The Case for Academic Meritocracy

As one awaits the crowning moment when the Supreme Court finally puts college affirmative action admissions programs out of their misery, emeritus law professor Alan Dershowitz reopens the debate and prepares the groundwork for accepting the court decision-- without having hordes of protesters tramping to justices’ homes and threatening them with bodily harm.

So, Dershowitz calls for a strict meritocracy, the kind that certain other countries, like France and China, have long since practiced. Efforts to admit, to promote or to hire people on grounds that have nothing to do with merit have been a calamitous failure.

Most recently, the Biden administration, what with the ascent of the cerebrally challenged Kamala Harris and a new incompetent press secretary, one Karine Jean-Pierre, has effectively made the case against diversity hires. Given that Joe Biden himself, hired as an exemplary senile old fool, embarrasses himself every other time that he opens his mouth, it is high time that administrations stop trying to look like America. 

Here is the Dershowitz argument. He calls for the abolition of all non-merit based admissions criteria. It is a good point, well worth making. One understands, incidentally, that legacy admissions are selected for the amount of money their parents can give to the school. If it looks like a racket, feels like a racket, and walks like a racket, it is a racket:

The time has come, however, for universities to abandon their efforts to achieve superficial, artificial diversity based on race. The coming decision would provide American schools with an opportunity to develop admission criteria based on academic achievement and potential—while abolishing such non-merit-based criteria as legacy status, athletics, geography and other nonacademic preferences. There would be resistance to getting rid of these advantages, but it could be done.

I believe the result of a merit-based policy would be more meaningful diversity. The result of such a policy would likely give way to more political, ideological, geographic, religious and other types of diversity that are at least as relevant to the educational mission of the university as race and ethnicity. I certainly am not asking for a return to “the good old days” of WASP dominance—those days were anything but good—but I am asking for an approach rarely attempted by American universities: pure meritocracy.

If universities were to institute a pure meritocracy they would certainly enhance the quality of instruction. As we have seen in many of the high schools across America, from San Francisco to Virginia, if you cease using merit-based admissions standards you end up with a number of students who cannot do the work, who require remedial classes, and who consistently fall behind. 

Colleges have tried to solve the problem by dumbing down certain majors, and by inflating grades. When Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, objected to the grade inflation in the African-American studies department, the cries of outrage drowned out everything else.

The side effect of a pure meritocracy would be a revival of the Humanities and Social Sciences, though one wonders how many teachers in those departments were also hired according to affirmative action criteria. It is going to take quite some time to clean out that swamp.

Dershowitz continues:

Use of merit-based standards would also end the need for bloated bureaucracies that enforce diversity, inclusion and equity mandates throughout universities—mandates that sacrifice academic goals to social, ideological and political agendas. Real equality does not require massive bureaucracies.

It is doubtful that any university with its current leadership and students would move toward a purely meritocratic system, even if its leaders believed that was the best approach. But it is the right thing to do—for universities and for America.

Dershowitz is not optimistic about the chances for implementing a pure meritocracy, but he is surely right. One wishes his arguments Godspeed.