Login
70% of Harvard’s donor-related and legacy applicants are white, and being a legacy student makes an applicant roughly six times more likely to be admitted.
***********************
After the death of affirmative action as (per SCOTUS) unfair preference, the complex business of legacy admits seems also to be circling the drain.
The word “legacy” covers not merely people admitted to selective schools because close relatives attended; it also can involve super-rich people donating (or likely to donate) multiple millions to buy a seat at these schools for their children. And it can have to do with talented athletes (most of them from expensive private secondary schools) admitted for their athletic rather than academic skill. It usually exhibits a mix of some of these elements.
Let’s look at a notorious case that in fact contains every one of these elements.
George Huguely, currently rotting in jail for killing his ex-girlfriend, was a legacy admit to the University of Virginia. “George III, George V’s grandfather, went to Sidwell Friends and the University of Virginia.” A friend of Huguely’s at the expensive, prestigious prep school he attended comments: “He was not a great student, but he didn’t care.” He was a great lacrosse player.
A hopeless alcoholic from a young age (Huguely’s father showed him how), Huguely boasted several booze-related arrests, including a quite serious one in Lexington, Virginia while he was a UVa student:
Officer Rebecca Moss discovered Huguely wobbling drunk into traffic near a fraternity at Washington and Lee University. She told him to find a ride home or face arrest. He began screaming obscenities and making threats. [Apparently he said “I’ll kill all you bitches.“]
“Stop resisting,” Moss said. “You’re only making matters worse.”
Moss and another female officer tried to subdue Huguely. He became “combative,” the police chief reported. Moss stunned him with a Taser, put him in a squad car, and took him to the police station.
At his court hearing a month later, Huguely said he didn’t remember much about the night and apologized. He pleaded guilty to public swearing, intoxication, and resisting arrest. He was fined $100 and given a 60-day suspended sentence.
Huguely bragged about the incident to [UVa] friends…
Some of these friends were, like Huguely, part of a drunk, entitled, obnoxious sometimes to the point of violence, rich lacrosse player culture where you don’t rat out buddies even if you know they’re really really dangerous and out of control. One assumes most of these friends laughed drunkenly along with Huguely as he detailed the latest incident in which he got away with… not murder. Not yet. But things were escalating, and some of his friends certainly knew he was threatening his ex-girlfriend and assaulting people he thought she was dating and just being a really scary violent crazy piece of shit.
It’s certainly worth asking what sort of subculture sees all of this and does nothing. It’s certainly worth asking how a non-academic, violent, total alcoholic with a criminal record was rewarded with an extremely competitive seat at one of the nation’s greatest universities. What did his prep school teachers and coaches, many of whom must have known or guessed how incredibly dangerous he was, write in their letters of recommendation about him? (Think also about poor drunk well-connected short-lived Paul Murdaugh, still a student in good standing at the University of South Carolina despite having recently killed a young woman and injured others while drunkenly at the helm of a family boat. Like Huguely, he already had a bunch of booze-related run-ins with police.
Two months after he was sprung from jail, a judge removed the only condition of his release — allowing him to travel outside the 14th Judicial Circuit, according to the news outlet.
Although he faced BUI charges, the state did not restrict him from drinking alcohol or driving a boat, the report said.
Another entitled rich kid given one free pass after another until… Well, one can’t help feeling for Paul Murdaugh. His own father murdered him.)
********************
“I was drinking a lot all the time, all the way from my freshman year to my senior year,” Huguely said at his trial. “I was drinking all the time. It was out of control.”
********************
Look. My point isn’t that legacy admits are murderers and degenerates. Most of them are pleasant well-meaning non-Ivy League material. But there’s a really anti-social pathology underlying the culture of lifelong consequence-free unearned social rewards of which some (not all) legacy admits are Exhibit A. The Varsity Blues criminal syndicate, and whatever current bogus athletics conspiracy has replaced it, is merely the crude extension of the basic legacy M.O. The socially acceptable con game of legacy admits makes the world safe for the scandal of Varsity Blues.
***********************
And can you think of anything more morally corrosive than knowing that your corrupt parents and a corrupt institution engineered your sorry ass into a seat at Harvard? Knowing that you’re little more than a cold hard cash epiphenomenon to the institution – does that bother you at all? Does it feel like a prefiguration of your entire entitled life? Here’s a bunch of nice people getting me into Harvard; here’s a bunch of nice people showing me how to evade taxes. And so it goes.
*************************
The tragedy of wealth-based admissions is that wealthy students are taking up seats from the poor, unconnected students who need them most. This is not a victimless crime.
… [C]ollege leaders … sell access while squatting on multibillion-dollar endowments and spending vast sums of money on palatial campus buildings, leadership compensation, and administrative bloat.
