Sunday, July 2, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.
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A Brief Holiday 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 Roundup.
Breakin’ 💥💥 News.
More Trump 2020 Election Interference Comes to Light.
Trump pushed Arizona Gov. Ducey to overturn 2020 election results.
In a phone call in late 2020, President Donald Trump tried to pressure Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) to overturn the state’s presidential election results, saying that if enough fraudulent votes could be found it would overcome Trump’s narrow loss in Arizona, according to three people familiar with the call.
Trump also repeatedly asked Vice President Mike Pence to call Ducey and prod him to find the evidence to substantiate Trump’s claims of fraud, according to two of these people. Pence called Ducey several times to discuss the election, they said, though he did not follow Trump’s directions to pressure the governor.
The extent of Trump’s efforts to cajole Ducey into helping him stay in power has not before been reported, even as other efforts by Trump’s lawyer and allies to pressure Arizona officials have been made public. Ducey told reporters in December 2020 that he and Trump had spoken, but he declined to disclose the contents of the call then or in the more than two years since. Although he disagreed with Trump about the outcome of the election, Ducey has sought to avoid a public battle with Trump.
Ducey described the “pressure” he was under after Trump’s loss to a prominent Republican donor over a meal in Arizona earlier this year, according to the donor, who like others interviewed for this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. The account was confirmed by others aware of the call.
Ducey told the donor he was surprised that special counsel Jack Smith’s team had not inquired about his phone calls with Trump and Pence as part of the Justice Department’s investigation into the former president’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, the donor said.
Ducey did not record the call, people familiar with the matter said.
Now out of public office, the former governor declined through a spokesman to answer specific questions about his interactions with Trump and his administration.
“This is neither new nor is it news to anyone following this issue the last two years,” spokesman Daniel Scarpinato said in a statement. “Governor Ducey defended the results of Arizona’s 2020 election, he certified the election, and he made it clear that the certification provided a trigger for credible complaints backed by evidence to be brought forward. None were ever brought forward. The Governor stands by his action to certify the election and considers the issue to be in the rear view mirror.”
A spokesman for Trump declined to respond to questions about the call with Ducey and instead falsely declared in a statement that “the 2020 Presidential election was rigged and stolen.” The spokesman said Trump should be credited for “doing the right thing — working to make sure that all the fraud was investigated and dealt with.”
It is unclear if Ducey has been contacted by Smith’s office since meeting with the donor. Investigators in the special counsel’s office have asked witnesses about Trump’s calls with governors, including the one to Ducey, according to two people familiar with the matter. It is unclear if prosecutors plan to eventually bring charges or how the calls figure into their investigation. Prosecutors have also shown interest in Trump’s efforts to conscript Pence into helping him, according to witnesses and subpoenas previously reviewed by The Washington Post.
Trump phoned the governor’s cellphone on Nov. 30, 2020, as Ducey was in the middle of signing documents certifying President Biden’s win in the state during a live-streamed video ceremony.
Trump’s outreach was immediately clear to those watching. They heard “Hail to the Chief” play on the governor’s ringtone. Ducey pulled his phone from out of his suit jacket, muted the incoming call and put his phone aside.
On Dec. 2, he told reporters he spoke to the president after the ceremony, but he declined to fully detail the nature of the conversation.
Ducey said the president had “an inquisitive mind” but did not ask the governor to withhold his signature certifying the election results.
But four people familiar with the call said Trump spoke specifically about his shortfall of more than 10,000 votes in Arizona and then espoused a range of false claims that would show he overwhelmingly won the election in the state and encouraged Ducey to study them.
At the time, Trump’s attorneys and allies spread false claims to explain his loss, including that voters who had died and noncitizens had cast ballots.
After Trump’s call to Ducey, Trump directed Pence, a former governor who had known Ducey for years, to frequently check in with the governor for any progress on uncovering claims of voting improprieties, according to two people with knowledge of the effort.
Pence was expected to report back his findings and was peppered with conspiracy theories from Trump and his team, the person said. Pence did not pressure Ducey, but told him to please call if he found anything because Trump was looking for evidence, according to those familiar with the calls.
A representative for Pence declined to comment.
In each of the calls, Ducey reiterated that officials in the state had searched for alleged widespread illegal activity and followed up on every lead but had not discovered anything that would have changed the outcome of the election results, according to Ducey’s recounting to the donor.
