Columbia Defends Affirmative Action
By Omar Melhem, UPI Correspondent
Published 4/2/2003 6:19 PM
WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) — The president of Columbia University — speaking the day after Supreme Court arguments on affirmative action — said Wednesday he views affirmative action as the most important civil rights issue in the country.
Columbia’s Lee Bollinger added that he supports affirmative action in academia, saying universities are where young people with distinct cultural backgrounds and experiences are brought from all over the world to be educated.
“We (universities) bring people together from different parts of the country, geographic diversity. We bring people together from different parts of the world. We want international diversity. We want students from different parts of the socio-economic spectrum,” he told his National Press Club audience in Washington.
Bollinger’s appearance came one day after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Graty v. Bollinger.
They involve a “reverse discrimination” case filed by a rejected law student applicant against the administration of the University of Michigan law school. Bollinger was university president during the period.
“We made several decisions. One was to defend the lawsuits as vigorously and fully as possible. The second was to take this issue to the public and to explain candidly and openly and as persuasively as we could the reasons why this was important,” Bollinger said.
“It was a major decision to link the issue to the great Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. the Board of Education, when the Supreme Court said that separate but equal was no longer an acceptable constitutional principle for our society and you could not discriminate in education against African-Americans,” he added.
He said that at stake in the case “is all of higher education” and that “all selective universities have joined in to support this.”
“We want racial diversity — this is the way America is stronger, and we think that will happen because the young people who have learned in this environment will be better able to cross boundaries that exist in the society to this day,” he said.
Bollinger said his goal at Michigan was to defend the school’s position by articulating the importance of racial diversity in colleges and universities throughout the country. He continues to do same thing at Columbia. Bollinger added that the issue is supported by mainstream America.
Bollinger is a graduate of the University of Oregon. He clerked for three federal judges, including former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, before joining the Michigan law faculty in 1973, where he was named dean in 1987. He was named University of Michigan president in 1996.
April 7th, 2003 at 9:32 am
Has it crossed anybody’s mind that affirmative action is in itself racial profiling? I think that if you want the good aspect of a strategy, you have to take the bad as well. However, I am opposed to both racial profiling in the general meaning and through affirmative action. Take people for what they are, not what color their skin is or where they’re from.
Would appreciate replies.
April 9th, 2003 at 9:02 am
Has it crossed anybody’s mind that minorities aren’t treated equally in today’s society and never have been? Why does affirmative action exist? Have you been bamboozled?? I think so; obviously I agree with the fact that people should be taken for what they are and not their skin color or where they’re from. When it happens, call me. Until then Affirmative Action needs to exist. If I can make some correlation.. 40 yrs ago today I could be murdered, executed in broad day light and no would give a shit.
May 24th, 2003 at 3:26 pm
Yes, you “may” be right. But that was 40 years ago, NOT in today’s society. Supporters of affirmative action embrace and support racial diversity at the expense of human equality, which like it or not is discrimination, period. This talk about privilege, is one of social privilege rather than a racial privilege. To say that all people of one race are privileged because of that race is ludicrous.
August 23rd, 2003 at 3:03 am
Yes, I’m not only right, many books, papers, magazines and personal accounts of people being attacked, killed and severely injured by white persons has been recorded, even up to today.
“But that was 40 years ago NOT in today’s society”.
No offense but maybe you have been living under a rock. I can think of easily 10 names off the top of my head of people who were severely injured by people who claimed to even be racist. One that sticks out in my mind strongly is the fact that 3 guys decided to drag a black man via their pickup. How can you possibly say not in today’s society? That’s disgusting.
“To say that all people of one race are privileged because of that race is ludicrous”.
Ummm to say that all people of one race have proven exactly that; I’d say you’re pretty much wrong. You also fail to make a point based on your diatribe above. It not only irritates me to read that but it shows your blatant ignorance to what social factors exist and how to approach them in a manner that makes sense based on factual correlation of data. It’s like you read what I said but simply can’t comprehend it, so you dribble out the above.
March 10th, 2004 at 11:45 am
As of late I have been debating the idea of affirmative action, and I am starting to lean towards it. I believe in what Martin Luther King Jr. said, people should be judged by their character, not skin color. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks this way. In fact, a hell of a lot of people don’t think that way. The hope that the “honor system” in giving everyone a fair chance at the job can work, is a false one. People are judgemental. Plain and simple. Sometimes diversity must be forced in order for people to accept it. Just look at the civil rights movement in the fifties. It was forced and gradually people began to accept that blacks could go to school with whites.
I’ve also heard the argument that affirmative action is just compensating for the oppression that blacks were under in the past, and that it shouldn’t be in effect because the people that live today didn’t enslave them. While that may have some truth to it, it is also true that ever since those times, the majority of blacks have been lower class, many have lived in poverty. They were just thrown out of the plantations after the civil war with nowhere to go, and a great deal of them have had to live through that handicap since then, whether you agree or disagree, the plain truth is that when your ancestors are just thrown out on their ass, it is very difficult for future generations to climb out of that. On top of that we still have the racists, the bigots, the fucking KKK, the fucking south, waving their confederate flags, and while blacks try to overcome the handicap of growing up in the lower class and trying to make it, you have all these assholes trying to hold them back. But whats more, thousands are being thrown in prison when the crime doesn’t fit the punishment, disallowing them to vote to perhaps make things better for them (which is George W. Bush’s little trick for getting elected in Florida with the help of his little brother Jeb) when white corporate criminals who sell death to kids, make deals with doctors to diagnose every kid bored with class with ADD so their huge drug company can make more money, pollute more air, and create a bigger hole in the ozone layer are able to run free.
Thats the sick sad truth. So considering all this, whats wrong with giving minorities a helping hand rather than keep them down where they have been for years. Hey at least they can become sports stars and entertain all of us white folk out here on our sunday afternoon off.
Sorry about the lengthy post.
And the next time you hear or see someone get nervous around a black guy in a fubu shirt because “they look like a gang member,” remind them who invented the H bomb, and ask them whats scarier.