Brandeis University, which has always prided itself on the “fundamental principle” of colorblindness and equality under the law, is now following the woke herd on race-based hiring and admissions.
An opinion piece, written by Daniel Ortner for The Hill, lays out succinctly the liberal fall of what was once an elite private research university founded by the Jewish community that was open to all regardless of race. In the name of progressive diversity, that is evidently no longer the case.
“Brandeis University was founded in Waltham, Mass., in 1948, when other universities commonly employed quotas to exclude Jewish, African American or Asian American students from admission. Universities such as Harvard used subjective screener interviews and personality tests to try to detect Jewish applicants based on antisemitic stereotypes,” Ortner writes in the opening of his article.
“Brandeis was envisioned as a corrective to such repugnant practices — ‘a university without quotas’ as one early promotional brochure put it, a place ‘where no barriers exist because of race, sex, color or creed,'” he noted.
The premise of actual “equality” was what the university envisioned as its unique “Jewish contribution to American education.” The educational institution was so adamant about the concept that in a letter to applicants for the Class of 1952, the university declared “no applicant will ever be asked to identify his religion or color because to do so would violate a fundamental principle of Brandeis University.”
Fast forward to today when the exact opposite is being promoted by the university.
“In the past few years, Brandeis departments have mandated that all faculty applicants write a ‘contribution to diversity’ statement. The rubric for evaluating these statements expressly penalizes any prospective faculty member who believes that ‘it’s better not to have outreach or affinity groups aimed at underrepresented individuals because it keeps them separate from everyone else, or will make them feel less valued.’ In other words, anyone who affirms the ideals upon which Brandeis was founded just 70 years ago need not apply,” the author continues.
“Excluding faculty members who uphold the university’s traditional commitment to equality is merely the tip of the iceberg. In a complete reversal of its founding ideals, Brandeis has enthusiastically embraced the fashionable ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ ideology that treats individuals primarily as members of racial or ethnic groups when it comes to hiring and admissions,” Ortner writes.
The GOP should promise to make race based selection in hiring or college admissions explicitly illegal if they regain Congress.
— CN (@comp_napper) October 20, 2022
He proceeded to lay out examples of what the university is now doing as opposed to what its original intent was.
“For example, the Office of Human Resources promotes its affirmative action plan ‘that assures that Brandeis will actively seek qualified females, minority group individuals, persons with disabilities and veterans with protected status as applicants for positions where there is demonstrated underutilization.’ If a job search does not yield enough candidates of certain races or ethnicities, it will be canceled or postponed. The university also employs an explicit preference for minority- and female-owned vendors and contractors,” he noted.
Per the article, Brandeis is now considering a student’s race when deciding whether they should be admitted or not, which is by definition racist. They are hypocritically using an “anti-racism plan” that employs “tracking demographic makeup” to further race-based recruitment. So, in the name of diversity, what is actually happening is a racist selection of students during admissions. It’s also happening at Brandeis’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management which is using race-based scholarships and other race-based policies to decide who gets into graduate programs.
“If you’re at all familiar with the higher education world today, these policies will sound numbingly familiar, as they reflect the same wrong-headed ‘equity’ commitments that institutions now use to put race at the center of admissions and hiring decisions. But that’s precisely the point: When Brandeis was established seven decades ago, the university was expressly founded on anti-discrimination principles. Now, Brandeis sadly has followed the same path of stereotyping, quotas and discrimination as other higher education institutions — surrendering the very thing that made Brandeis different,” Ortner lamented.
I’m very happy for these kids to be going to college, but it comes at the cost of doing away with merit-based admissions for race-based “equality of outcomes.” I am against all discrimination based on race, no matter how “anti-racist” its intentions.
— M. Thomas Wayne (@MThomaswayne) October 16, 2022
“We can see where these policies lead: to open discrimination and racial stereotyping. For example, Harvard today is accused of penalizing Asian American applicants for subjective and racist reasons such as lacking ‘kindness’ and ’empathy’ — the same thing Harvard did to Jewish applicants when Brandeis was founded. These accusations of discrimination have led to a constitutional challenge currently before the Supreme Court,” he added.
As one can see, the whole race-based argument is a vicious circle that always ends up discriminating against others. It is mind-boggling that a university founded by the Jewish community would fall into such a discriminatory leftist trap.
“But Brandeis need not wait for the Supreme Court to act. It must simply reclaim its historic founding mission. Brandeis was established as a university without discriminatory quotas, where students would have the freedom to flourish as individuals, not as representatives of their racial category. Those who founded the university had it right. It is time to restore Brandeis’s founding vision — the fundamental principle of equality for all,” Ortner correctly and astutely concluded.
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