Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, The New York Times opinion columnist, Ezra Klein, had a dreary prediction for the upcoming elections in 2022 and  beyond.  In an essay entitled, “Can Democrats Find a Winning Message,”  he reviews models developed by data analyst David Shor and others that posit that the odds of the Democrats keeping control of the House or Senate are very slim.

Among other indicators, Shor’s model is based on data showing that Democrats are losing support among blue-collar, white and black non-college educated voters, a trend that is likely to continue into 2022 and beyond.  Shor is deeply pessimistic about the near-term chances for Democrats.

While some Democratic strategists such as Michael Podhorzer question Shor’s modelling, Klein also comments that the Democratic Party’s messaging is muddled and disconnected with factions fighting and disagreeing among themselves.  He is also concerned that the electorate is not splitting allegiances and that in races in national, state, and local jurisdictions, increasingly the voting is for one party.  Klein concludes:

“The core problem Democrats face is that almost all politics are now national. They are one party facing electoral disaster, and they will rise or fall together. Democrats cannot escape one another, no matter how they might try…For the Democratic Party to chart any course out of the peril it faces, it must first accept that in the minds of most Americans, it is a party, a singular entity. And before that party can shape what voters think, it must find a way to see itself clearly and act collectively.”

If Klein and Shor are correct, the future for the Democrats is not rosy.  His essay is worth a read.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd, in a column this morning, entitled, The Supreme Court v. Reality, examines the conservative make-up of the US Supreme Court as it gets ready to take on major issues such as abortion.  Here is an excerpt:

“Donald Trump’s ability to get three conservatives on the court, thanks to Mitch McConnell, will turn out to be the most consequential part of his miserable presidency. And the minority leader is about to get his reward in the form of a bunch of conservative rulings.

The beauty of it for McConnell is that the court is going to do his dirty work for him. Republicans don’t want to vote to roll back abortion rights because they know it’s not popular and they don’t want their fingerprints on it. They’d prefer the court do it.”

Her conclusion:  “Ignore the charade of the parade of justices protesting that they are pure and neutral. Nobody’s buying it. We all know it’s a disaster if the country’s going one way and the court’s going the other.

The Least Dangerous Branch, as the court was once known, has become the Most Dangerous Branch.”

Her entire column is below.

“It ain’t pretty.”

Tony

—————————————————————————————————–

The New York Times

The Supreme Court v. Reality

Oct. 9, 2021

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist

WASHINGTON — Ordinarily staid and silent Supreme Court justices have become whirling dervishes of late, spinning madly to rebut the idea that Americans are beginning to regard the court as a dangerous cabal of partisan hacks.

They need not fret and wring their hands. No one is beginning to think that.

Many of us have thought that for a long time.

Supremes are often Shakespeare fans, so of course they are familiar with the phrase “doth protest too much, methinks.”

The once august court’s approval ratings on fairness were already falling two decades ago. The bloom came off the robe in 2000, when the court threw the game on Bush v. Gore, voting 5 to 4 to stop the Florida recount and anoint a Republican president.

If we conjure an alternative-history look at America, consider all the things that the Supreme Court brought down on our heads by pre-emptively purloining that victory for George W. Bush: two interminable and inexplicable wars, costing so many lives and so many trillions; a descent into torture; the villainous Dick Cheney.

As some on Twitter noted, our 20 years of quicksand in Afghanistan was capped Friday with this headline: “Son of Afghanistan’s Former Defense Minister Buys $20.9 Million Beverly Hills Mansion.”

Al Gore, mocked as “Ozone Man” by Bush senior, certainly would have tried to head off the biblical floods and fires engulfing our country.

The right-wing justices may as well embrace their reputation for hackery. Because in this blockbuster year, when the conservative court begins debating abortion and the Second Amendment, one thing is certain: They are going to make rulings that will drive people crazy, rulings that will be out of sync with what most Americans believe.

So please, conservative cabal, don’t pretend you’re not doing this out of ideology.

And please, Justice Breyer, skedaddle. You’re playing a dangerous game. You need to get out of there because it looks as if the midterms are going to be bad, and if the Democrats lose the Senate majority, there’s no guarantee that Mitch McConnell will let any Biden nominee onto the court, even with two years left on the president’s term. Do you want the court to be 7 to 2?

Listen to those Democrats who are warning that staying would be irresponsible and egotistical. Don’t make the colossal mistake that Ruth Bader Ginsburg did, ignoring entreaties from top Democrats and hints from the Obama White House to leave in a timely way and hanging on so long that the worst possible outcome happened: That remarkable feminist’s seat went to the ferociously anti-abortion Lady Handmaid’s Tale, who is trying to cancel out R.B.G.’s legacy.

And please, America, can we have term limits? Justices should not be on the court for 30 years, or into their late 80s.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who did not want the court to be seen as too extreme, has lost control because there are five more rabid conservatives running over him.

Donald Trump’s ability to get three conservatives on the court, thanks to McConnell, will turn out to be the most consequential part of his miserable presidency. And the minority leader is about to get his reward in the form of a bunch of conservative rulings.

The beauty of it for McConnell is that the court is going to do his dirty work for him. Republicans don’t want to vote to roll back abortion rights because they know it’s not popular and they don’t want their fingerprints on it. They’d prefer the court do it.