After learning that Ducey was not being supportive of his claims, Trump grew angry and publicly attacked him.
It is unclear if Ducey and Trump had additional conversations. Publicly, the governor said the state’s election systems should be trusted, even as Trump and his allies sought to reverse his loss.
In Arizona, Trump and his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called then Speaker of the House Rusty Bowers (R) on Nov. 22, 2020. They asked the speaker to convene the legislature to investigate their unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, which included that votes had been cast en masse by undocumented immigrants and in the names of deceased people.
Weeks later, on Dec. 31, 2020 the White House switchboard left a message for the chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, Clint Hickman, seeking to connect him with Trump. The supervisor, a Republican, did not return the call.
Trump and his allies made similar appeals to officials in Michigan and Georgia. On Jan. 2, 2021, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) and said he wanted to undo his loss there by finding additional votes.
The next night, the White House switchboard left Hickman another voice mail seeking to connect him to Trump. Hickman did not call back.
Investigators with Smith’s office interviewed Raffensperger this week, and they interviewed Giuliani last week. “The appearance was entirely voluntary and conducted in a professional manner,” said Giuliani spokesman Ted Goodman.
More than half a dozen past and current officials in Arizona contacted by Trump or his allies after his defeat have either been interviewed by Smith’s team or have received grand jury subpoenas seeking records, according to four people familiar with the interviews. Those interviewed include Bowers, the former Arizona House speaker, and three current members of the governing board of Maricopa County, the largest voting jurisdiction in the state that affirmed that Biden won.
Spokespeople for Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes (D), told The Post this week that their offices have not received correspondence from Smith’s team seeking records about the 2020 election. The Arizona Secretary of State’s office received a grand jury subpoena dated Nov. 22, 2022, that sought information about communications with Trump, his campaign and his representatives, according to an official familiar with the document but not authorized to publicly speak about it.
During his time as governor, Ducey navigated a hot-and-cold relationship with Trump. Ducey, who struck a more conventional approach to governing, was slow to embrace Trump during his first bid for the White House. The two men warmed to each other, and amid the pandemic and Trump’s second bid for the White House, Ducey campaigned for him.
But after Ducey certified Arizona’s election results, affirming the wins of Biden and other Democrats, Trump ridiculed him on social media: “Why is he rushing to put a Democrat in office, especially when so many horrible things concerning voter fraud are being revealed at the hearing going on right now … What is going on with @dougducey?”
That same day, allies of the president gathered in Phoenix to air unproven claims of widespread fraud and claim that state lawmakers could reject the will of voters. Giuliani attended the event, along with Republican lawmakers and activists; Trump dialed in.
The president invoked Ducey repeatedly in the days that followed, according to an archive of his tweets.
On Dec. 3, Trump asked if “allowing a strong check of ballots” in Arizona would “be easier on him and the great State of Arizona.”
On Dec. 5, Trump wrote that Ducey and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) “fight harder against us than do the Radical Left Dems.”
A week later, Trump attacked the men again, asking “Who is a worse governor?” He labeled them “RINO Republicans” and baselessly claimed that “They allowed states that I won easily to be stolen.”
Ducey, long eyed by national Republicans as a formidable candidate for the U.S. Senate, passed on a 2024 bid after his standing with the Trump base cratered after Trump’s attacks. After leaving office in January, he was a fellow at the Sine Institute of Policy & Politics at American University, where he spoke about the policies he enacted while in office. Earlier this month, Ducey announced that he is leading a free-enterprise focused political action committee, Citizens for Free Enterprise. (The Washington Post).
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and this, to cheer you…
After a week of SCOTUS verdicts.
What's Next for Affirmative Action.
From OLD GOATS with Jonathan Alter.
A must read if you want to feel better after one of last week’s Court rulings.
Rick Kahlenberg,now a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, a non-resident scholar at Georgetown University and a lecturer at George Washington University, has devoted much of his career to spreading the idea of giving preference on the basis of class, not race. He provided research on behalf of the plaintiffs in the Harvard case. Now, if colleges and universities want to maintain diversity (which they obviously do), they will have to adopt Rick’s approach. This won’t likely be enough to keep the number of black students at elite institutions at their current levels, but it remains the only plausible path forward. Rather than re-arguing the case, Rick and I explore what class-based remedies would look like, as well as the themes of Rick’s new book on how housing discrimination is now based more on class than race.
