Mismatch by Richard Sander

Author:Richard Sander
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2012-10-09T16:00:00+00:00

It was bad enough that Brodhead made no attempt to deal substantively with the problems Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Spenner had identified. Much worse was the unmistakable import of Brodhead’s words, even more than those of Lange and Nowicki, that Arcidiacono and his coauthors had engaged in research that was at best insensitive and at worst reckless and incorrect. Strikingly, Brodhead seemed to invoke academic freedom not to protect the professors—who felt hurt and stigmatized by the university’s actions—but Brodhead himself, as if to say that he might like to retaliate against the professors more directly, but academic freedom must stay his hand. His words also implied that research for its own sake would be tolerated but that to actually use research findings in a public policy debate (i.e., a Supreme Court brief) was going too far.

Interestingly, behind the scenes there was no sign of official disfavor toward Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Spenner. On the contrary, the university had provided the data the authors used in their paper, and administration officials seemed anxious to let them know that there were no hard feelings. Certainly no one ever suggested that there was anything incorrect in their findings or even anything improperly phrased. The public criticism, it seemed, was all for show.

We cite these events not because they are unusual but because they are so quintessentially typical. Research that documents the workings of racial preferences seems to experience one of two fates: It is either ignored or it is subject to ritualistic denunciations. One of us (Sander) could recount experiences at UCLA, following his own research on law school mismatch, that almost perfectly parallel—even in many of the words used—the events at Duke.

It is tempting to write off things like Brodhead’s speech as a necessary gesture to campus politics. But politics, in the end, is supposed to be about leadership and about moving from social argument toward institutional solutions. Imagine if Brodhead had said something like this: Arcidiacono, Aucejo, and Spenner have done exemplary research here. Their data are accurate, and other experts tell me that their analysis is correct on every point. Importantly, they have demonstrated that race itself does not affect outcomes at Duke, validating our efforts to create an environment where discrimination is either absent altogether or so minimal as not to affect academic performance. But they have also demonstrated that relative levels of academic preparation do matter, not for every individual but in a way that is somewhat predictable when we look across large numbers of students. They matter not only for grades but perhaps for learning itself, and apparently they have an influence on one’s choice of major and chances of successfully sticking with that major. This merits further research, but assuming these findings hold up, they suggest three things that we in the administration should be doing.

First, we should provide academic support counseling for students who wish to pursue STEM fields but enter Duke with lower-than-average levels of academic preparation. Through careful and rigorously evaluated support efforts, we may be able to improve successful persistence in these fields.

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