A scholar responds that “diversity by intercourse is a bad proxy for the exact viewpoint diversity that makes a college bloom.”
For the first time in story, the incoming class at the California Institute of Technology is 50 percent woman, which raises questions from a legal professional about the importance of initiatives promoting gender equality rather than merit.
A report of the undergraduate school of 2028 shows the kids ‘ “gender diversity”, showing 50 percent of the students are female and 50 percent are feminine. The profile also breaks down the class by students ‘ race, financial aid awards, and home state or country.
” As one of the leading research and education institutions, we aim to recruit, enroll, and develop the world’s most talented students”, spokesperson Robert Perkins told The College Fix in a recent email.
” These students come from all backgrounds and communities, and it is in bringing together exceedingly bright, curious, creative, STEM-passionate problem-solvers that science, engineering, technology, and society advance”, Perkins said.
In an earlier this month article on its website, the private research university described the class gender demographics as a “historic milestone.”
Caltech has been “pilot]ing ] strategic initiatives” such as “targeted outreach and recruitment efforts” to increase the number of female attendees, according to the article.
These efforts are critical in order to” combat inequities” and “increase diversity among the undergraduate class”, the institution states.
However, a former assistant secretary of the Trump administration has concerns about the legality of Caltech’s efforts.
According to Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, “gender parity initiatives are typically unjust because they tend to involve disparate treatment and disparate impact on the basis of sex.”
No person in the United States shall, under Title IX, be prohibited from participating in, denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any educational program or activity that receives Federal financial assistance.
According to Kissel in a recent email to The Fix,” Disparate treatment and intentional disparate impact in university recruitment of students are even more clearly unlawful” in light of the Supreme Court’s rulings regarding Students for Fair Admission.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment was used to defame Harvard and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s race-based admission system in the 2023 decision.
The Caltech Equity and Title IX Office’s website states that the institute’s “policies and procedures against unlawful discrimination and harassment, sex- and gender-based misconduct, and related retaliation comply with important state and federal anti-discrimination laws, including Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 .”
Kissel claimed that the issue with gender parity initiatives goes beyond just legal grounds.
He claimed that in order to achieve social goals, they “nudge other people toward studies that they are not actually cut out for” and “disrespect women’s choices and try to persuade girls and women to do things they do not already want to do.”
Furthermore, despite Caltech reporting a lower graduation rate for men, the institute puts an emphasis on supporting the success of female students “via academic and career counseling” and “mental health resources”.
Additionally, the university has 10 affinity groups designed for women, but none for male students.
According to Kissel, these kinds of gender parity initiatives “almost always aim to lift up women at the expense of men, while the same institutions typically express no interest in supporting men when they are underrepresented.”
The Caltech media relations office did not respond to The Fix‘s inquiries regarding the fairness and legality of its initiatives to address gender diversity.
But its spokesperson, Perkins, told The Fix that the institute’s admissions office “furthers the Institute’s commitment to research and education by ensuring that the best and brightest STEM students know Caltech and that they are aware of the opportunities that our collaborative, interdisciplinary research and education community provides”.
He claimed that the admissions office also works to “promote a greater awareness” of the college to potential students.
Our campus community is committed to and invested in the success of all enrolled students while they are at Caltech and beyond once students matriculate, he said.
However, Kissel claimed that “diversity by sex is a poor proxy for the actual viewpoint diversity that makes a college flourish.”
” Diversity initiatives for the sake of counting identity groups are more of a socialist redistribution exercise or a project in cultural division than a genuine effort to bring diverse views into academic discussion,” he told The Fix.
With the spread of the transgender movement, Kissel claimed that it might be difficult to define what a woman is in the first place in some universities that have gender parity goals and initiatives.
At the bottom of Caltech’s article celebrating the incoming class’s gender diversity, a disclaimer reads:” Admissions data reflects students’ ‘ legal sex’ per national reporting requirements. Because students are not required to disclose their gender on college applications, admissions data may not accurately reflect the genders of the students they have lived with.
MORE: Group alleges MIT rejects male applicants for less-qualified female ones
IMAGE: fizkes72/Shutterstock, California Institute of Technology
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