And you’re paying for it:
… If a donor earns seven figures a year and lives in California, taxpayers can wind up subsidizing more than 52 cents of every dollar used to buy his child’s way into college. Even in states with less exorbitant tax rates, taxpayers routinely pick up more than 40% of the tab. That’s because these kinds of donations are wholly tax deductible: As long as there’s no explicit quid pro quo agreement, the IRS allows parents to write off their influence-peddling donations in full.
… Offering a special admissions track to the wealthy on the taxpayer’s dime impedes equal opportunity, rewards influence peddling, and robs the public. It’s time for a change. Colleges and universities should be places of opportunity, not institutions where background or wealth determine success. Wealthy applicants should have to earn their place in a university by the same rules as everyone else.
… We should press college officials to mean what they say about opportunity and equity, and to spend less time strong-arming wealthy donors. But at a bare minimum, we should get taxpayers out of the business of subsidizing campus shakedown artists.
And when I say pathology: Harvard is currently squatting on 53 billion dollars. It has yet more from other sources. And because the government, risibly, continues to consider it a non-profit institution, it enjoys amazing tax breaks. What sort of fucked up institution is still trading its integrity for more money under these circumstances?
Harvard students and supporters marched through Harvard Square during a rally on Saturday to oppose the Supreme Court’s ruling against affirmation action.
Universities are preparing for the possible end of race-conscious affirmative action.
Randall Robinson, a lawyer, civil rights activist, and educator died from aspiration pneumonia on March 23 in Basseterre, St. Kitts, where he had lived for the past two decades. Robinson was 81 years old.
A native of Richmond, Virginia, Robinson attended what is now Norfolk State University but left to join the U.S. Army. After military service, Robinson earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Virginia Union University. He held a juris doctorate from Harvard Law School. At Harvard, it was the first time Robinson had ever sat in a classroom with White students.
After law school, Robinson worked as a legislative aide on Capitol Hill. In 1977, he established the TransAfrica Forum. According to the group’s website, TransAfrica is a “research, educational and organizing institution for the African-American community, offering constructive analysis concerning U.S. policy as it affects Africa and the African Diaspora in the Caribbean and Latin America.” While leading TransAfrica, Robinson became one of the strongest voices in the United States against South African apartheid. In 1994, Robinson went on a 27-day hunger strike to protest U.S. policy toward Haiti.
Robinson worked at Penn State jointly as a professor of law at the University Park campus and as a professor at the Penn State School of International Affairs from 2008 to 2016. He was the author of seven books including Defending the Spirit: A Black Life in America (Dutton, 1998). In the book, Robinson stated “I am obsessively Black. Race is an overarching aspect of my identity. America has made me that way.”
“Randall Robinson was an intellectual giant,” said Victor Romero, a professor of law at Penn State. “His pathbreaking work in the area of international human rights and social justice, especially regarding the history and condition of Africans and African-Americans, was particularly influential and still resonates today.”
Richard D. Kahlenberg, whose hero is Robert Kennedy, wants to build a multiracial progressive coalition.
Article tags
Article tags
The Supreme Court is poised to overturn race-based affirmative action. But preferences based on socioeconomic disadvantage—which are both politically popular and legally sound—could produce similarly high levels of diversity.
The documentary filmmaker and sports editor Paul Devlin has won five Emmy awards, but he may well be better known for not getting into Harvard — or rather, for not getting into Harvard, then rejecting Harvard’s rejection. “I noticed that the rejection letter I received from Harvard had a grammatical error,” Devlin writes. “So, I wrote a letter back, rejecting their rejection letter.” His mother then “sent a copy of this letter to the New York Times and it was published in the New Jersey section on May 31, 1981.” In 1996, when the New York Times Magazine published a cover story “about the trauma students were experiencing getting rejected from colleges,” she seized the opportunity to send her son’s rejection-rejection letter to the Paper of Record.
It turned out that Devlin’s letter had already run there, having long since gone the pre-social-media equivalent of viral. “The New York Times accused me of plagiarism. When they discovered that I was the original author and they had unwittingly re-printed themselves, they were none too happy. But my mom insists that it was important to reprint the article because the issue was clearly still relevant.”
Indeed, its afterlife continues even today, as evidenced by the new video from Letters Live at the top of the post. In it actor Himesh Patel, well-known from series like EastEnders, Station Eleven, and Avenue 5, reads aloud Devlin’s letter, which runs as follows:
Having reviewed the many rejection letters I have received in the last few weeks, it is with great regret that I must inform you I am unable to accept your rejection at this time.
This year, after applying to a great many colleges and universities, I received an especially fine crop of rejection letters. Unfortunately, the number of rejections that I can accept is limited.