Ruminating with Rick Kahlenberg about the SCOTUS decision and the promise of class-based preferences.
JONATHAN ALTER:
Hi, Rick. Did anything in any of the opinions — especially Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion — surprise you?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I was pleased that Justice Sotomayor's dissent encouraged universities to adopt affirmative action programs for first generation and low income students. That is now an area of common ground among liberal and conservative justices.
JON:
Will the portion of the majority opinion encouraging students to write essays about overcoming racial obstacles give colleges a work-around to maintain the status quo?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I believe a fair system evaluates a student's record in light of obstacles overcome. That might include growing up in a poor neighborhood, or being the victim of racial discrimination. That's very different from giving blanket preferences based on which racial box is checked. An Asian American student, for example, might discuss how discrimination presented a hurdle.
JON:
Do you think the absence of class-based affirmative action from the headlines set back efforts to move toward that kind of an admissions process?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I didn't read it that way. Both the majority and the dissent rallied around giving an admissions boost to low income and first generation college students. And I was very pleased that President Biden endorsed admissions policies that consider "adversity," whether the student is from "Appalachia" or "Atlanta."
JON:
I think of you as a classic "Hedgehog" in the Isaiah Berlin formulation [from his famous essay The Hedgehog and the Fox, where hedgehogs believe one big thing and foxes many things]. As a hedgehog, you’re in the company of people like Plato and Ibsen and Nietzsche who believed in one big idea. How did you first develop this idea of affirmative action by class, this notion that the world — thanks to the Supreme Court — is now catching up to?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I would say it goes back to my days in college. I read a book about Bobby Kennedy by Jack Newfield, called Robert Kennedy: A Memoir. In the book, Newfield talks about the ways in which Bobby Kennedy senses that we have important racial issues to address but at the same time, there are bigger class issues that we've ignored. That if you wanted to try to do something about it in this country, you had to build multiracial working class coalitions.
I'm a strong supporter of civil rights and addressing racial discrimination, but I think that at times the left has become so focused on race that we ignore this bigger picture.
My senior year, I did my thesis with Dick Neustadt at Harvard on Bobby Kennedy's 1968 campaign.
JON:
Neustadt was my professor in a class I took at the Kennedy School [while an undergraduate] on “The Uses and Misuses of History” that hugely influenced my thinking and, later, my Newsweek column, and we stayed in touch. He was not only arguably the best political scientist of the 20th Century — Presidential Power is a classic — he was a warm and wonderful guy. Sorry, please continue.
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I agree 100 percent. Neustadt was a phenomenal thinker and mentor. Anyway, I talked to a lot of Bobby Kennedy’s aides about the exciting things that he was doing to continue to push forward on civil rights. He had enormous support from Black and Hispanic voters, but he also managed to appeal to some white working class people who had voted for George Wallace for president and that's an exciting idea. Everyone thinks it's dead now that Trump came onto the scene and has done phenomenally well with white working class voters. However, to me it would be a tragedy for the Democratic Party to give up on this group of voters, many of whom are struggling.
JON:
Was there a moment when you realized that the Democrats were doing that?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Well, it's been an evolving process. Throughout the 70s, there were Nixon Democrats, then in the ‘80s, Reagan Democrats. Bill Clinton tried to change that some. But I think the key moment when there was an effort to really reject many working class white voters was in 2016. When Hillary Clinton described a group of millions of voters as “deplorables” — I think that had multiple consequences. First, it forfeits a huge piece of the voting population. Second, it signals that these voters are so beneath Democrats, so “deplorable” that it's almost wrong to even want their votes. Trump also helped convince Democrats that it was no longer a worthy project to try to recruit large numbers of working class white voters.
JON:
Well, Joe Biden still believed it was a worthy project, right?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Biden has done some some good things to try to attract those voters and it'll be fascinating to see what he does with the issue of affirmative action, because there's a huge opportunity for him to signal to working class white voters that — in addition to his strong commitment to black and Hispanic voters — he also recognizes that they struggle. Biden has, however, also engaged in a number of highly racialized policies that go beyond civil rights and non-discrimination and endorse racial preference. I think that will complicate his efforts to reach out to working class voters.
