Author and social psychologist advances the view that affirmative action formulas once employed by college admissions deny equally the diversity of White and minority races

Also, stay tuned for J. Wyatt Ehrenfels's response, located at the bottom of this page, to Affirmative Action featured in the February 2003 issue of the American Psychologist. In his response, Dr. Ehrenfels remarks "We need psychologists to demonstrate the willingness and ability to penetrate the subtletly and complexity of discrimination in its broadest sense and to demonstrate a sensitivity to the inner life of the individual. But with a Washington Beltway tunnel vision, psychologists are blind to all subtle forms of discrimination that do not conform to their race consciousness, demographic and policy analysis, and political conceptualization of exclusion."

The embattled pro-diversity admission policy of the University of Michigan law school and college of arts and sciences became a subject of national debate when the White House Administration filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court to contest the constitutionality of the alleged quota system. The Supreme Court has since delivered a mixed ruling on the case, requiring admissions policies to abandon quick-and-dirty formulas that assign extra points for minority status in favor of a more thorough "holistic" review of each applicant.

"The guidance offered by the Supreme Court on the issue of affirmative action is no different than the one Wyatt Ehrenfels has been publicly promoting over the past four years," remarked a source with close ties to the author.

J. Wyatt Ehrenfels, self-styled pundit and author of Fireflies in the Shadow of the Sun, admitted personal involvement in the case against the University of Michigan, but downplayed his 1992 application to its graduate psychology program as the basis for his argument. "It may account for my motivation to express the argument, but it cannot explain away the logic of my argument," recounts Ehrenfels. "If you want to defeat my argument, you have to address it."

Ehrenfels's criticism of affirmative action has been wrapped up within a broader rant against what he called a "lazy and lying" applicant review process. "When admissions officers from flagship universities across the country now whine about having to employ more staff -- at great expense -- to review the applicant materials in the way instructed by the Supreme Court, doesn't that tell you something? For years now they have been requiring applicants to submit essays they weren't even reading. And I can tell you that this is not unique to admissions at the undergraduate level. This also includes applications to graduate programs and even post-doctoral teaching positions."

Ehrenfels took aim on the University of Michigan's public justification for the minority-boosting point system. "They created this cosmetic veneer of legitimacy when they cited research tying learning outcomes to diverse classroom environments. It's their contention that by increasing racial and ethnic representation on campus, they are achieving their primary objective of increasing the diversity of ideas and experiences. It is my contention that their primary goal is actually to promote racial and ethnic diversity and that, furthermore, the most effective means to achieve this would be to select applicants, regardless of color, with diverse ideas and experiences. Under their current method, the minorities selected from among their own pool are likely those with the best numbers. In other words, minorities are selected for their best approximation to members of the majority, a criterion just as indifferent to a diversity of ideas and experiences as any predating affirmative action.

But of course, there is no denying the classic argument against affirmative action, which is that there is no getting around the individual. Individual applicants, whether members of majority or minority races, do not want to be treated as representatives or instantiations of a racial category. They want to stand, be counted, and be judged for their ideas, achievements, plans, and potential. They do not want to be placeholders on a bookkeeper's legal pad, benefactor's charity roll, or pundit's score card. Unfortunately, a thorough exmaination of the individual is too much work for U. of Michigan officials, and they rely on some short-cuts, otherwise known as algorithms or heuristics, to widdle down that stack of application materials."

"Despite the implied handicap of being a white male, I bring many unique and diverse ideas to Psychology. Just drill down to the bottom of my web site and you will find wildly interesting or successful programs of research. If they truly desired original ideas, diverse experiences, and independent thinking, they would not flag my application as that of an 'anomaly' or 'imperfect fit,' they would not cast aspersions on my professionalism in end-of-academic-term evaluation meetings, and they would not stack the odds against those seeking to publish exploratory or phenomenological research. I find the implication that I am not diverse one of the greatest insults to my character and a gross distortion of what is meant by 'diversity.'"

