By Steve Sailer
12/20/2012
Here’s the debate in The New York Times on Ron Unz’s research suggesting Ivy League colleges keep Asian numbers down and Jewish numbers up:
Fears of an Asian Quota in the Ivy LeagueWith a disproportionate number of Asian-American students acing standardized tests, are top colleges limiting the number they admit? Read More ยปDEBATERS
RON UNZ, THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE
KHIN MAI AUNG, ASIAN AMERICAN LEGAL DEFENSE AND EDUCATION FUND
ROD M. BUGARIN JR., FORMER ADMISSIONS OFFICER
S.B. WOO, 80-20 NATIONAL ASIAN AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
JEFF NEAL, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
JOHN C. BRITTAIN, LAW PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SCHOOL OF LAW AND
RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG, CENTURY FOUNDATION
I haven’t read through this yet, but a couple of quick points:
First, this shows the overwhelming importance of The New York Times as first mover in the mass media echo system in determining What Is, and What Isn’t, News. College admissions is a topic of tremendous interest to the kind of people who write the news, and of some interest to the kind of people who read the news, but Unz’s research wasn’t news until the New York Times said it is. If you go to Google News and type in Unz college, you get three articles over the last three weeks before the NYT decided to feature it today:
Add "unz college" section to my Google News homepage
Discrimination Is ObviousNew York Times-4 hours ago Top colleges are clearly limiting the number of Asians they admit, and what’s … As Ron Unzdemonstrates, the percentage of Asians among the … |
Elite College Admissions Are Unfair, Sure … We Still Shouldn’t CareHuffington Post (blog)-Nov 29, 2012 In fact it might be utterly the wrong thing to worry about. Many argue that the inequity of elite collegeadmissions is really important. As Ron Unz … |
Are Asian College Students the Victims of a Racial Quota System?FrontPage Magazine-Dec 17, 2012 Are Asian College Students the Victims of a Racial Quota System? … As Unz notes, America’s Asian population has more than doubled since … |
For Third-raters Who Want to Get Into Harvard, It Helps To Have …Forbes-Dec 1, 2012 Although virtually every paragraph in Unz’s long essay is brimming with controversy, if I were 18 again and trying to get into a good college, … |
I devote a fair amount of energy to critiques of New York Times coverage both because of its power, but also because it influence is by no means wholly undeserved. The NYT employs people smart enough to get it, and sometimes they do. For example, Nicholas Wade, the NYT genetics reporter, spent a decade dismantling the Clinton Era myth that Race Does Not Exist. I haven’t seen any evidence of anybody apologizing for propagating bad science, but Wade’s dogged work has taken a little of the wind out of the sails of the zeitgeist.
Second, the really interesting aspect of Unz’s research is his inference that not only are Ivy League colleges discriminating against Asians, they seem to be discriminating in favor of Jews. Now, that’s pretty interesting. But, that’s only going to leak out as a secondary aspect of the now-approved story of discrimination against Asians.
P.S., I see a rumor that The New York Times will be for sale in 2013. I think it would be nuts for politically dependent billionaires (i.e., most billionaires) to evaluate buying the NYT solely based on net present value of cash flow. Do you think Carlos Slim regrets the money he spent bailing out the NYT in 2008? The Mexican telecom monopolist bought himself years of being not considered terribly newsworthy, while Americans who want to reduce the profits Slim makes on calls to and from illegal aliens were recurrently demonized. And any connection between Slim’s bailout and the NYT’s virulence against immigration skeptics is simply Not News.
Money well spent.
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