JON:
What are a couple of quick examples of that?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Well, this case is an example. Biden supported Harvard and University of North Carolina in embracing racial preferences that are not related to class. So Harvard has now become majority minority, which is a beautiful thing. It also has 15 times as many rich students as low income students. I have never heard any critique of that aspect of Harvard's policy and instead, there was kind of a full-throated endorsement [of affirmative action by race].
There were also some problematic policies that came up during COVID. In providing financial support for small businesses, restaurants in particular, the government gave priority to those owned by members of many groups. They essentially said, every group can benefit except for straight white men. I find that problematic especially from someone like Joe Biden, who historically has believed in the Bobby Kennedy coalition and has a bust of Bobby Kennedy in the Oval Office.
JON:
His son [Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.] is running against Biden. Let’s just drill into the COVID policy a little bit here, because how did that regulation actually read? What do you mean when you say it included everybody except straight white men?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
You could receive PPP money sooner if you are Black, Hispanic, Asian, female, gay or lesbian or a veteran. So the only category that’s not included was straight white men who had not served in the military.
JON:
My understanding is that this was done by encouraging government contractors to process the money through financial institutions that lent in under-served areas, where the money was moving more slowly.
Moving back to affirmative action in education: What was wrong with the Bakke decision and later the Grutter decision that the Court just struck down? [Regents of the University of California vs.Bakke in 1978 outlawed the idea of numerical quotas, but allowed colleges to engage in affirmative action; Grutter vs. Bollinger in 2003 gave colleges some latitude to make up a diverse class as they saw fit]. Sandra Day O'Connor raised the question of “when is this going to end?”. In 2003, she put a 25 year time limit on it, which we’re almost at, but what was wrong with those SCOTUS decisions as workable solutions that allowed colleges to remedy past discrimination and to make up a class with the kind of diversity that could enhance the college experience?
As a related question, why should the government tell colleges what to do in this area?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
The goal of creating a racially diverse class is one I totally support. There are enormous benefits in the college environment, and benefits for our society, in having elite colleges be racially integrated, because our leadership class is disproportionately derived from these institutions. So the goal is an important one. The problem is that universities took a shortcut in achieving that and instead of reaching out to someone who would be the quintessential beneficiary of affirmative action, someone who grew up in a tough neighborhood, who went to under-resourced schools and managed to do pretty well — they did something else. Elite colleges essentially brought together upper-middle class black and Hispanic people to be in school with white and Asian students who are even wealthier. It was racial justice on the cheap, it's a lot less expensive for a college to bring in those groups of students because you don't have to provide that much financial aid. 71 percent of Harvard’s underrepresented minority students come from the top socio-economic fifth of their minority population.
JON:
How much money is that a year, Rick? Are these people with families that have six figure incomes? Because the top fifth doesn’t mean very much if you're dealing from a relatively low basis. How about just looking at it in terms of financial aid? What percentage of the minority students are on financial aid at Harvard?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Well, I don't know the figure offhand. But that reaches up to $200,000 a year. So Harvard will brag about the fact that some large portion of its class get some sort of financial aid, usually around 50-60 percent. What's unspoken is that almost half the class can afford $80,000 a year, for four years, with two or three kids in college at the same time. It's not hard to get financial aid at Harvard.
JON:
So what we're talking about is Harvard and the University of North Carolina bringing in a lot of middle class and upper middle class Black and Latino students, not rich, as a way of meeting their diversity requirements and not working hard enough to get low income students of all races into their universities?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
That's right. The next question everyone has: why not just do both? Why not just push for [economic] class preferences alongside of racial preferences? And I tried that, back in 2003, after the Grutter decision came down. I worked with [then-Harvard President] Larry Summers and some others to say, “Let's build up our socio-economic diversity.” But there have been just massive financial incentives for universities not to do that. Every penny you spend on financial aid is money that could go to a faculty salary increase or more volumes in your library, and so that never happens. That's why the idea of class plus race, while theoretically enticing, never happens. However, when universities are forced to stop using race, they don't give up on racial diversity. We saw that in lots of states where race-based affirmative action was banned. They are now embracing a form of class-based affirmative action. A lot of them also got rid of legacy preferences and other preferences that tend to benefit wealthy white people.
