Did U of Michigan cook the diversity books?
That's the claim made by Chetly Zarko (believe it or not, that's his real name) of Ann Arbor. He runs a website called The Czar's Court, and his exclusive report says that the U of M conducted a student survey several years ago, which showed that African American students felt stigmatized by affirmative action. The university apparently covered up these results, and their public position directly contradicts it, as does the research Michigan commissioned after litigation began. Chet believes the survey results negate the U of M's arguments that ethnic diversity is necessary for the campus atmosphere, and that affirmative action helps minority students. He says that the survey was originally "cleaned" before being released, and he's also suspicious about the fact that one of the authors of the study, U of M professor Gerald Gurin, is married to Patricia Gurin, who gave expert testimony supporting AA.
Valid claim, or crazy conspiracy theory? You be the judge:
Since the secret and contradictory report was written at Michigan before the lawsuits, by researchers and decision-makers heavily in favor of affirmative action, it poses a more significant challenge to the legitimacy of Michigan’s defense...
The MSS was commissioned in March 1990 shortly after Duderstadt became president and advanced his diversity and multicultural initiative known as the ‘Michigan Mandate.’ A sample of students from the 1990-91 freshman class were given a detailed survey of political and academic attitudes upon entering U-M and at the end of each year thereafter, until they left in 1994. The advantage of such a “time-series” study was that it allowed the researchers to draw conclusions as to how student attitudes evolved, as well as providing traditional snapshot data. The study sought to identify “students’ expectations, perceptions, and experiences with respect to diversity, [and] explored differences and commonalities among students of different racial/ethnic backgrounds in many other areas of their lives—their goals and expectations of college, experiences with faculty, interactions with fellow students and extracurricular involvement,” and a variety of other factors.
The report began by noting that the only real difference between racial groups involves the social and economic backgrounds from which students come to the university. African-American students have statistically fewer financial resources and their fathers have had less education. According to the report though, “in contrast to these large group differences in background, financial support and concerns, few group differences were found when we examined students’ general college expectations and orientations that are not directly focused on racial/ethnic diversity and multi-culturalism"...
Essentially, this affirms the counter-argument to diversity that individuals from different groups don’t necessarily ‘think’ differently. The idea of imposing racial/ethnic diversity upon a student population because it will expose them to a wider range of ideas depends implicitly upon the idea that we have less in common than we have in differences. Indeed, the writers of the report were astute enough to see a danger that the ‘diversity’ argument brings in potential divisiveness.
Where there were “some differences which, though relatively small,” the conclusions drawn actually support the opposition to racial preference programs. Quoting the report, “students of color, particularly African-American students, less often feel that they are respected academically, and that their work is appreciated and fairly graded. This supports the concern in the literature on minority students that they feel stigmatized and academically disregarded by faculty at predominantly white institutions.” <>Here, the bias of the authors is reflected in how carefully they point the blame of “stigmatization” to the “predominantly white [nature of the] institutions.” It must be pointed out though that race preferences, ‘diversity’ programs, and the ‘Michigan Mandate’ were in full force during the study. An equally plausible explanation for the minor ‘stigmatization’ felt by minorities is that the existence of racial preference in admissions influences both self-confidence and the faculty’s confidence in minority students. ”
Read the whole thing, and decide for yourself.