Posted Sat, 06/11/2011 - 13:58 by Fishville
The Reichstag, Berlin, Germany. Photo Courtesy: Fishville
Fishville's Notes: This article written by William Chase pointed to the last chance for the affirmative action to be practicing in the United States. William Chase was former president of Wesleyan University and Emory University. We are not surprised to learn his favorite viewpoints on the civic and moral values of the affirmative action, he was fair enough in citing the balance opinions, an article worth reading from both sides. You would be interested to be informed that there were actually more resistances from the Democrat Party than the Republicans when The Civil Rights Act was put on a vote in the U.S. Congress in 1964 as we would expect a contrast result based on the current political landscape in the United States. Lyndon Johnson clearly indicated in his writing that his action on affirmative action would cost Democrat to permanently lose the South in which history has verified that prediction.
The two recent cases (Grutter v. Bollinger et al and Gratz et al. v. Bollinger et al.) on affirmative action against University ofMichigan were all associated with the name of Lee Bollinger, former president of U Michigan-Ann Arbor who is now president of prestigious Columbia University in New York. Only U.S. Supreme Court decision could possibly force Harvard or Yale to restore the justice with regard to their obvious discrimination policy to the highly qualified Asian and White students. The score differences are only a very small influence on admission decisions to students with Chinese last name, the real detrimental consequences would be related to the discriminated attitude from the admissions officers on student's extracurricular activity (including leadership, character and personality, the so-called soft index). That drama will be exciting to watch if some days in the future, the next Supreme Court case on affirmative action would come from a Chinese American student or parent, then we could call it "Li v. Bollinger" against Columbia University. Some of the contents from the articles were highlighted for simplifying the reading.
这篇出自威廉蔡斯的文章告诉我们平权法案在美国的实施已经到了最后的阶段。威廉蔡斯是卫斯理大学和埃默里大学的前任校长。我们并不惊讶他推崇平权法案在扶持弱者时体现的民权和道德价值的观点，但是他平衡而公正地引用不同的观点的做法使此文值得左右两派人士阅读。您可能很奇怪地发现1964年美国国会辩论民权法案时，投反对票的民主党国会议员比共和党议员还多，这恰好与当前美国的政治生态相反。当时的美国民主党籍的总统林登约翰逊明确写道，他对民权法案的支持将使民主党永久失去美国的南方。现在看来，约翰逊的预测已经得到历史的证实。
最近两次美国最高法院有关平权法案对密歇根大学的判决（格鲁特 诉。博林格 和格拉茨等人 诉。博林格等）均与博林格的名字有关。博林格是密歇根大学当时的校长和著名的纽约哥伦比亚大学的现任校长。只有美国最高法院的裁决才有可能迫使哈佛或耶鲁改变对优秀亚裔和白人学生录取的明显歧视政策。对于拥有华裔姓氏的学生来说考分已不是录取的决定因素, 真正的歧视将涉及到招生人员用领导才能，品格和个性等软指标来做决定。如果在不久的将来，下一个美国最高法院平权法案的案子是来自华裔美国学生或家长，那将是一个令人兴奋的戏剧值得我们期待和观赏。那么我们可以称之为“李 诉。博林格的哥伦比亚大学“。为简化你的阅读，我们摘录了文章里面的一些论述如下。
" From the article:
"One important set of studies, by Thomas Espenshade of Princeton University and his colleagues, examined the records of more than 100,000 applicants to three highly selective private universities. They found that being an African-American candidate was worth, on average, an additional 230 SAT points on the 1600-point scale and that being Hispanic was worth an additional 185 points, but that being an Asian-American candidate warranted the loss, on average, of 50 SAT points.