JON:
So which state universities are doing it right, and what are their results? Might we take some comfort from this in the wake of the Court’s decision?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
The University of Texas is one that has done a good job. They have created the top 10 percent plan. So that if you do well in your high school, irrespective of your SAT scores, you are admitted to UT-Austin. The result was that they start admitting working class students of all races. That's where you did get a Bobby Kennedy coalition. You had rural white Republican legislators, teamed up with black and Hispanic urban legislators, to support this top 10 percent plan because UT-Austin had been monopolized by a small number of wealthy white suburbs and the private schools that are associated with those suburbs. So this opened up a whole new world to working class students.
There was research in 2012 that found that seven of 10 flagship universities around the country were able to get as much black and Hispanic representation using non-racial factors as they had in the past using race. The three outliers are ones you may have heard about: UCLA, UC-Berkeley and the University of Michigan. However, UCLA and UC Berkeley have recently ramped up their socio- economic efforts. They recently created their most diverse classes in 30 years. So it is possible to have both racial diversity and economic diversity when universities are forbidden from using race.
JON:
Right, so how will this play out in private colleges and universities that cannot use 10 percent plans and the like?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
My sense is that universities are deeply committed to racial diversity. It has become part of their DNA. Harvard will say that diversity is a hallmark of a Harvard education. So they're not going to walk away from racial diversity. Instead, they will adopt a number of things that they should have done years ago.
They should get rid of legacy preferences [for alumni], and they should get rid of preferences for the children of faculty, who are among the most educationally-advantaged students in the country. They should allow more really bright students from community colleges to transfer, as Amherst, UCLA and UC- Berkeley currently do. And they should give a meaningful break to working class students of all races.
In the litigation of the Harvard and UNC cases, we modeled what would happen and found they are able to produce strong levels of racial diversity and much more economic diversity. It's going to cost them more, but they can afford it. When they cannot, we need to see federal and state governments step up to provide more support for financial aid for these institutions.
JON:
So there's a chance for a kind of a grand bargain, where in exchange for not resisting implementation of this decision, colleges and universities would get additional state and federal aid. Is that where you believe we might be headed?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I think that's right. We've seen models for that. Racial preferences are deeply unpopular with the American public, but at the same time, Americans rightfully support racial diversity. They do not want to see higher education resegregated. So in states like Florida and Texas we saw conservative governors in the 1990s who stepped up to the plate and did provide more financial aid for working class students of all races because there was the political support for achieving racial and economic diversity without racial preferences. That's the sweet spot in the public opinion polling.
So I expect that there'll be strong support for that. Donald Trump has made white working class people the base of the Republican Party so it seems to me that it would be hard for people like him to say to working class white voters, “Okay, you've been screaming about affirmative action for years and now your kids can benefit from it, but I'm going to walk away from it under the new plan.” I just don't think that makes sense for conservatives.
JON:
But in the short term, won't there be some resegregation before these adjustments are made?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
In the very short term, evidence from the states where race-based affirmative action was banned suggests that it will take a while for universities to figure out the new path. I don't expect that universities will immediately implement the programs, but I think over the long term we will see better kinds of affirmative action programs that have broad political support, broad legal support, and will really help the students who need it most. We’ve been talking about white working class people who have been left out of affirmative action. However, I'm more concerned about the working class Black and Hispanic students who are virtually absent at these selective colleges.
JON:
Well, when you say take a while, how long is the transition? What you're basically saying is we're going to need to take a step back on diversity, so that we can take a step forward on fairness and diversity. But when does that happen?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Well, it depends on universities and public officials. But we definitely don't want to see Black and Hispanic enrollment plummet for any period of time and so ideally, they would move very quickly. I just know that some public officials and universities have taken a little while to move forward. My hope is that they can act very quickly.
JON:
Aren't they more likely to just do away with standardized tests, so that no one can argue that they are discriminating against white and Asian-American students with higher scores?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
That has been happening already. Lots of universities during COVID abandoned the requirement for SATs and ACTs and many of those policies are still in place. But that doesn't solve the racial and economic diversity problem. Because the base issue is that we have unequal public schools and unequal opportunity in America. Any indicator you use is going to reflect the fact that some students have overcome obstacles and others haven't. So whether it's teacher recommendations, high school grades, AP scores, success in extracurriculars (which cost a lot of money) — all these things are biased by class and have a racially disparate impact. So just eliminating one measure is not going to solve the problem for these institutions.