Linda Greenhouse, who has a book coming out called “Justice on the Brink,” had a piece in The Times summing up why it is brutal for our democracy to have institutions so out of step with majority views in the country: “Three polls within the past month show that fewer than a third of Americans want to see the court overturn Roe v. Wade. Yet it appears that only a third of the justices can be counted on to preserve the right to abortion as defined by the court’s current precedents.” So unlucky women in red states are going back to back-alley days?

As The Times’s Adam Liptak said on “The Daily,” the Supreme Court might tinker with Roe v. Wade, or it might take “an option that will be attractive to the most conservative members of the court,” the one “that gives rise to the headline ‘Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade,’ which would be a big news day.” He also noted that the reason justices are so sensitive now is that “the authority of the Supreme Court — it’s a little hard to know where it comes from. Sure, it’s in the Constitution, but they don’t have an army, they don’t have the power of the purse. It’s not entirely clear why we do what the Supreme Court tells us to do.”

Ignore the charade of the parade of justices protesting that they are pure and neutral. Nobody’s buying it. We all know it’s a disaster if the country’s going one way and the court’s going the other.

The Least Dangerous Branch, as the court was once known, has become the Most Dangerous Branch.

Gamal Abdelaziz and John Wilson

Dear Commons Community,

Gamal Abdelaziz, a former casino executive, and John Wilson, a private equity financier, were the first people to stand trial in the federal investigation known as Operation Varsity Blues which involved dozens of parents, coaches, and exam administrators  in a scheme that had children fraudulently admitted to some of the most prestigious universities in the country.

The defendants in the case were powerful and successful men. They and their families enjoyed privileges and opportunities that most of us can only imagine. Yet they were willing to break the law in order to guarantee an admission spot for their children in the school of their choosing. What they did was an affront to hard-working students and parents.  As reported by The New York Times.

“The investigation has snared more than 50 parents, coaches, exam administrators and others in an admissions scheme that implicated college athletic programs at the University of Southern California, Yale, Stanford, Wake Forest and Georgetown. Many other wealthy parents, including some celebrities, have pleaded guilty rather than take their chances in court.

Mr. Abdelaziz, 64, was accused of paying $300,000 in 2018 to have his daughter admitted to U.S.C. as a top-ranked basketball recruit even though she did not make the varsity team in high school. Mr. Wilson, 62, was accused of paying $220,000 in 2014 to have his son admitted as a water polo recruit at U.S.C. His son did play water polo, but prosecutors said he was not good enough to compete at the university.

Mr. Wilson was also accused of agreeing to pay $1.5 million in 2018 to have his twin daughters, who were good students, admitted to Harvard and Stanford as recruited athletes.

“What they did was an affront to hard-working students and parents,” Nathaniel R. Mendell, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Massachusetts, said in a news conference after the verdict. “But the verdict today proves that even these defendants, powerful and privileged people, are not above the law.”

Mr. Abdelaziz and Mr. Wilson were both convicted on charges of conspiracy to commit bribery and fraud; Mr. Wilson alone was found guilty of additional fraud and bribery charges and of filing a false tax return for taking a deduction for a payment that the government called a bribe.

They face up to 20 years in prison on the most serious charges. But experts said that under the sentencing guidelines they would get far less, perhaps less than three years for Mr. Abdelaziz and less than five years for Mr. Wilson.

In many ways, the college admissions system was also on trial. The defense argued that its clients were playing by the rules as they understood them: that wealthy parents could get an edge for their children by donating money. In this case, they paid the money through a corrupt college consultant, William Singer, who said he had a “side door” reserved for recruited athletes.

Mr. Singer’s scheme has thrown an unflattering light on the college coaching industry, in which parents pay thousands of dollars for tutoring and advising services to help their children get into prestigious institutions. And it showed how many students use college athletics to gain a big advantage in admissions, reinforcing a cynical view that gaining entry into highly selective schools can be a transactional process.

But prosecutors stressed that universities were not on trial, and that this was not a case about traditional admissions. The defendants, they said, had gone to great lengths to pay bribes and falsify their children’s athletic profiles.

Even so, the case could lead to some self-examination by admissions officials, said Jeffrey M. Cohen, a former federal prosecutor and associate professor at Boston College Law School.

“People who are trying to cheat always look for the weakest link,” Mr. Cohen said, adding, “What’s shocking about this case was that we saw in broad daylight that people were lying to get through these weak links in the admissions system.”

U.S.C. issued a statement saying, “We respect the judicial process and the jury’s decision.”

The verdict was a swift, resounding victory for the prosecution. The jury came into the courtroom a little after 2:30 p.m. Friday, just more than 24 hours after it began deliberating. The court clerk read the verdict form, pronouncing each man’s name and a separate “guilty” verdict, over and over again, five times for the charges they had in common, and another six times for Mr. Wilson, a crushing pile of guiltys.

“This is obviously not the result he was looking for, but you know that’s our system and that’s why they have appellate courts, so that’s what we’ll be doing next,” Mr. Abdelaziz’ lawyer, Brian Kelly, said outside the courthouse.

As Mr. Wilson walked calmly out of John Joseph Moakley United States Courthouse, he kept a straight face and held his wife’s hand. Though he was met by a barrage of reporters, he did not answer any questions.

