Intellectual deficiency is best signified by the belief that a political opponent cannot generate good ideas and lacks reason, common sense or morality. But people are seldom purely evil or purely good. While some lean closer toward one of these extremes, most of us vacillate somewhere between such neatly designed poles in the messiness of life.
A thinking person is one whose analysis concerning the position of their political opponents recognizes and supports whenever legislative initiatives are introduced that enhance and expand the common good. Sophomoric thinkers, lacking the necessary faculties to engage in a posteriori analytical skill, tend to mask their insufficiency of rational thought through boisterous rhetoric, narcissist pronouncements and a conspiratory worldview. Bullying and name-calling trump thoughtful intellectual engagement.
Disagreeing with your political opponent does not necessarily make them evil, just wrong. It certainly does not make you right, with God on your side. Even in a divisive political climate such as the present, common ground can be found and supported for the good of the whole.
For example, I am hard-pressed to find anything with which I would agree that is advocated by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, especially when it comes to education.
During his gubernatorial tenure, he has shamelessly enacted an education policy under the misnomer “parental rights.” These policies are geared to silence the voices of those whose stories have always been absent from the classroom.
Discussing race or racism or making accommodations for transgender students is muzzled due to the belief that it detracts from academic success. To protect white cisgender fragility, recounting the existential reality of the disenfranchised is not permissible.
So, imagine my surprise when I agreed with an educational bill signed into law by Youngkin on March 8th.
House Bill 48 bans the use of legacy admission in public universities. Legacy programs, an admission policy that only exists in the United States, give preferential treatment to applicants based on either having an alumni parent or a generous donor to the school. Legacy admission primarily functions as affirmative action for underachieving, privileged middle-class and upper-class whites.
Since World War I, the normative quota system at the most prestigious universities and colleges has been replaced by a more benign-sounding system—legacy.
The purpose remained the same: limit the number of immigrant students— specifically Jews and, to a lesser degree, Catholics.
This relic of WASPish supremacy gives admission preference to the children of alumni, who, due to historical racism and ethnic discrimination, are disproportionally white. Almost three-quarters of the 100 U.S. universities continue to consider legacy in their admission decisions, including each of the top 100 liberal arts institutions.
A study based on Harvard’s data revealed a fivefold increase in the likelihood of admission for white legacy students. From 2014 through 2019, the admission rate for legacy applicants to Harvard was 33% higher than for non-legacies.
During those five years, 43% of the white students admitted were either legacies, athletes, or children of donors or faculty. The recent class of 2024 consisted of 15.5% legacy students.
If Yale and Harvard were to drop their white affirmative action legacy program, they would be more diverse, as unqualified, underperforming white students with economic connections no longer take the place of more academically rigorous and better-performing students.
When it comes to legacy, academic rigor is not part of the admission equation. Consider the $2.5 million pledge made by real estate developer Charles Kushner to Harvard in 1998, which ensured his son Jared (the future husband of Ivanka Trump)—whose GPA and SAT scores were below Ivy League standards—was admitted.
Race and class privilege continue to trump merit, continuing the white affirmative action program known as “legacy.” But recently, states have begun stepping in to correct this white supremacy residue.
Hence, as much as I disagree with Governor Youngkin, I nonetheless support his initiative to end legacy admission at all public universities in Virginia, making him the second Governor to do so. Colorado, led by Democratic Governor Jared Polis, was the first state to ban legacy admission in 2021.
Currently, New York and Connecticut are considering similar legislation. Regardless of political leanings, we should encourage other governors–Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative–to do likewise.
Better yet, Congress should pass the Merit-Board Education Reform and Institutional Transparency Act, sponsored by Senators Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Todd Young (R-IN) and introduced last November. This act would ban legacy on a federal level.
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Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, and a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