JON:
So after the Bakke decision in 1978 that basically outlawed quotas, colleges and universities said, “Okay, we don't use quotas anymore. We're not going to put anything on paper. We're going to have these things as goals.” It seems to me that what a lot of these colleges will do now is just no longer require the SAT. ACT, then say to possible litigants, “You can't establish any racial discrimination. On what basis could you do that? We don't accept SATs or ACTs anymore and these black kids we admitted had high grades. So we didn't discriminate in their favor.”
Is this a possible practice that some colleges might adopt?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
That won't work. When you have thousands of applications coming in, you have to quantify, otherwise the system becomes impossible to administer. So in the Harvard litigation, they had a score. They had a score for grades and extracurriculars and standardized tests. There was one controversial score associated with integrity that was seen as discriminating against Asian Americans. So if universities try to cheat and continue to factor in race in admissions, that will be detectable whether or not they use SATs and ACTs. There will always be quantitative measures.
Class-based affirmative action is a solution that is neither evading nor working around the Supreme Court. It is fulfilling what the Supreme Court has historically said, which is that racial diversity is a positive thing. But there is a [resistance] to using race as a defining characteristic that we're going to award substantial weight to. And that’s basically what the Court said in its decisions in the Harvard and UNC cases.
JON:
You wrote a book very critical of legacy admissions. Is this decision a death-blow for legacy admissions?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I think it will put enormous pressure on universities to eliminate legacy preferences. We saw that happen at UCLA, UC-Berkeley, Texas A&M, University of Georgia. When these institutions stopped using race, it became very hard to justify legacy preferences. There's always been kind of an unholy alliance between the consideration of race and legacy. It was useful to the civil rights community to point to legacy preferences as another example of deviating from traditional notions of merit in admissions. That dynamic will change once race is no longer available.
JON:
So could we end up concluding a few years from now that getting rid of legacy admissions and preferences actually helped get to a place where you had racial diversity through affirmative action by class?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Yes, legacy preferences tend to help wealthy white students. So if a university says “Listen, we believe in racial diversity, we're desperate for it. We have to do everything we can, within the bounds of the law, to try to achieve racial diversity through new means.” Getting rid of legacy preferences is the lowest-hanging piece of fruit because it's very unfair.
And [as explained in my book], there's no evidence that it actually increases donations. And it's a deeply anachronistic practice to begin with. We fought a revolution to get away from the idea of inherited advantage, an aristocracy and royalty.
JON:
How does it not increase donations?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
Donations do increase for legacy applicants when they're in high school. But as admissions have become more and more competitive, institutions have increasingly had to reject even the legacies. Then the parents are furious because they feel they’ve been told both that “Your kid isn't good enough for us” and “Even with a legacy preference, your kid is still not good enough for us.” It often makes parents so upset when their kid gets denied with a legacy preference that they cut off donations altogether, which offsets the [donations] they made while the kid was in high school.
JON:
I have classmates from Harvard who did this when their kid didn’t get in. Kinda pathetic, but I guess it adds up.
RICK KAHLENBERG:
It also makes no sense to the parents because they look at their kids and they say their academic records and everything else are more impressive than when I went. What that misses is that the whole process has become much more competitive over time.
JON:
How do you think this big SCOTUS decision will affect politics?
RICK KAHLENBERG:
I think there will be broader positive political ramifications. Arlie Hochschild did research on working-class whites and why they vote against their own self interests. One big theme was that these voters believed other people are cutting in line. She interpreted this as their negative views towards immigration and affirmative action policies that explicitly say, “We're going to favor someone based on race.”
So Barack Obama had it right when he said that his own daughters didn't deserve a break in admissions and that economically disadvantaged people of all races do. I remember talking to an Obama staffer and saying, “Well, this is fabulous, how can I help you implement that?” And her answer was, “He can't do this, his hand has to be forced by the courts.” That's what’s going to happen now. I think politically we will be in a much better place. For years, Democrats have been on the defensive, defending racial preference policies that are deeply unpopular. If the debate becomes “Should economically disadvantaged people get a leg up?” — that moves into favorable terrain for Democrats. I hope Republicans will go along but they may shoot themselves in the foot and go against a very popular policy of uplifting, hard working students who've overcome disadvantages. (To read the whole interview with Rick, click here).
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I hope that these two posts make your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th of July happier, knowing there are and will be solutions to the Court’s dreadful verdicts.
To Democracy!
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