Since the indictments were announced in March 2019, 47 of the 57 defendants who have been charged have pleaded guilty or have agreed to do so. Thirty-three of those have been parents, including the actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Loughlin, and Ms. Loughlin’s husband, Mossimo Giannulli, a fashion designer. Their sentences have ranged up to nine months in prison.

A handful of parents are scheduled to go on trial in the new year.

The linchpin of the operation was Mr. Singer, who billed himself as a “concierge” admissions consultant for wealthy families. He ran a company called the Key and an associated foundation that provided a mix of legitimate and fraudulent services, and worked with a network of athletic coaches and administrators.

He has pleaded guilty to racketeering and other charges and is cooperating with the government, though he has not yet been sentenced.

Prosecutors said Mr. Singer’s services appealed to parents who wanted a guarantee of admission; he typically told them they did not have to pay in full until their children were admitted.

“The parents did not come up with the scheme; that was Rick Singer,” Leslie Wright, one of the prosecutors, said. “But without them, it never would have happened.”

After his son was admitted to U.S.C. as a water polo recruit, Mr. Wilson wrote in a March 2014 email to Mr. Singer: “Thanks again for making this happen! Pls give me the invoice. What are the options for the payment?” He asked if Mr. Singer could make it “for consulting or whatever,” so that “I can pay it from the corporate account?”

The defense argued that Mr. Wilson, a former Gap and Staples executive, and Mr. Abdelaziz, a former Wynn Resorts executive, were the victims of a masterful con artist. Mr. Singer had earned their trust by providing years of college coaching services, the defense lawyers told the jury, and they had no reason to suspect him.

They said they never saw the emails containing phony athletic profiles of their children that Mr. Singer sent to them for their approval — a claim the prosecution said was unlikely.

“John is not part of Singer’s con,” Michael Kendall, Mr. Wilson’s lawyer, told the jury. “There is no evidence, not even a hint, that John figured out Singer’s scam.”

Mr. Kelly, Mr. Abdelaziz’ lawyer, said: “It’s not illegal to do fund-raising, not illegal to give money to a school in the hopes that your kid will get in. So that’s his mind-set.”

In the end, the jurors did not see the defense’s blurry line, but a clear one. And they found that it had been crossed.”

Justice has been served!

Tony

Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov

Dear Commons Community,

The Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace.” Ms Ressa and Mr Muratov are receiving the Peace Prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and Russia. At the same time, “they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions.”  As announced by the Nobel Peace Prize Committee.

“Maria Ressa uses freedom of expression to expose abuse of power, use of violence and growing authoritarianism in her native country, the Philippines. In 2012, she co-founded Rappler, a digital media company for investigative journalism, which she still heads. As a journalist and the Rappler’s CEO, Ressa has shown herself to be a fearless defender of freedom of expression. Rappler has focused critical attention on the Duterte regime’s controversial, murderous anti-drug campaign. The number of deaths is so high that the campaign resembles a war waged against the country’s own population. Ms Ressa and Rappler have also documented how social media is being used to spread fake news, harass opponents and manipulate public discourse.

Dmitry Andreyevich Muratov has for decades defended freedom of speech in Russia under increasingly challenging conditions. In 1993, he was one of the founders of the independent newspaper Novaja Gazeta. Since 1995 he has been the newspaper’s editor-in-chief for a total of 24 years. Novaja Gazeta is the most independent newspaper in Russia today, with a fundamentally critical attitude towards power. The newspaper’s fact-based journalism and professional integrity have made it an important source of information on censurable aspects of Russian society rarely mentioned by other media. Since its start-up in 1993, Novaja Gazeta has published critical articles on subjects ranging from corruption, police violence, unlawful arrests, electoral fraud and ”troll factories” to the use of Russian military forces both within and outside Russia.

Novaja Gazeta’s opponents have responded with harassment, threats, violence and murder. Since the newspaper’s start, six of its journalists have been killed, including Anna Politkovskaja who wrote revealing articles on the war in Chechnya. Despite the killings and threats, editor-in-chief Muratov has refused to abandon the newspaper’s independent policy. He has consistently defended the right of journalists to write anything they want about whatever they want, as long as they comply with the professional and ethical standards of journalism.

Free, independent and fact-based journalism serves to protect against abuse of power, lies and war propaganda. The Norwegian Nobel Committee is convinced that freedom of expression and freedom of information help to ensure an informed public. These rights are crucial prerequisites for democracy and protect against war and conflict. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov is intended to underscore the importance of protecting and defending these fundamental rights.

Without freedom of expression and freedom of the press, it will be difficult to successfully promote fraternity between nations, disarmament and a better world order to succeed in our time. This year’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize is therefore firmly anchored in the provisions of Alfred Nobel’s will.”

Congratulations to these deserved winners!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Nobel Prize in Literature went yesterday to Abdulrazak Gurnah, who left Zanzibar as a refugee in the 1960s and settled in England. He is the first Black writer to win it since Toni Morrison in 1993.

Many of Gurnah’s books focus on the effects of colonialism in East Africa, and on themes of exile and displacement. In 1996, The Times called his novel “Paradise” — about a boy who travels across Africa as an indentured servant — “a shimmering, oblique coming-of-age fable.”

