“We view ourselves as the cop on the beat” to get DEI discrimination out of higher ed

“We view ourselves as the cop on the beat” to get DEI discrimination out of higher ed

My California Post (and New York Post) Op-Ed, Racism survives on California campuses — here’s how we’re fighting it, has received a good reception.

I had a chance to talk about it on Varney & Co. on Fox Business Network:

Transcript (auto-generated, may contain transcription errors, lightly edited for transcript clarity)

Varney:

Now take a look at this. It’s an op-ed. It’s in the New York Post. “Racism survives on California campuses, here’s how we’re fighting it.” Cornell University law professor and founder of the Equal Protection Project, William Jacobson, wrote that and he joins me now. Professor, you say that California education is addicted to group identity with special benefits based on race and ethnicity. Okay, William, how do you fix that?

WAJ:

Well, what we’re doing at the Equal Protection Project is we go school by school and we challenge programs. We’ve challenged hundreds of programs around the country. We’ve challenged many in California. California’s a particular problem.

We recently filed a claim against Berkeley for five discriminatory programs. We filed against the Cal State system. We filed against the UC system.

We are on the beat. We view ourselves as the cop on the beat because everybody thinks because the Supreme Court decided you can’t use race in admissions, that now all of a sudden the schools are going to obey that command and obey that law and they’re just not.

And so it’s got to be a street by street, house by house, battle to get this racism out of the system.

Varney:

Is preference for any race or ethnic group just out of bounds? Any kind of preference? Gone?

WAJ:

It’s an extremely high hurdle. What’s called strict scrutiny. You have to have an extraordinary reason to invoke a racial preference in higher education, whether it’s a public school or a private school that receives federal funding. So essentially you’re right, you cannot have racial preferences in higher education. You cannot have any, not just admissions, but scholarships, programming.

We see a lot of so-called racial signaling. We challenged a program that runs at 65 community colleges in California called the Puente Project, which targets Hispanic students and almost a hundred percent of the people who are participating are Hispanic students. So what does that say to Asian students and white students and other students who are feeling they’re not welcome in those programs?

So it is pervasive and it’s particularly bad in California.

Varney:

There’s an op-ed, it’s in the Boston Globe and it reads, “college students are less woke now, it’s a chance to improve campus culture.” A professor at Tufts says students there are ditching the woke culture. Alright, William, is that what you are seeing?

WAJ:

It’s a little hard to measure, but in my gut, yes, I feel that there has been a change. There is a change in attitude. At least the students at Cornell where I teach, I think are less so-called woke. I think they’re tired of it. They’re burned out. They have had this forced on them and I think there is a little bit of a backlash.

Again, it’s very hard to measure and certainly campuses lean liberal and lean to the left. But I don’t think it’s as bad, certainly as it was in 2020 and 2021, during the Black Lives Matter protests and riots. So I think there has been a change. We just sense it. Although it’s very hard to measure.

Varney:

You still have a job. And I take it you’re still doing fine, <laugh>, you’re still surviving and that’s great. So come back and see us whenever you like. Bill Jacobson, thank you very much.

WAJ:

Great. Happy to be here.

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