By Gerhard Casper
Gerhard Casper is president of Stanford University. This article was adapted from
his Statement on Affirmative Action at Stanford University on October 4, 1995.
With increasing frequency, students, faculty, trustees, alumni and others have asked where Stanford should stand with regard to affirmative action. Reasonable people differ on what affirmative action means, has meant or ought to mean.
Government-mandated affirmative action began with President Lyndon Johnson's Executive Order 11246 of 1965. Affirmative action requirements applicable to the employment decisions of federal contractors, including universities, were substantially reinforced and extended under President Nixon. Most regulations originate with the executive branch rather than Congress, and require outreach, plans, goals and timetables. State regulations also come into play. Some affirmative action--for instance, in college admissions--is voluntary in the sense that it is not being mandated by government.
Affirmative action does not require, and does not mean, quotas or preferment of unqualified over qualified individuals. Indeed, such preferment may violate anti-discrimination laws. Affirmative action is based on the judgment that a policy of true equal opportunity needs to create opportunities for members of historically underrepresented groups to be drawn into various walks of life from which they might otherwise be shut out. Barriers continue to exist in society, and therefore affirmative action asks us to cast our net more widely to broaden the competition and to engage in more active efforts for locating and recruiting applicants.
Of course, the very act of broadening the competition means that more candidates will seek, and be considered for, the same finite numbers of admissions places or employment openings, and the competition for them will therefore be more intense. It would be hypocritical to suggest that affirmative action, even without quotas, does not diminish the opportunities for some who, in the past, might have benefitted from a narrower casting of nets or narrower definitions of merit.
For about 30 years, debate about affirmative action has been constant, though only occasionally very heated. In 1995, the discussion has become more intense and much louder. It is not sufficient to explain this phenomenon in terms of electoral politics. The politicians are responding to views and opinions whose forceful expression has triggered, and been triggered by, plans for a referendum in California. The "California Civil Rights Initiative," as presently worded, would prohibit using "race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin as a criterion for either discriminating against or granting preferential treatment" to anyone in public schools, employment or contracting. The initiative is not--at least not directly--aimed at private institutions such as Stanford University.
It is often unclear why a given public controversy erupts at a particular moment. It seems that a confluence of various trends has led to the present crescendo concerning affirmative action.
Let me speak about what Stanford has stood for since its founding. In a 1902 address, which formally amended the Founding Grant, Jane Stanford stressed that the moving spirit of the founders was "love of humanity and a desire to render the greatest possible service to mankind." I quote: "The University was accordingly designed for the betterment of mankind morally, spiritually, intellectually, physically and materially. The public at large, and not alone the comparatively few students who can attend the University, are the chief and ultimate beneficiaries of the foundation." The University's "chief object" was to be "the instruction of students with a view to producing leaders and educators in every field of science and industry."
The University's initial policy of not charging tuition was adopted, I again quote Jane Stanford, to "resist the tendency to the stratification of society, by keeping open an avenue whereby the deserving and exceptional may rise through their own efforts from the lowest to the highest station in life. A spirit of equality must accordingly be maintained within the University."
At Stanford, there are no restrictive quotas of any kind and admissions are decided without regard to an applicant's economic resources. Stanford seeks undergraduates of varied ethnic, social, cultural and economic backgrounds whose talents, achievements and characters suit them for leadership. In the case of every person admitted, there has been a judgment that the applicant is "deserving and exceptional."
A few categories of applications--certain ethnic minorities, legacies and athletes--receive special consideration provided they meet these requirements. Children of Stanford alumni receive preference among applicants of approximately equal qualifications, as do children of eligible faculty and staff. Furthermore, Stanford is committed to a substantial presence of African Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans in the undergraduate student body. Finally, the Department of Athletics may designate outstanding athletes for special attention. The Dean of Undergraduate Admission and Financial Aid has final authority over all admissions.
All applicants receive careful consideration and the admissions review takes individual circumstances of the applicant into consideration. These efforts aim at a class characterized by diversity in terms of academic interests, artistic and athletic accomplishments, leadership qualities, and ethnic and social backgrounds.
Why should we look for such diversity? First, we want a rich educational environment to challenge our students. Students learn much from one another. Second, we want to be faithful to our task to educate leaders for a diverse and complex society--a society that will, we hope, overcome the undue tendencies toward stratification. This cannot be done unless the country's demographic diversity finds a presence on campus.
We do not admit minorities to do them a favor. We want students from a variety of backgrounds to help fulfill our educational responsibilities, not, to my mind, to address the effects of historic discrimination, although that might be a result. University admissions offices are not set up to sit in judgment on what injustices society should compensate for and who should pay the price. Furthermore, who possesses the wisdom and insight for the task? Admissions decisions, on the basis of an applicant's demonstrated achievements, should be forward-looking. We must not admit some and thereby exclude others because we arrogate to ourselves the power to sort out who owes what to whom.
How an individual applicant has dealt with disadvantage obviously is relevant to assessments of capability and resilience. However, I am extremely wary of any admissions process in which economic and social disadvantage (including dysfunctional home environments) become categorical criteria to be formally weighed in decisions about whom to admit as a student. In order to survive as a sane society, we should not create incentives for ever more people to think in terms of victimhood or to play the role of victims, or to suggest that one must be disadvantaged to be given serious consideration in the college admission process.
I strongly believe it remains necessary to level the field, to recognize that there are vast differences between primary and secondary schools and how they develop ability, and to make conscious efforts to increase the presence of underrepresented minorities at all levels of society.
I am, of course, fully aware of the fact that my view of the matter leads me to take into consideration criteria that are very problematic. There is, first of all, the utter arbitrariness of racial and ethnic labeling. Boxes to be checked may look neat on paper but there is little underlying or inherent sense. What is race? What is a race? What is ethnicity? How do we deal with racial or ethnic mixing? Why is the child of a black parent and a white parent classified as black? Why does one-fourth American Indian ancestry qualify a person as Indian, while slightly less does not? Are the classificatory laws of apartheid South Africa what we end up emulating? Is our way out, self-classification, something to be fairly relied on? When government and courts dictate race relations, we quickly get caught in contradictions and absurdities.
I said at the outset that many who worry about the consideration of race and ethnic background in admissions and employment decisions worry about enhancing the balkanization of American society. Indeed, we must at all times guard against enhancing and freezing, rather than ameliorating, cleavages. We must call attention to the citizenship held in common. As concerns affirmative action policies--which raise issues that are among the most difficult that a society can confront--I think it is of the greatest importance that all those who participate in the debate refrain from demonizing their opponents. All of us, on all sides of the issue, are and will be open to criticism. The request I have to make of those who would be critical is that they also make the effort to understand.