Marty Lederman, who consistently writes thoughtful and detailed posts on the Balkinization blog, has post discussing Judge Alito’s involvement in Concerned Alumni of Princeton, a conservative group that, among other things, questioned the university’s dedication to co-education and the level of its commitment to affirmative action policies designed to increase minority attendance at Princeton. I think Lederman makes a fine point when he questions the gap between Alito’s citation of the group as evidence of his qualifications for a post in the Office of Legal Counsel and his more recent statement that he had no recollection of any significant involvement in the group.
But why does Lederman lead off by suggesting that CAP was “apparently devoted to the retention of quotas that had long excluded women and minorities from Princeton?” I read through most, though not all, of the materials cited by Lederman, some of which in turn rely on advocacy briefs by groups like People for the American Way. I did see evidence that CAP members opposed the move to co-education, so the first half of the sentence makes sense to me. But examined in isolation, it seems far less pernicious to me. Some people, to be sure, oppose any non co-educational environments — and others lopsidedly favor gender segregation that benefits women, but not the reverse. Those people will disagree with me that CAP’s argument could be seen as non-pernicious. But while I might disagree with a tradition of limiting attendance at certain universities primarily to men (or women!), I don’t find it everywhere and always outrageous that some alumni might believe Princeton should have remained a school primarily for men, and I suspect others feel that way as well; they may disagree with the position, but it does not engage their gag reflex.
The other half of the sentence is far more provocative for most people: the suggestion that CAP favored quotas that excluded minorities from Princeton. And here I didn’t see any evidence that CAP took such a position. Rather, the quotations I read seem to suggest that CAP believed the university had an unstated goal of using admissions policies to admit a 40% mix of women and minorities, and opposed what they considered a quota system designed to achieve that goal. To be sure, some of the arguments in favor of that position voiced in the materials seem asinine to me. But opposing preferential admissions policies is not the same thing as favoring “the retention of quotas that had long excluded . . . minorities from Princeton,” and I didn’t spot any evidence of the latter. Can anyone enlighten me? Or enlighten “us”: Lederman writes in his post that he knows very little about CAP and its policies. If that is so, I think his description of CAP, at least with respect to minorities, was somewhat incautious.
Posted by Paul Horwitz on December 2, 2005 at 02:15 PM
Comments
I doubt very much that there’s any reason to think Alito was motivated by a love of quotas. But, nevertheless, let us suppose he was so motivated. Following John’s logic, they agreed with the university on the appropriateness of quotas, but disagreed only on what the relative representations should be. Well, then, how on earth could they be outside of polite debate on the subject? At least they haven’t shown themselves to be devotees of merit, or some such.
Also: there is much suggestion that the reference to a 14% quota on admission of alumni children is somehow comparable to a quota of 11% for minority admissions, and that CAP demonstrated their hypocrisy when they opposed one as too low and the other as too high–the problem being that endorsing one means they’ve given up the game. But why would we suppose that? I mean, is there good reason to think that “merit”–however determined–wouldn’t have given us an admitted class at Princeton with, say, 20% alumni children but only, say, 5% minority children? (Recognize that these were not, generally speaking, overlapping groups.) That is, why don’t people recognize that quotas are caps as well as floors? When told that two numbers represent quotas, we shouldn’t assume that both are floors, and of course we should recognize that every floor implies a cap somewhere else.
Posted by: anon | Dec 3, 2005 2:26:22 AM
Looking at the materials I found googling (NYT, Nation, and Daily Princetonian articles), it appears CAP opposed the lifting of a supposed quota on the admission of women that limited them to 40%. The only information I’ve seen on minority admissions is objection to a supposed 11% quota as too high, at least as compared to a supposed 14% quota for alumni children, which CAP thought was too low. One could reasonably conclude that they wanted quotas but disagreed with the university on what the percentages should be. FWIW, I remember getting and reading Prospect Magazine as an undergrad, at roughly the same time Alito was writing his letter, but I remember no one who thought Prospect was at all within the range of reasonable debate (this under the editorship of D’Souza and Ingraham). My conservative friends tended to be embarrased by it (or at least said they were, which could of course be quite a different thing). Tiger Magazine did a wonderful parody of it in 1984 or 1985. But it has been a long time and I may be over-remembering the extent to which CAP was widely derided as fusty, irrelevant, stupid, and mean. But I do not remember it as a Princeton alumni version of the federalist society — much different, much less intelligent, and much nastier. Alito ought to be embarrassed (as indeed he appears to be given his “I don’t really recall exactly what my role was” answer to the Senate questionnaire).
Posted by: John | Dec 2, 2005 3:31:11 PM
I found this article by Stephen R. Dujack fairly informative, and he isn’t identified as an “advocate” (although why one would presume that advocates are inherently less credible than, say, the White House, is a curious question…)
For example, it reports on “co-founder Shelby Cullom Davis ’30 writing in Prospect, CAP’s member magazine, in 1973, that he could not “envisage” a future student body of 40 percent women and minorities. More important, according to a 1977 New Yorker article, the group used the same language in its fund raising.”
Posted by: Michael Froomkin | Dec 2, 2005 3:15:26 PM