The author also points out that there is more than one kind of diversity. "I think the goal of any diversity initiative should be a diversity of ideas. If you speak with U. of Michigan officials, many of them will tell you they agree with that goal. But if they did, they would spend more time getting to know the ideas of their applicants than attempting to take the short cuts involved in assuming complex ideas from skin complexion. While African Americans broadly embrace the idealism of affirmative action policy, they should feel slighted by the procedures and by that I mean the practice of selecting from among the African American pool the applicants with the highest grade point average and standardized test score rather than the applicants with the most interesting backgrounds, aspirations, or ideas. In effect, U. of Michigan admissions officials select those African American applicants who most resemble their Caucasian counterparts. Consequently, for all the U. of Michigan political posturing and rhetoric, the incoming classes can be aptly described as a racially and ethnically diverse group of like-minded students, ensuring each racial and ethnic group lays equal claim to mediocrity.

If you truly desire applicants with diverse ideas, then admit applicants with diverse ideas! But the implication that minorities have a monopoly on diversity (or for that matter even hardship) is an insult to the public's intelligence. While some might claim (as I once did) that the real losers here are impoverished white males disenfranchised by political fashions, we're all losers. Even more egregious is the effect on impoverished white persons with original ideas and unique experiences from all races and ethnicities. Some individuals have multiple disadvantages, including poverty, originality and, okay, let's be frank, the notable handicap of being white and male in a world that wants to allocate extra points to African American, Hispanic, female, and lesbian & transgendered persons (as if all such individuals must possess diverse ideas to match their diverse skin color)."

"This whole race and ethnicity thing is either a major ruse or a rousing coup for the intellectually degenerate. Personally, I think U. of Michigan officials enjoy their excursions into social policy. Just look at the publicity for the U. of Michigan and for their Civil Rights cause! Everyone has U. of Michigan on the mind, and U. of Michigan officials are tauted among minorities as saviors. They are positioning themselves as the modern equivalents of Martin Luther King, Jr."

Ehrenfels also comments that these policies have violent effects on the individual. "You just can't deny that the vehicle of all life is the individual. Our policies should respect the integrity of the individual and put fate in the hands of the individual where it belongs. There is no better way to suppress idea development than to send a clear message that ideas are less important than skin color and that a person is an instantiation of a demographic group." Ehrenfels also notes a hypocritical trend in which vocal advocates of racial and ethnic diversity suffocate the diversity of ideas. "You see it in college professors all the time. I think their fetishistic rhapsodizing about multiculturalism and Civil Rights conceals and compensates for their patrician fears of other intellectuals and those with an appetite for independent thought. They would much rather have as colleagues a racially diverse group of shallow and like-minded thinkers and that is precisely what they work to achieve. You want diverse ideas? Then be open to diverse ideas! But these academics are interested primarily in learning, which is an important distinction, as learning here implies the likelihood an applicant will absorb their policies, procedures, and prejudices like a sponge. 'Perfect fit' is as much a buzzword as 'diversity and multiculturalism.' Minorities who grow up feeling they are not likely to receive many opportunities in life make the most of those they are given and have proven they can follow the rules and imitate their models with great enthusiasm. Like many of their career-driven Caucasian cohorts, they follow the reinforcement gradient, behaving as expected, and developing views and attitudes secondarily in slavish compliance with their behaviors. Many of the fledgling female professors model a fierce professionalism that exceeds that of their program directors and other administrative savants.

"But you have to avoid crucifying divergent and flexible thinkers who do not wholly identify with a demographic group, be it a race, ethnicity, or even a professional guild. Until you do, there will be no genuine equality, and no genuine freedom. Just administrative savants seeking ways to balance inquities across demographic groups. Just people forced to comply with policies to meet racial and ethnic quotas. Just a world in which everyone is treated as an instantiation of a demographic variable. Sure, a few more minorities may be granted access to amenities, but I suspect not to opportunities. But we're essentially inviting them to join the ranks of indentured servants and other creatures of imprimatur. They will be born into a world in which they are denied the same opportunities to think as everyone else and will have to content themselves with the social and material amenities and resources they were given in exchange for surrendering their freedoms and wits. That's assuming such freedoms and wits were there to begin with. Psychology professors are quite adept at selecting applicants with no wits to cede and no freedom to choose its abrogation. Such applicants are malleable. It is easier to make someone in your own image without first having to break them down. And minorities, especially those eager to thank anyone for just giving them an opportunity, fit the bill."

"Until you are willing to open yourself up to a range of ideas, I am afraid your thinking on this matter is as black-and-white as it is skin deep. This is not really about ideas and the administrators at the University of Michigan know this quite well."