If you haven’t read Gurnah’s books, The Times Book Review has a guide to his best  compiled by Claire Moses

Tony

Mayor Bill de Blasio Announcing Phase Out of Gifted and Talented Programs

Dear Commons Community,

Mayor Bill de Blasio will overhaul New York City’s highly selective, racially segregated gifted and talented education classes, a sea change for the nation’s largest public school system that may amount to the mayor’s most significant act in the waning months of his tenure.

The elementary school gifted and talented program that New York has known for the last several decades will no longer exist for incoming kindergarten students next fall, and within a few years, it will be eliminated completely.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Students who are currently enrolled in gifted classes will become the final cohort in the existing system, which will be replaced by a program that offers accelerated learning to all students in the later years of elementary school.

The gradual elimination of the existing program will remove a major component of what many consider to be the city’s two-tiered education system, in which one relatively small, largely white and Asian American group of students gain access to the highest-performing schools, while many Black and Latino children remain in schools that are struggling.

New York, home to one of the most racially segregated school systems in the country, is more reliant on selective school admissions than any other large system in America.

The move represents one of Mr. de Blasio’s most dramatic actions to combat segregation in city schools, though it also puts New York more in line with how other cities are approaching their own segregated gifted classes. About 75 percent of the roughly 16,000 students in gifted elementary school classes in New York are white or Asian American. Those groups make up about 25 percent of the overall school system.

Though the mayor has long promised to tackle inequality in city schools, he has been criticized by some for not taking more forceful action on desegregation until the end of his mayoralty. His schools chancellor, Meisha Porter, who was appointed this year, has been instrumental in pushing him to fundamentally alter the gifted and talented program, according to people with knowledge of the last several months of intensive negotiations on the issue.

The change also presents an unwelcome challenge for Mr. de Blasio’s almost certain successor, Eric Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor, who would have to implement an entirely new gifted education system during his first year in office.

Mr. Adams has expressed skepticism about overhauling the gifted system and has said he wants to offer more gifted programs in low-income neighborhoods. While the next mayor could technically reverse Mr. de Blasio’s plan, doing so would be logistically complex for a new administration and could cause confusion among parents. It is still possible that the next mayor could make adjustments to the plan.

Barring any dramatic moves by the incoming administration, New York City will no longer admit rising kindergarten students into separate gifted classes or schools starting next fall. Instead, the city will train all its kindergarten teachers — roughly 4,000 educators — to accommodate students who need accelerated learning within their general education classrooms. The city does not yet have an estimate for how much the training will cost, though it is expected to be tens of millions of dollars.

The final group of students who are labeled gifted and talented will progress through the system over the next five years without any major changes, a significant concession on Mr. de Blasio’s part to the many parents who have expressed concern that their children’s education would be upended midway through elementary school.

But almost every other aspect of the current gifted system will change. The city will permanently eliminate a much-criticized admissions exam that sorted 4-year-olds into gifted classes before they even entered the public school system. Some parents paid for test preparation in the hopes that their toddlers would ace the exam.

The city will evaluate all rising third graders, using past work and input from their teachers, to determine whether they need higher-level instruction in specific subject areas.

But those children will no longer be separated from their peers into classrooms or schools with other students who are considered gifted. At most, students will spend a period or two of the day in small groups focusing on one subject area with specialized teachers, which is already common in many schools.

The mayor has not yet solicited feedback from parent groups or elected officials on his gifted and talented plan, which was kept under wraps for months as it was finalized. Officials said that he planned to consult with families and educators on the plan throughout October and November, and that aspects of the proposal could shift before he leaves office.

It is not yet clear, for example, what will happen to the five schools across the city that exclusively serve children considered gifted. Officials said parental input will inform their decisions on how to reshape those schools.

A well-organized group of parents who support keeping gifted classes in some form, with support from elected officials like State Senator John C. Liu, a Democrat from Queens, have criticized the mayor in recent months for preparing a new system without getting input from parents. Many of those families have children who attend school in Manhattan’s District 2, one of the city’s whitest and wealthiest school districts.

The mayor’s earlier push to eliminate the admissions exam for the city’s most elite high schools, including Stuyvesant High School, failed after he announced the plan without first seeking feedback from the many thousands of Asian American parents whose children would be most affected. Those families spent months forcefully pushing back against the plan, and their opposition ultimately helped defeat it in the State Legislature.

The mayor’s other significant action on integration, a plan announced late last year to remove some admissions requirements at competitive middle and high schools, was rolled out without significant public comment.

While changes to admissions to the city’s specialized high schools are subject to legislative approval, Mr. de Blasio has full power over all other schools, including gifted programs.

The announcement by Mr. de Blasio, who is term-limited and is actively considering running for governor next year, comes just three months before he leaves City Hall.

In recent years, a growing number of activists pushing for integration measures have focused on the city’s gifted program, which provides a particularly stark example of how children are often separated by race and class within a diverse school system.

The mayor’s plan for the future of gifted education is similar to a proposal made in 2019 by a task force he convened on school integration measures — a plan that he had, until now, mostly ignored. Friday’s announcement will be welcome news to many activists who have said the current gifted system is outdated and unfair.

Though public outcry from those advocates no doubt played some role in the mayor’s decision, more meaningful still has been nearly eight years of private pressure from the mayor’s three schools chancellors, all of whom have been skeptical of, if not completely opposed to, separate gifted classes.