Each of my rejections was reviewed carefully and on an individual basis. Many factors were taken into account – the size of the institution, student-faculty ratio, location, reputation, costs and social atmosphere.
I am certain that most colleges I applied to are more than qualified to reject me. I am also sure that some mistakes were made in turning away some of these rejections. I can only hope they were few in number.
I am aware of the keen disappointment my decision may bring. Throughout my deliberations, I have kept in mind the time and effort it may have taken for you to reach your decision to reject me.
Keep in mind that at times it was necessary for me to reject even those letters of rejection that would normally have met my traditionally high standards.
I appreciate your having enough interest in me to reject my application. Let me take the opportunity to wish you well in what I am sure will be a successful academic year.
SEE YOU IN THE FALL!
Sincerely,
Paul Devlin
Applicant at Large
However considerable the moxie (to use a wholly American term) shown by the young Devlin in his letter, his reasoning seems not to have swayed Harvard’s admissions department. Whether it would prove any more effective in the twenty-twenties than it did in the nineteen-eighties seems doubtful, but it must remain a satisfying read for high-school students dispirited by the supplicating posture the college-application process all but forces them to take. It surely does them good to remember that they, too, possess the agency to declare acceptance or rejection of that which is presented to them simply as necessity, as obligation, as a given. And for Devlin, at least, there was always the University of Michigan.
Related content:
Read Rejection Letters Sent to Three Famous Artists: Sylvia Plath, Kurt Vonnegut & Andy Warhol
T. S. Eliot, as Faber & Faber Editor, Rejects George Orwell’s “Trotskyite” Novel Animal Farm (1944)
Gertrude Stein Gets a Snarky Rejection Letter from Publisher (1912)
Meet the “Grammar Vigilante,” Hell-Bent on Fixing Grammatical Mistakes on England’s Storefront Signs
Steven Pinker Identifies 10 Breakable Grammatical Rules: “Who” Vs. “Whom,” Dangling Modifiers & More
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletter Books on Cities, the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles and the video series The City in Cinema. Follow him on Twitter at @colinmarshall or on Facebook.
Ah, but unlike those other institutions, Harvard struggles with a 5.4 billion dollar endowment, and cannot be expected to overcome the legal and sand blasting hurdles that other institutions have overcome.
Article tags
by P.D. Lesko
I recently read this great opinion piece by Julien Berman published in the Harvard Crimson. Titled “Adjuncts: The Faculty Underclass,” I expected it to be the same old tired arguments in favor of breathing, clean water and, yes, the need to treat adjunct faculty better. Much to my surprise, I got to the end of the piece and muttered, “What a great idea!” Berman, a college sophomore, writes, “Here are some immediate and practical solutions that universities across the country can implement to improve adjunct well-being and thus the quality of education received by undergraduates. First, institutions should index the adjunct pay per course to local living conditions.”
Yes, yes, yes. What a simple and elegant solution. Kind of. (I’ll get to that in a moment.) Adjunct faculty at NYU have, for years, used the high cost of living in New York as a reason to push for much higher per course pay. The NYU adjuncts’ latest contract, while not perfect, was a huge improvement where per course pay is concerned.
For non-tenured faculty who teach in cities such as Boston, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle and Chicago, the cost-of-living solution to piddling pay should be a must have for every part-time faculty union bargaining team. Never a fan of the push for $10,000 per course (it’s still three-course per year pay that is around the poverty line for an individual poverty), adjunct faculty in those cities need to be paid $25,000 per course, plus benefits.
So what happens when adjuncts at college’s in cities where the cost of living is low have their pay tied to local cost of living? Julien Berman either didn’t think of that. Perhaps, on the other hand, he’s a budding capitalist. In his piece he wrote: “From an economic standpoint, this move makes sense: Tenured professors are expensive investments under long-term contracts, whereas adjuncts are cheap hires that can be laid off more easily.” Either way, tying per course pay to the cost of living in a small city or town, would be a disaster for those non-tenured faculty. In those cases, adjunct pay would, instead, be better improved by being tied to what full-time faculty are paid.
Another of Berman’s suggestions is something I have been criticizing loudly for decades. He writes: “Second, adjunct pay raises should match full-time faculty pay raises, at least on a percentage basis.” No. No. And no. In fact, until adjuncts at a college or university reach pay parity (read more about that here), unions that represent adjuncts need to push for big pay raises, like 60, 70, 80, 100 percent. What Julien suggests is called the “equal percentage raise.” Slippery union leaders push this to make it appear as though they are treating all members equally and fairly.
Equal percentage raises for adjunct faculty union members are back of the bus union representation at its worst. Why? If a union negotiates a five percent raise for all faculty, who benefits the most, materially? The people who earn the largest salaries, of course, the full-time faculty.
