of “nondiscrimination” scored by Justice Clarence Thomas in the Harvard case. For most Americans, nondiscrimination means not taking into account categories like race or sex when making admissions decisions, especially when the standards for admissions are different on account of race or sex. But for a certain elite, “nondiscrimination” means taking those categories into account in certain cases with regard to certain groups. If they are considered to give a “leg up” for groups deemed traditional “victims of discrimination,” that’s perfectly fine — even if other races or sexes are victimized in consequence. “Discrimination” is not what you are doing but why you are doing it. Do you arrive at a color-blind society by practicing color-blindness? Or do you get there by pursuing hyper-color-consciousness in the hope that, someday, magically, it will become color-blind? Or, as some of our “critical racial theorists” would have you believe, the very notion of “color-blindness” is “discriminatory” and should be scrapped?

Nor can the new victims of discrimination be deemed merely collateral damage. In a limited pool, such as the fixed number of slots in a freshman class, every seat taken by A excludes B getting that seat. When A gets that seat on account of race or sex — especially when the standards for awarding that seat differ on the basis of race or sex — B is not just a “collateral’ victim. He is directly discriminated against. Making sure that doesn’t happen, whether by intent, obfuscation, or new language, is what the Administration’s quest for hard metrics is all about.

I think a solid case can also be made that what the Administration is pursuing is compatible with a traditional Catholic understanding of justice.

There remains a stubborn core of higher education that regards merit-based admissions as something undesirable. They see their roles not to teach but to “transform society” through some form of demographic reengineering. It’s why — unlike Columbia and Brown — Harvard remains a holdout, to the plaudits of other “educators” hoping the Massachusetts school will save their current regime.

When the Harvard decision came down, schools — initially thinking they only had to hoodwink federal courts — toyed with changing language, e.g., asking applicants to write an essay about “hardships” overcome (with a wink, wink, nod, nod to introduce discussion of the categories the Court said they can’t ask about). Now the latest craze may be a kind of social credit system where potential freshmen participate in online “chats” to demonstrate their “empathy,” “inclusivity,” and “dialogical openness” by grappling with some issue. (Do you get extra points if you’re viewpoint on the issue is “correct?”) It’s amazing how many subterfuges are pursued to avoid looking at past academic performance as a predictor of future academic success… which is what higher education ought to be about.

[A link to the New York Times article is here.]