The mayor’s first chancellor, Carmen Fariña, got rid of gifted classes in the Manhattan elementary school she ran for many years as a principal. The second chancellor, Richard A. Carranza, resigned earlier this year, in part because he was frustrated by what he considered the mayor’s reluctance to take bold action on gifted and talented education.

While Mr. de Blasio’s announcement represents a major shift for New York, it is hardly pioneering. Many districts around the country have already moved away from separating children by perceived academic ability, and there is wide agreement among educational experts that New York’s practice of sorting 4-year-olds into gifted classes was not supported by research.

Labeling students as gifted and plucking them out of general education classrooms altogether often exacerbates segregation, removes resources from regular public schools, and weakens instruction for all other students, experts say, when children who need special support can still receive proper attention within normal classrooms and schools.

But teaching children with a large range of abilities in one classroom is difficult, meaning much of the success of the plan will depend on the city’s approach to training educators.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said he believed crucial details of the plan would be worked out by the next administration. Mr. Mulgrew, who has consistently called for the elimination of separate gifted classes for children in kindergarten through second grade, said he thought that some children in upper elementary school would still end up sorted by ability, despite the mayor’s new plan.

“The plan isn’t baked yet,” he said.

Mr. Mulgrew also criticized the timing of the mayor’s announcement. “It’s a little late in the game,” he said.

The City should welcome this change in policy but it is indeed a little late in de Blasio’s game.

Tony

Ronald J. Daniels

Dear Commons Community,

Ronald J. Daniels, President of Johns Hopkins University, has an essay this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education calling for the abolishment of legacy admissions in our colleges and universities.  He cries out for an end to the practice stating that it has no place in higher education.  Here is an excerpt:

“My own university, Johns Hopkins, offers a clear example of what can happen when a school eliminates legacy preference. Since 2014 — when we ended the practice — we have seen remarkable results. The decision has created space for high-achieving students from diverse socioeconomic, geographic, and racial backgrounds to gain admission to Hopkins. In 2009, the year I arrived, our university had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). In 2020, those numbers were different: 4.2 percent of first-year students had a legacy connection to the university (none of whom were given any legacy-admissions preference), and 20.5 percent were Pell eligible. Over the same period, the percentage of first-generation students in our incoming classes has more than doubled from 7 percent in 2009 to 16 percent in 2020. And all of these shifts have occurred alongside steady growth in the academic achievement of our incoming classes. Extinguishing legacy preferences was a foundational step for these shifts.

Defenders of the practice like to say that legacy preferences exist to nurture a sense of institutional loyalty across generations and, by extension, to develop relationships with alumni that will foster greater financial support to the university. One often hears that this is critical in building a multigenerational community. Community is a truly venerable goal; a sense of connection to each other, and our shared institutions, is the lifeblood of a thriving society. But this support need not be conditional on the future admission of our children. And a true community — a true American community — is one that brings together people from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds rather than the inherently insular community of wealthy legacies. In truth, many alumni long for the institutions to which they feel so deeply connected to be embodiments of merit for all talented students.”

Amen!

The entire essay is below.

Tony

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The Chronicle of Higher Education

Abolish Legacy Admissions Now

By Ronald J. Daniels

October 7, 2021

In the late 1990s, I served as dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto. As Canada’s most selective law school, the competition for admission was fierce. Applicants were always in search of anything they could do to secure an advantage in the application process. In my position as dean, it was not uncommon for alumni whose children were applying to the school to approach me and inquire what kind of admissions bump those children would receive by virtue of being a legacy. The answer I gave was always the same: none whatsoever.

One encounter stands out. A prominent and philanthropic alumnus whose child had been denied admission to the school contacted me in the hope that I would reconsider the application. After all, he reasoned, his relationship with the school must mean something. As I had done in many similar situations, I explained that there were clear guardrails in place that fettered my capacity to reverse this decision. I simply had no ability to admit his child. Before our phone call ended, he said something that has been etched in my memory ever since: “If you really want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the great Ivy League law schools in the United States, you better start acting like one.”

When I came to work in the United States, I saw firsthand how true these words were. For all of the progress that highly selective universities have started to make in recruiting low-income and historically underrepresented students, they continue to cling tenaciously to admissions policies that confer significant advantages on children of privilege. Legacy admissions, when coupled with the considerable advantages that many of these children already have — like stable families, engaged parents, high-quality K-12 schools, ample extracurricular opportunities for personal enrichment and development — set these applicants up to triumph over applicants from less-fortunate circumstances. Several years into my tenure as president of Johns Hopkins, we decided to strike at one particularly egregious instance of this system — we eliminated the use of legacy preferences in our admissions.

Legacy preference is immobility written as policy, preserving for children the same advantages enjoyed by their parents. It embodies in stark and indefensible terms inherited privilege in higher education and has compromised college and university admissions for decades. Moreover, it has drained the public trust in colleges and universities at a moment when the public is seething with rage at the seeming illusion of the meritocratic ideal and widening inequality. It is also a policy that is fully within the control of institutions to change at any moment.

The practice of giving admissions advantages to children of alumni is virtually alien to Canadian and European universities. Yet legacy preferences remain commonplace in the United States, where they constitute, in the words of the journalist Daniel Golden, an “almost exclusively American custom.” The majority of the 100 highest-ranked schools in the U.S. News & World Report still engage in some form of the practice. Remarkably, it has not yet buckled under the pressure of competition or rankings.

