06/02/2011
[See also Amy Chua: Tiger Mother — Or Market-Dominant Minority?, by Steve Sailer]
That Sophia Chua-Rubenfeld, the bright and driven daughter of parents who are themselves both members of preferred groups (two groups in mommy’s case), suitably diverse Harvard grads and Ivy League professors into the bargain, is admitted to Harvard College should surprise absolutely no-one. ['Tiger Mom' cub accepted to Harvard, By Lindsay Goldwert, New York Daily News, April 5th 2011]
This is simply how Ivy League and other so-called elite universities work today, and have since 1968 at least. These schools are all under new, not-improved, multicultural management — and for that very reason more ruthlessly nepotistic than ever before.
By my count, young Ms. Chua — half-Chinese, half-Jewish, a girl, a double Harvard legacy and a Yale faculty brat — is a member of at least five preferred groups at once. Should she have odd sexual proclivities, that would make it six.
"American" universities today exist to serve the "diverse" — and despise actual American. As long ago as 1978, John LeBoutillier, double Harvard grad, titled his book about his alma mater Harvard Hates America. This is hardly a new development!
To report the Chua child’s admission to Harvard as news is a true dog-bites-man story. Memo to MSM: For a man-bites-dog story, report on the admission of academically qualified Old American-stock boys to Harvard College — if you can find any! (Other than, perhaps, a few specially recruited hockey players — but even they are probably Canadian.)
WASPs, that is, who don’t have alum parents who can hit the "Harvard Number" — and I suspect that among WASPs those are few, relative to parents from Harvard’s current dominant group.
When a without-connections WASP beats Harvard’s system and gets in, you have something noteworthy. The very last people today’s Harvard wants are the descendants of the kind of people who founded Harvard in the first place and made it what it used to be.
I have experienced Harvard’s attitude about WASPs myself, and it is nothing new. When I was interviewed at Harvard in 1975, I was bluntly told to my face by the admissions officer whom I met, a Jewish gentleman from Brooklyn, that Harvard had no inclination to admit WASPs from prep schools, qualified or not. He was much friendlier with my Chinese classmate, whom he also interviewed.
I made it to Harvard’s waiting list and no farther, despite being a somewhat desirable commodity (varsity oarsman). My pa, who had Harvard business and law degrees to follow his Sewanee B.A., could not have hit the "Harvard Number" of the day. But he would have refused to give Harvard the satisfaction, had the question come up.
(Curiously, Harvard turned down my Chinese comrade. Yale took him, though, so diversity was served.}
For me, the anti-American discrimination revealed by the Espenshade-Radford study revealed was no surprise — just the fact that it saw the light of day.[How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others, By Russell K. Nieli, Minding the Campus, July 12, 2010]
And, of course, my advice to Amy Chua and her husband Jed Rubenfeld, if they really wanted the best possible undergraduate education for their daughter in a healthy environment, as opposed to the glossiest credential, they would send her almost anywhere other than Harvard!
Americans need to figure out how to recapture our once-great universities, which are now effectively enemy encampments in the middle of our society.
I admit I don’t know how we can do that — so maybe the better alternative in the short term is to shun them.
And, above all, to quit according them a prestige which they no longer deserve.
Henry McCulloch blogs frequently for VDARE.COM.
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.