Ehrenfels also voiced his concern with a related trend in the hiring of counseling psychologists. "I have made an example on my web site of a friend who is on the verge of dual doctorates in psychology, one research PhD and one practitioner's PsyD. She also received her BA from a rather venerable and prestigious university with an international reputation for scholarship. While 90% of her cohorts applying for internship received one of their top three choices of internship site, this person was passed over altogether despite having applied to twice the number of sites as the average applicant (and despite the fact she did not restrict her applications to local institutions). I am sure this had something to do with her disability, which is a rather unsexy demographic group with no minority privileges. Upon completing an unfunded and unaccredited internship she found through the clearinghouse, a counseling center, her post-doctoral job opportunities are pretty much restricted to counseling centers. But with all her training and education, and all the work she did with diversity groups as a counseling intern, you would think she'd have her pick of counseling jobs. Unfortunately, all the counseling position announcements in no uncertain terms indicate a strong preference for someone who has specialized in this or that 'diverse' group, usually gay and lesbian issues or gender identity. As she waits long for an interview which I have to say frankly may never come, she watches as colleagues, graduates of master's programs, pick up all these counseling jobs. It would be very disturbing indeed if my dually-doctored friend ends up on the outside looking in, no job and steep loan debt, when these positions are offered to people with less than one doctorate, less training, and less education, selected solely on the basis of their sexual orientation or work with students with gender identity issues. Not that it would surprise me. The first two issues of the journal The Counseling Psychologist, arrived at my friend's doorstep the other day. No where on the cover was there any indication that these were special issues devoted to gender themes, and yet almost every article in these two journals were devoted to gay & lesbian issues."

Ehrenfels does not voice his opinions without fear of being branded a racist. "The other day I received an e-mail from a graduate student at a university in the city of New York responding to this report on the University of Michigan's affirmative action policy. I was called a fascist and neo-conservative. This is emblematic of the violence to which many pro-diversity advocates will resort to discourage the expression of views like my own, which I defend to this day is one that is pro-diversity. This individual knows nothing of my political affiliations, ideology, or voting record and he seems disposed to award sympathy only to those whose claim to pain or suffering is somehow legitimized by skin color. You have to examine these claims on a case-by-case basis. Even though I am not a member of an ethnic or racial minority group, my experiences constitute a pretty strong case for discrimination through a pattern of adverse effects related to my style as a thinker and to the phenomena in which I am interested (or by exclusion, the style I do not exhibit or the phenomena in which I am not interested).

"Nevertheless, I am sensitive to instances of all kinds of discrimination. But you can't solve this problem by forcing a culture of race-consciousness and robbing the individual of his self-determination. College campuses today look like mini-UNs with all the clubs and groups and lecturers devoted to issues like race and gender identity. Some students can be forgiven for feeling that institutions of higher learning have been robbed of their academic imperative and transformed into agents of socialization and social experimentation. We need to found new colleges where education is primary and reserve admission to mature students who are not desperate to resolve some racial or sexual identity issues, who are not inclined to treat the college campus like a public pool or bath house, or who are not itching to participate in a war with individuals who identify with rival minorities. I somehow cannot help but feel I was being punished for having matured well before high school, and for not bringing any psychological baggage to college with me."

While Ehrenfels compares the college campus to an island, isolated from the adult world, he acknowledges trends on campuses that are symptomatic of broader trends in society. "I have documented within psychology alone this tendency of students to borrow this one-size-fits-all identity from the profession in which they seek membership. Personal and, yes, even professional, development is stunted by a premature and comprehensive enmeshment of the individual within some cultural group. How is that person within us, the DNA of psychological development, expected to unfold if we continue to base our own decisions and self-image on identifications with demographic groups? We have definitely lost that instinct to self-discovery and development which may be related to, but is clearly distinguishable from, pressures from outside us. The true individual who is able to mature this way will have to struggle to find his place in a world of increasing pressures to uniformity and identification."

Ehrenfels points out the hypocrisy in the denizens of our racial, ethnic, and even gender consciousness. "Many of us happen to be silent members of even more victimized groups. What about short men? What about introverts? What about independent thinkers? What about unattractive women? These people face a prejudice as systemic as it is covert. The individual himself, or herself, is a minority, as an increasing number of persons allow themselves to be defined and determined by outside agencies and reference groups."

For Ehrenfels, the individual and the idea is the indivisible unit of experience and that truth, health, and beauty is achieved by being an "individual in society" and thereby living on the experiential plane.