The preceptors (non-tenured faculty) at Harvard launched their official campaign to form a union in Feb. 2023. In a press release, “Harvard Academic Workers-United Automobile Workers stated that it seeks to bargain a contract for the University’s non-tenure-track faculty, which includes lecturers, preceptors, postdoctoral fellows, instructors, researchers, teaching assistants, and adjunct faculty. Non-tenure-track faculty may only hold teaching appointments up to eight years,” according to reporting in the Harvard Crimson.
Union organizers have said they don’t expect Harvard administrators to voluntarily recognize the union. Any way you slice it, though, Cambridge/Boston is one of the most expensive areas in which to live. The average non-tenured faculty member at the university earns around $50,000. Average monthly rents in the area top $2,700. Full-time faculty at Harvard earn, on average, $182,992 per year.
Berman writes: “The adjunct problem has grown as universities have started to increasingly hire part-time labor. From an economic standpoint, this move makes sense: Tenured professors are expensive investments under long-term contracts, whereas adjuncts are cheap hires that can be laid off more easily. However, when university professors are paid so little that they are forced to sleep in their cars and apply for food stamps, it might be time for a change.”
Ya think?
Michelle Garfield Cook has been named the next vice president for student affairs at the University of Georgia. She has been serving as senior vice provost, where she oversaw strategic initiatives and programs spanning the University of Georgia while also leading the Office of Institutional Diversity.
Dr. Cook joined the staff at the university in 1998. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Princeton University, a master’s degree from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Duke University.
Tasha A. Carson has been appointed assistant vice president for first-year students in the Division of Enrollment Management at Tennessee State University. She was the executive director of new student programs and retention at the university. She joined the staff at Tennessee State in 2018.
Dr. Carson holds bachelor’s degrees in political science and human science and a master’s degree in counselor education from North Carolina Central University. She earned a Ph.D. in higher education administration from Jackson State University in Mississippi.
Anthony D. Henderson, Sr. was appointed director of athletics at Hampton University in Virginia, effective February 27. Henderson comes to Hampton from Yale University where he served as deputy director of athletics. Earlier, he was the senior associate athletics director and executive director of athletics advancement at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia.
Henderson is a graduate of Hampton University, where he majored in marketing and played football. He holds a master’s degree in sports leadership from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Brenda Tindal is the first chief campus curator for Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She has been serving as the executive director of Harvard Museums of Science and Culture. Earlier, she was the founding director of education and engagement for the International African American Museum in Charleston, South Carolina.
Tindal earned a bachelor’s degree in history and Africana studies from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She holds a master’s degree in American Studies from Emory University in Atlanta.
Anna Ponder was appointed vice president for alumni, development, and communications at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. Dr. Ponder was vice chancellor for advancement at the University of South Carolina Beaufort.
Dr. Ponder earned a bachelor’s degree in French language and European history from Spelman College in Atlanta. She holds a master’s degree in international economics and African studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
A new study led by researchers affiliated with Harvard University finds that older Black patients with advanced cancer are less likely than White patients to receive opioid medications for pain relief in the last weeks of life.
Researchers examined opioid prescription orders for 318,549 Medicare patients over the age of 65 who had poor-prognosis cancers and were nearing the end of life. Between 2007 and 2019, the group experienced a steady decline in access to opioids and a rapid expansion of urine drug screening. Within these broader trends, researchers found small but meaningful divergences between racial and ethnic groups.
Compared with White patients, Black patients were 4.3 percentage points less likely to receive any opioid and 3.2 percentage points less likely to receive long-acting opioids near the end of life. Researchers also found that when Black patients received opioids, they tended to receive lower doses.
The inequities were particularly stark for Black men. “We found that Black men were far less likely to be prescribed reasonable doses than White men were,” said the study’s senior author, Alexi Wright, a gynecologic oncologist and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School. “And Black men were less likely to receive long-acting opioids, which are essential for many patients dying of cancer. Our findings are startling because everyone should agree that cancer patients should have equal access to pain relief at the end of life.”
The full study, “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Opioid Access and Urine Drug Screening Among Older Patients With Poor-Prognosis Cancer Near the End of Life,” was published on the website of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. It may be accessed here.
A new study found that undergraduate degrees from Princeton, along with Harvard and Yale, offer a leg up in getting a coveted Supreme Court clerkship.
Elementary school students returning to in-person learning in a school in California in 2021. Education deficits were equivalent to about 35 percent of a school year and remained steady, according to a new study.
Kenneth Roth, the former director of Human Rights Watch, in New York last April. The Harvard Kennedy School recently reversed its early decision to reject his fellowship application because of his criticisms of Israel.
Article tags
Harvard Medical School, in Boston, is dropping out of U.S. News & World Report’s ranking of top programs.
FreshRSS