That such a naked form of hereditary advantage prevails in a country with a deeply ingrained commitment to the ideals of opportunity is striking. That it persists at institutions that otherwise exhibit such profound promise for socioeconomic mobility is tragic. My hope is that the competitive spirit — channeled, as it ought to be, toward accessibility and mobility — may yet end it.

Legacy preferences were first introduced at the Ivies in the 1920s. After a series of meritocratic admissions reforms had started to push out these schools’ traditional constituencies of prep schoolers and children of alumni in favor of public school students and, notably, Jewish students, anxious college administrators pivoted toward a holistic admissions process that frequently included some special provision for legacy students. This was a way to shore up alumni support and to reduce Jewish enrollment numbers while still preserving a sheen of meritocracy. At some institutions, the advantage given to legacy students became so pronounced that, by the 1960s, these applicants were virtually guaranteed admission to the country’s most elite colleges.

Today, legacy status is no longer the guaranteed entry into elite institutions it once was, but the advantage it confers is still substantial, and evidence suggests that it is growing. One 2004 study estimated that legacy status afforded applicants to highly selective universities an admissions boost equivalent to an added 160 points (out of 1600) on the SAT. A 2011 analysis of more than 200,000 applications to 30 highly selective institutions concluded that, controlling for other variables, legacy applicants were more than three times as likely to be admitted as their non-legacy peers. And over the past decade, admission rates for legacy students have stayed constant at many selective universities, even as legacy applications remained flat and overall admission rates have declined, which has put the advantage legacy students receive each year on an upward trajectory.

This boost does not even account for the leg up legacy applicants already receive simply by virtue of having been born to college-educated parents. These students are more likely to grow up in stable and supportive homes, attend the best schools, receive tutoring, and participate in extracurriculars. Legacy preferences guarantee that these students are doubly advantaged.

At most top-ranked U.S. universities with legacy preferences, legacy students comprise anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of incoming classes. With numbers like these, legacy students can significantly influence the racial and socioeconomic composition of a class. And we know that legacy students at the top-ranked universities in the country are not representative of American society. They are far more likely than their classmates to be wealthy and white, and so the existence of legacy preferences skews student bodies at elite institutions away from low-income students — sometimes with dramatic results. At Harvard, for instance, legacy students disproportionately have parents with incomes in excess of $500,000 per year (40 percent of legacies versus 15 percent of non-legacies). Similar stories could be told at elite institutions across the country.

The bottom line is this: selective college admissions is a zero-sum game. Every student who gets admitted to a highly selective institution is taking a seat away from another student. Legacy preferences ensure that more of those coveted spots go to the young people most likely to have had a head start in life: wealthier, whiter, and with college-educated parents. That means fewer seats for low-income applicants, for underrepresented minorities, and for those who would be the first in their families to go to college. None of this is to undermine the accomplishments or merits of legacy applicants themselves, many of whom are exceptional applicants. But affording such students a routine admissions advantage based solely on their parentage comes at a high cost.

In the past 60 years, there have been occasional swells of demand in and outside of academe to end legacy preferences, none of which has met with much success. In the 1960s, Yale’s idealistic dean of admissions, R. Inslee Clark, tried to eliminate legacy preferences at the university, only to be rebuffed by a chorus of furious alumni. Later, members of Congress took up the banner. In the 1990s, Republican Sen. Bob Dole said the time had arrived to “take the next logical step on the fairness front” and end “alumni perks [that] have absolutely nothing to do with an individual’s qualifications or merit.” In 2003, Democratic Sen. Ted Kennedy floated a bill aimed at discouraging legacy preferences, and a year later, then-President George W. Bush, himself a beneficiary of legacy preferences, acknowledged that universities ought to give up the practice. Nothing happened.

Despite these thwarted efforts, legacy preferences are not inexorable. In the past half century, a handful of universities have demonstrated unequivocally that legacy preferences can be eliminated without any sacrifice in institutional quality or reputation. Oxford and Cambridge ended legacy preferences in the 1960s. The University of California at Berkeley eliminated them in the 1990s. And extraordinary institutions like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Caltech never had them in the first place.

My own university, Johns Hopkins, offers a clear example of what can happen when a school eliminates legacy preference. Since 2014 — when we ended the practice — we have seen remarkable results. The decision has created space for high-achieving students from diverse socioeconomic, geographic, and racial backgrounds to gain admission to Hopkins. In 2009, the year I arrived, our university had more legacy students in its freshman class (12.5 percent) than students who were eligible for Pell Grants (9 percent). In 2020, those numbers were different: 4.2 percent of first-year students had a legacy connection to the university (none of whom were given any legacy-admissions preference), and 20.5 percent were Pell eligible. Over the same period, the percentage of first-generation students in our incoming classes has more than doubled from 7 percent in 2009 to 16 percent in 2020. And all of these shifts have occurred alongside steady growth in the academic achievement of our incoming classes. Extinguishing legacy preferences was a foundational step for these shifts.

