[This is a long post, but I urge you to read it all the way through. I cannot imagine a more powerful rebuttal to the advocates of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”]
Last October, in “Harvard’s Self-Indicting Grade Inflation Report,” I wrote about the school’s embarrassing report that revealed that 60% of the grades handed out at the supposedly elite college (my alma matter, and my sister’s, and my father’s, where my mother was Dean of Housing once-upon-a-time) are now As, making Harvard resemble Garrisons Keilor’s imaginary Minnesota community where “all the children” seem to be are “above average” even though that’s impossible.
In a prescient comment (as is often the case), AM Golden wrote in part, taking off from a Dean Amanda Claybaugh’s statement that it was desirable to “ produce a broader distribution of grades,”
That’s the problem. They don’t want to admit they accept unqualified applicants because many of those applicants will be disproportionately minorities. Returning standards to what an elite institution should have will mess with the faculty push for D.E.I. The standards have to stay low if the experiment is to be prioritized over pure academics. They have set too many precedents to easily back away now…
They have created bubbles where remote learning, mask wearing, protesting for the correct causes and making equal outcomes are virtues valued over a solid education. Backing up now will cause mass revolt on campuses. Like the news media, the colleges will be accused of caving to Trump. The asylum has been run by people who should have been inmates for so long that the actual inmates can’t be helped.
Sometimes I think Ethics Alarms is the only online community where clear-eyed vision dependably resides. For right on cue, as Harvard announced a long term effort to start grading seriously again, a coalition of “of color” Harvard students sent this open letter to the campus:
Ethics Alarms 
How do they reconcile the claim that FGLI students are equally capable intellectually but then state they will be harmed. The writer states this twice The only possible explanation is that they want to not have to work as hard to get the higher grade.
I think it’s even more straightforward than that, Chris. If students were graded according to the quality of their work, the students of color wouldn’t get as high grades as the white kids. (Remember the Georgetown Law Center adjunct who was tarred and feathered for saying her black students got the lowest grades in her classes?) And why is that? The black kids aren’t as qualified as the white kids to do the sort of work a place like Harvard expects. Surprise! And hey, you know what? I couldn’t have gotten into Harvard if I’d applied, and I’d probably have gotten creamed academically. I’ve been around smarter kids than I am, an entire order of magnitude smarter. I know the difference between a 1200 SAT and a 1600 SAT. The solution is to stop letting these kids into elite colleges and universities and let them go to lesser schools and get their degrees where they’re a better fit. And then, maybe they can raise children who will be smart enough to go to elite colleges and universities. You simply can’t take kids, wave a wand over their head, and graduate them from an elite college or university and expect them to go out into the world and become partners at megafirms and managing partners at Goldman Sachs so thirteen percent of those groups are “of color.” Sorry, it just doesn’t work that way.
By the way, I was just recently made aware of a trend that my college has succumbed to. Elite colleges are no longer requiring students to pass a swimming test. And why is that? Because, for the most part, BLACK KIDS DON’T KNOW HOW TO SWIM! So, to remedy the problem, rather than teach them how to swim, an experience most white kids go through, these noble schools are instead going to let these kids run the risk of DROWNING when they’re in a situation where they think they have to swim to be accepted and they just jump in and think they can figure it out as they go along. Good work, gang.
When gross incompetence has gone on this long and the inmates have run the asylum, the only path forward is going to be a bumpy one. A lot of faculty need to be let go, as well as staff This will be hard to do without going on a witch hunt, but putting in uncompromising standards for achievement will show who is willing to enforce those standards and who is still trying to play by the old system.
Many students possibly halfway through a degree program need to fail out. There will be a whole lot of expectations unmet. The chaotic revolt will be real, and it will probably take some years to fully reverse course, but it is possible if someone has the stomach to do it. Harvard needs a president willing to do some very hard lifting, possibly even with just a short run as president because of the controversy he will cause.
When the faculty come to your office crying, say too bad. This is an elite institution. Go somewhere else if you want mediocrity to reign. Let them get mad and whine and cry. When protests go too far, student or faculty, trespass them, fire them, or expel them. The bad behavior has to stop.