In 1988, I became the unpaid volunteer Executive Director of an oranization called Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni/Alumnae Against Apartheid. or HRAAAA. In light of the Supreme Court's recent decision, I believe that a new organization should be formed, called HRAAALA, or Harvard/Radcliffe Alumni and Alumnae Against Legacies in Admissions.
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A Commentary on the Passing Scene by Robert Paul Wolff rwolff@afroam.umass.edu
My Stuff
https://umass-my.sharepoint.com/:f:/g/personal/rwolff_umass_edu/EkxJV79tnlBDol82i7bXs7gBAUHadkylrmLgWbXv2nYq_A?e=UcbbW0
Coming Soon:
The following books by Robert Paul Wolff are available on Amazon.com as e-books: KANT'S THEORY OF MENTAL ACTIVITY, THE AUTONOMY OF REASON, UNDERSTANDING MARX, UNDERSTANDING RAWLS, THE POVERTY OF LIBERALISM, A LIFE IN THE ACADEMY, MONEYBAGS MUST BE SO LUCKY, AN INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF FORMAL METHODS IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
Now Available: Volumes I, II, III, and IV of the Collected Published and Unpublished Papers.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON KANT'S CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for "Robert Paul Wolff Kant." There they will be.
NOW AVAILABLE ON YOUTUBE: LECTURES ON THE THOUGHT OF KARL MARX. To view the lectures, go to YouTube and search for Robert Paul Wolff Marx."
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- Robert Paul Wolff
- As I observed in one of my books, in politics I am an anarchist, in religion I am an atheist, and in economics I am a Marxist. I am also, rather more importantly, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a violist.
8 comments:
If you have a sincerely-held religious conviction against legacy admissions, you’ll be on safe constitutional ground. There’s a precedent for that.
Am I correct that this is another example of your ironic sense of humor?
Bitterly ironic. I mean it, but am well aware that Harvard would be more opposed to ending legacy admissions thnan they were to divestment.
I believe I finally get it.
It would easier to form a committee against war crimes in Ukraine or the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia.
Hey! Just where will those new buildings come from?
If they end legacy admissions at Harvard, there are a lot of currently unborn children who will be later harmed, afflicted with a sense of felt meaninglessness in life. I know a couple of dudes in their 70s who were legacy admits at Harvard, and who still strut around as if having gone to Harvard is their biggest achievement. It's like Jim Hightower's crack about Bush Sr.--a man who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple.
I have a couple of observations. (The second observation is longer than the first.)
(1) The real irony here is that if Harvard were to end the legacy preference, its donations would not suffer much. I believe that evidence from schools that have ended legacy preferences demonstrates that.
(2) I did not come from a wealthy family (by any means), but I had family connections to Harvard, so I was a legacy. (However, I also got into Swarthmore, where I had no family ties at all.) Would I have been admitted to Harvard if I hadn't been a legacy? For some people, this question is easy to answer yes or no -- i.e., their metrics were such that they definitely would have been admitted irrespective of legacy status or definitely would not have been. My best guess is that in my own case my legacy status did make a difference. However, if I were applying today, when getting in is significantly harder than in the mid-1970s, I would not be admitted, my legacy status notwithstanding. Final anecdotal remark: My 19-year-old nephew, who was/is a double legacy (i.e., both parents with Harvard degrees) applied and did not get in. Getting into the places today that take typically 5 percent or fewer of their applicants (as Harvard does) really is, as has been often said, a crapshoot. For most people -- unless they're, e.g., an unbelievably gifted student, a world-class musician, or a recruited athlete -- it's really a roll of the dice. That won't change as a result of the Sup Ct decision, though certain aspects of the admissions process will change.
P.s. Or unless they have, as a senior in high school, made a scientific discovery equivalent to the discovery of penicillin. Remove those applicants and certain others (e.g. star athletes, children of faculty, children of very large donors, children of real celebrities (e.g. Presidents, Sup Ct Justices, etc.) and you might as well just take -- despite all the care and the multiple reviews -- the rest of the applications and throw them down a staircase and pick some out at random from the resulting messy stack of paper.
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