Defenders of the practice like to say that legacy preferences exist to nurture a sense of institutional loyalty across generations and, by extension, to develop relationships with alumni that will foster greater financial support to the university. One often hears that this is critical in building a multigenerational community. Community is a truly venerable goal; a sense of connection to each other, and our shared institutions, is the lifeblood of a thriving society. But this support need not be conditional on the future admission of our children. And a true community — a true American community — is one that brings together people from different socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds rather than the inherently insular community of wealthy legacies. In truth, many alumni long for the institutions to which they feel so deeply connected to be embodiments of merit for all talented students.

This has certainly been MIT’s experience, and so far we have found it to be true at Hopkins, too. In 2012, Chris Peterson of MIT’s admissions office took to the internet to clear up once and for all the question of whether MIT practiced legacy preferences: It doesn’t. He wrote that if the school even entertained the possibility of introducing legacy admissions, it would “face an alumni revolt.” At Hopkins, alumni participation has steadily grown since we ended legacy preferences in 2014, and when we went public with our policy in 2019, we saw broad alumni support.

I do not pretend that ending legacy preferences is itself adequate to reverse the scourge of immobility or assuage the frustration and anger directed at universities. Although legacy preferences, in direct and often painful ways, affect thousands of high-achieving students who lose spots in favor of their better-connected peers, the policy still affects a relatively small number of students, at a relatively selective tier of universities.

Abolishing legacy preferences is a beginning, not an end, and it must be coupled with a broader reinvestment in poor and middle-class students and struggling universities. Even then, there are entrenched structural inequities across our nation that will prevent us from achieving the goal that every child, no matter their background or circumstance, will be equipped to attend a selective university, inequities to which universities must be part of the solution. But this is hardly reason for those colleges to leave an additional thumb on the scales in favor of the most privileged students.

This essay is adapted from the author’s recent book, What Universities Owe Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press).

Ronald J. Daniels is president of the Johns Hopkins University.

Dear Commons Community,

A federal judge yesterday ordered Texas to suspend the most restrictive abortion law in the U.S., which since September has banned most abortions.

The order by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman is the first legal blow to the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8, which until now had withstood a wave of early challenges. In the weeks since the restrictions took effect, Texas abortion providers say the impact has been “exactly what we feared.”

But even with the law on hold, abortion services in Texas may not instantly resume because doctors still fear that they could be sued without a more permanent legal decision.   As reported by the Associated Press.

Texas officials are likely to seek a swift reversal from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which previously allowed the restrictions to take effect.

The law, signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May, prohibits abortions once cardiac activity is detected, which is usually around six weeks, before some women even know they are pregnant. To enforce the law, Texas deputized private citizens to file lawsuits against violators, and has entitled them to at least $10,000 in damages if successful.

The lawsuit was brought by the Biden administration, which has said the restrictions were enacted in defiance of the U.S. Constitution.

The Biden administration argued that Texas has waged an attack on a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. The GOP-engineered restrictions were signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in May and took effect Sept. 1.

“A state may not ban abortions at six weeks. Texas knew this, but it wanted a six-week ban anyway, so the state resorted to an unprecedented scheme of vigilante justice that was designed to scare abortion providers and others who might help women exercise their constitutional rights,” Justice Department attorney Brian Netter told the federal court Friday.

Abortion providers say their fears have become reality in the short time the law has been in effect. Planned Parenthood says the number of patients from Texas at its clinics in the state decreased by nearly 80% in the two weeks after the law took effect.

Some providers have said that Texas clinics are now in danger of closing while neighboring states struggle to keep up with a surge of patients who must drive hundreds of miles. Other women, they say, are being forced to carry pregnancies to term.

Other states, mostly in the South, have passed similar laws that ban abortion within the early weeks of pregnancy, all of which judges have blocked. But Texas’ version has so far outmaneuvered the courts because it leaves enforcement to private citizens to file suits, not prosecutors, which critics say amounts to a bounty.

“This is not some kind of vigilante scheme,” said Will Thompson, defending the law for the Texas Attorney General’s Office. “This is a scheme that uses the normal, lawful process of justice in Texas.”

The Texas law is just one that has set up the biggest test of abortion rights in the U.S. in decades, and it is part of a broader push by Republicans nationwide to impose new restrictions on abortion.

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court begins a new term, which in December will include arguments in Mississippi’s bid to overturn 1973’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion.

Last month, the court did not rule on the constitutionality of the Texas law in allowing it to remain in place. But abortion providers took that 5-4 vote as an ominous sign about where the court might be heading on abortion after its conservative majority was fortified with three appointees of former President Donald Trump.

Ahead of the new Supreme Court term, Planned Parenthood on Friday released a report saying that if Roe v. Wade were overturned, 26 states are primed to ban abortion. This year alone, nearly 600 abortion restrictions have been introduced in statehouses nationwide, with more than 90 becoming law, according to Planned Parenthood.

Texas officials argued in court filings this week (week of Sept. 26) that even if the law were put on hold temporarily, providers could still face the threat of litigation over violations that might occur in the time between a permanent ruling.

At least one Texas abortion provider has admitted to violating the law and been sued — but not by abortion opponents. Former attorneys in Illinois and Arkansas say they sued a San Antonio doctor in hopes of getting a judge who would invalidate the law.

