Missing the Point on Racial Preferences

If schools could promote diversity without lowering standards, we wouldn’t be having this debate, right?

Letter to The WSJ.

"Drs. Fritz François and Gbenga Ogedegbe laud diversity in medical schools but insist that it reflects no compromise in merit and quality (“Med Schools Are Wrong on Rankings,” op-ed, Feb. 16). They therefore express dismay and confusion when some diverse medical schools drop out of the U.S. News & World Report rankings. They write, “Even if these schools didn’t imply that diversity and excellence are mutually exclusive, that’s what they’re doing. It’s not an implication we can accept.”

Even a casual reader of the news knows perfectly well that increasing diversity means exactly that—admitting students with lower scores. The authors are pretending not to understand the entire debate over affirmative action: Whether it’s permissible, morally or legally, to grant advantage to someone with less merit, so as to increase diversity. If all these students had equally high scores, and schools could promote racial diversity without lowering standards, we wouldn’t be having this debate, right?

Ari Weitzner, M.D.

New York"