My Take on the Lead Article in the February 2003 issue of the American Psychologist: Affirmative Action: Psychological Data and the Policy Debates (Crosby, Iyer, Clayton, & Downing, 2003)

The authors of Affirmative Action would have us believe that the policy of affirmative action, notwithstanding its effectiveness in improving diversity, "conforms to the American ideal of fairness and is a necessary policy."

While I think it is acceptable for courts to mandate preferential treatment as a means of targeting certain organizations for remediation after a pattern of racial or ethnic discrimination is established, I oppose an indiscriminate and voluntary application of quotas or of the practice of weighting applicants by their demographic group. While I applaud Crosby et al. for elucidating the differences between preferential treatment and affirmative action, I think Crosby fails to apply some of their own learning to the University of Michigan and related cases. For example, while the affirmative action plans required by EO11246 call on employers to determine whether minorities with requisite skills are available and whether the current workforce proportionately reflects this availability, it is unclear whether the University of Michigan researched this basis in ascertaining a need for preferential treatment in the form of weighting. Judging from statements by University of Michigan administrators, it would appear that the University of Michigan instituted preferential treatment for the sake of diversity on the grounds of research indicating a diverse learning environment is associated with exposure to new perspectives and with "deeper, more complex learning." I have not yet reviewed the methodology of the inhouse Michigan research (Gurin study), but a review is not necessary at this time given my argument does not depend on invalidating the study conclusions. (A review of the research is forthcoming). I oppose the implication that the primary role of colleges and universities is the socialization of students into LBJ's Great Society. While citizenship standards are important, there is more to education than learning how to interact with minorities and I think there is an untested assumption that the "deeper, more complex learning" is generalizable to one's college coursework, unless of course the only courses in which students are enrolling are ethnic studies courses (which would not surprise me given the direction of curriculum development). The positive outcomes cited by the authors of the Gurin study include (1) "enrolling in an ethnic studies course," (2) "attending racial/cultural awareness workshop," (3) "discussing racial/ethnic issues," and (4) "socializing across race." Now that I know the specific outcomes, I feel that I have been misled (possibly by myself) to believe that a diverse learning environment translates into greater comprehension of material presented in physics, philosophy, or even psychology. Having no prejudices or problems interacting with others, I am outraged that colleges and universities can be transformed from academic institutions into agents of social experimentation and democratization. Despite my near 4.0 GPA and history of precocious and independent reading and research, I had difficulty gaining admission to reputable undergraduate institutions because I failed to meet an important social requirement of the period. I was not 'well-rounded,' well-roundedness conceived as having participated in social clubs and activities like sports. (When cornered for an explanation, admissions agents verified that my role as editor of the high school literary magazine and my employment through Distributive Education Clubs of America was neither sufficient nor apropos).

Don't get me wrong. I agree that there are institutional mechanisms in place (e.g., standardized testing and advanced placement courses) that inadvertently disadvantage minorities. However, that being said, standardized testing (against which I have lobbied for years) works against all individuals prone to process material in a deep, complex way, and also disadvantages students when employed as superfluous grounds for evaluation. When I applied for graduate schools in 1992, I brought an interesting GRE score profile to the process. I was in the 98th percentile on the Verbal scale and the 92nd percentile on the Psychology subtest scale, and yet one of the reasons cited for the fact I achieved only 3 interviews and 1 admission out of 40 applications is my mediocre Quantitative (50th percentile) and Analytical (50th percentile) scale scores. These scales were valued as predictors of performance in graduate psychology Statistics courses, and factored into my disqualification despite excellent grades across a greater-than-average number of undergraduate statistics courses (fulfilled at multiple universities), including two required courses in Statistics, and electives in Statistics II, Tests & Measurements, and the Psychology of Individual Differences (which deals in abstract mathematical concepts). I am aware of widespread and ingrained prejudices in the process and criteria for selection of students and faculty in psychology, but preferential treatment for ethnic and racial minorities only compounds the discrimination.

We need psychologists to demonstrate the willingness and ability to penetrate the complexity of discriminatory practices in selection and to demonstrate a sensitivity to the individual psyche. But with a Washington Beltway tunnel vision, psychologists are blind to all subtle forms of discrimination that do not conform to their race consciousness, demographic and policy analysis, and political conceptualization of exclusion.

Applicant with Double Doctorate Advised to Feign Bisexuality for Hiring Competitiveness