This litigation will continue on and off for some time to come!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

With Congress in another pitch battle between Democrats and Republicans on passing legislation to raise the US Government debt ceiling, the idea of minting a $1 trillion platinum coin that could be deposited and be used to keep paying its bills is being bandied about.  The idea may seen screwy but Peter Coy, opinion columnist for The New York Times, floats the idea which has been in and out of the news since 2011.  Coy cites prominent economists on both sides of the idea.  For example:

“Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that she wouldn’t consider the idea, calling it a “gimmick.” She’s right that the trillion-dollar coinage would require using the U.S. Mint to perform a function for which it was never intended, but that doesn’t dissuade its backers. This month my Opinion colleague Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, wrote, “Gimmickry in the defense of sanity — and, in an important sense, democracy — is no vice.”

Below is the entire column.  Interesting reading!

Tony

——————————————————————————————–

The New York Times

What a Trillion-Dollar Coin Can Teach Us?

Oct. 6, 2021

By Peter Coy

Opinion Writer

Now that the U.S. government is once again at risk of defaulting on its debts because of an impasse over raising the debt ceiling, we’re back to arguing over whether minting a trillion-dollar platinum coin could save the day.

For readers unfamiliar with this odd gambit: The idea is for the Treasury Department to direct the United States Mint to stamp a special coin made of platinum with a face value of $1 trillion. The Treasury Department would then deposit that coin in its account at the Federal Reserve, giving itself $1 trillion to spend. That would allow it to keep paying the bills and interest on the national debt — thus escaping default — without busting through the congressionally imposed debt ceiling.

Some people think this is an ingenious idea. Others think it’s disastrous.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Tuesday that she wouldn’t consider the idea, calling it a “gimmick.” She’s right that the trillion-dollar coinage would require using the U.S. Mint to perform a function for which it was never intended, but that doesn’t dissuade its backers. This month my Opinion colleague Paul Krugman, a Nobel laureate in economics, wrote, “Gimmickry in the defense of sanity — and, in an important sense, democracy — is no vice.”

Here’s what I find interesting about the debate, which has been raging since at least 2011, when the idea was broached by a lawyer in Atlanta named Carlos Mucha:

You might think that the people backing this merry bit of gimmickry would be the ones casting doubt on the reality of concepts like “money” and “debt,” while opponents would be soberly testifying to the granite-like substance of those entities.

In fact, it’s frequently pretty much the opposite. The would-be coin minters seem to have more faith in the reality of money than their opponents do.

The two sides of the debate are ably laid out in a Kentucky Law Journal article, published last year, by Rohan Grey, now an assistant professor at Willamette University College of Law, who is an adherent of a deficit-friendly school of thought known as modern monetary theory.

Grey cites Neil Buchanan, an opponent of minting the coin who is an economist and law professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law. Buchanan wrote in a blog post in 2013 that issuing a trillion-dollar coin would be tantamount to “pulling back the curtain on the entirely ephemeral nature of money and finance itself.”

He continued: “A monetary system simply cannot work if people do not collectively take a leap of faith. We accept currency or precious metals — which have no inherent use-value for everyday purposes — because we think that other people will accept them in turn. This group delusion allows us to say that money is money. If the delusion starts to fall apart, then there are very real, very negative effects.”

After citing a joke about the trillion-dollar coin made by the comedian Jon Stewart in 2013, Buchanan wrote, “It is no laughing matter to expose the fundamentally unreal nature of money to public ridicule.”

Grey, in contrast, argues that money is not just a confidence game whose value depends on an “infinite regress” of people trusting other people to trust it. Money has value, he says, because the government promises to accept it as payment of taxes and other obligations. (This is an argument of modern monetary theory.) Because taxes will always be with us, Grey writes, “there is little cause to worry that U.S. currency will cease to enjoy wide acceptability” if a trillion-dollar coin is minted.

To the extent that minting the coin would shake the popular belief that government spending must be funded with taxes or borrowing, rather than issuance of new money, that would be a good thing, Grey argues in his article. He writes that minting a trillion-dollar coin could be “a public teaching moment.”

You can agree with Grey or not, but it’s undeniably interesting that the opponents of minting the coin, not the backers, are the ones who call money a “group delusion.”

When I interviewed Grey on Tuesday he said: “If the only people who are qualified to have an opinion on monetary issues are people who are on the inside, or in the know, then that’s extremely dangerous for electorally accountable politics. We don’t have to be afraid of pulling back the ‘Wizard of Oz’ curtain and it all collapsing.”

I asked Buchanan about that today. He said he is worried that minting the coin could undermine public faith in money. The government’s acceptance of money to pay taxes isn’t enough to sustain its value if no one else accepts it, he said: “You don’t want to make the crisis worse by creating a stunt that makes everybody say, ‘Wait a minute, what’s going on here?’” (Buchanan says the debt ceiling statute is unconstitutional and the Treasury Department should “continue to issue normal debt in normal ways.”)

I also interviewed Michael Dorf, a professor at Cornell Law School who has collaborated with Buchanan. Said Dorf: “There are a great many noble lies on which our society rests. Not that we need to hide the truth from the public but it’s not productive to constantly remind people of the truth.” He added: “I’m sympathetic with the notion that governments oughtn’t depend on noble lies. But I also think that especially in times of economic crisis, mass psychology is unpredictable and potentially very dangerous.”

Heavy stuff, right? Minting the coin may be a gimmick, but it’s one with profound implications.