start with the general point that social elites need to replicate themselves, one way or another. Otherwise they tend to fade away;
At first, I had a hard time figuring out what he meant. So here was my thought process:
In context, Cowen seems to be defending non-merit based means by which an elite replicates. That is, to be a replicating elite, you have to give unfair advantages and disadvantages to people trying to join the elite. As another example, he writes,
I was struck by a recent paper showing that “almost 80 percent of the faculty at a top 10 economics department did their Ph.D. in a top 10 department.”
It is possible that this shows the ability of top departments to select the most promising students, so that if you don’t get into a top 10 department you are probably a clod. I am sure that is what the departments themselves believe, and if it’s true, then the paper is uninteresting. On the other hand, it could be that hiring at top departments is a game of “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” played by thesis advisers. If that is the case, then what you have is selection for orthodoxy.
I think both mechanisms are at work. The lesser departments tend to get a fair amount of clods to work with. And the better departments give an unfair disadvantage to heterodox thinkers.
So I think that what Cowen means by an elite “replicating” is something like this:
An elite replicates if the selection process for new members ensures that they tend to respect and enhance the status of incumbent members. That is, I would replace the word “replication” with “holding onto status acquired when you became a member.”
The potential problem is that the goal of protecting the status of existing members may cause too much diversion away from true merit. I believe that this is what has happened in many academic disciplines. Cowen may disagree.
Next, you can ask what would happen if whites became a minority at Harvard. Would current white Harvard alumni (the relevant incumbents) lose status if newly-admitted Harvard students were heavily Asian? One way to read Cowen is that Harvard is acting as if it believes this to be the case.
Next, you can ask what would happen if whites became a minority at Harvard. Would current white Harvard alumni (the relevant incumbents) lose status if newly-admitted Harvard students were heavily Asian?
Long term I am dubious of this as most higher California Universities are Asian background dominated and even actively going after foreign Asian students. (Note of most native Californians are used to fact their higher math classes tend to dominated by Asian background students.) Some might think it is true but I bet it would be that big. (And really how much alumni know about their faculty.)
Whites are already a minority at Harvard (47%, despite being 72% of the population). That’s before spiking out Jews. If you believe Unz numbers whites and Jews are splitting the remaining 50% or so equally, but even if you don’t the Jewish numbers would no doubt be quite high. Whites are 1/3 to 1/2 of their general population and likely their smart fraction population. They are also disproportionally whites of a certain type (not the type that feel sympathy for the deplorables).
There really isn’t much left in the white well to pull from to get Asians from 20% to 40%.
It’s going to have to come from other groups too. Blacks in particular seem way over represented (15% versus 12% of population and maybe 1% of smart fraction). There are also the slots taken up by the kids of foreign oligarchs. Truth is they could find the numbers to make it work if they really wanted to, even while keeping some token “critical mass” around.
The issue is more then Asians despite having numbers, high IQ, and a powerful country of a billion plus that owns our government debt aren’t really “owners”. They are servants of the elite, dutifully making the hardest functions in our society work for UMC wages that barely pay the rent on the coasts, while others get rich and make the laws the govern society. At 40% they would be independent enough to challenge for leadership.
That’s why the 20% cap is everywhere, especially in the Northeast. It’s there at private elementary schools. It’s there in trying to shut down Asian magnet schools. It’s there in the bamboo ceiling. Enough to do the hard work, but not enough to lead!
Some say this is Asian personalities. That might be true in the sense that Asian traits aren’t what make you rich and powerful in society as structured today. However, we ought to ask if the people currently being made rich and powerful have traits that are good for the rest of us! Maybe a few more pragmatic, polite, conscientious, STEM and reality oriented Asians in elite leadership might be better for Americans. Getting power and using it for the countries best interests take different skill sets. Harvard only seems concerned with the former.
Harvard should have been increasing Asian enrollment 1-2% a year to manage to some level that balanced their growing power with incumbent interests. Instead it slammed down to 20% hard and kept it there for too long.
The heterodox Razib Khan had an interesting post on just this, Making What Harvard is About Transparent.
The issue is that Harvard doesn’t teach noblesse oblige or select for it. At best it selects and teaches for a substitute, one that is laced in a poison pill that requires blaming the same elites failures on half the country and supporting a lot of ideas that have failed.
I’d take my chance with more Asian grinds. I don’t know how much noblesse oblige they would feel for me, but at least they don’t seem to hate half the country instinctually or share the ideology which demands it.
Asians will have a harder time doing what Jews did because:
1) They can’t pass as white
2) Jews intelligence maximum is verbal (better for law, business, and opinion making) while Asians intelligence maximum is for STEM (hence why we don’t find the same degree of Asian quota on the west coast).
3) There are just too many of them. While Jews have very high IQ, they’re percent of the population is low enough to provide a natural cap even if you let them all in on merit. If all of the high IQ Asians in Asia came over they would swamp the smart fraction in this country.
Living in California, you surely could surprise me that Asians are not doing well here. And you don’t to pass for white to successful here. The head of Google is Indian Immigrant! Anyway I think what most miss about California (and Washington) is our state economy and society has a lot of Asian influence here.
Harvard is considered a private university, but it receives vast amount of public funds and support. The moral case for such heavy public funding is to advance knowledge and created skilled citizens that benefit everyone in the nation. When Kling mentions a purpose to “respect and enhance the status of incumbent members” that’s an unjustifiable use of public money and support.
How should elites replicate? That isn’t my concern. However, I don’t think they deserve such vast public support + funds to do it. Bryan Caplan said he supports the separation of school and state and also AnCap, but notably he fully supports the right of publicly funded universities to discriminate how they choose and raise status of insiders and incumbents and lower status of outsiders.
Yes, it’s something of a status cartel, I would say, but you’re overlooking the fact that people also try to use institutions like Harvard to pass status down to future generations, and nobody likes nepotism when it’s someone else’s kid that’s benefiting.
Seconded.
This day has been a long time coming. Looking back to April 7, 2013 there was an interesting article on assortative mating published in The American Interest entitled “Elites Close Ranks Around Ivy League Intermarriage” that stated:
Today’s blue meritocracy, the degenerate descendant of the upper middle class Progressives of the early 20th century, has a problem: it is formally committed to ideas like equality, social justice and an open society, but what it really wants to do is to protect its own power and privilege. The Ivy League system of elite colleges is a key element in the system of exclusion and privilege that helps perpetuate both the power of the American elite and its comforting delusion that because elite status is based on ‘merit’ it is therefore legitimate.
This aristrocratic tendency corrupts the admissions process. Once upon a time SAT scores were said to correlate with general intelligence (IQ). Now, my general impression from grazing the tabloids is that those days are long since gone and the SAT is just a measure of how well you were coached to take it. This of course further enhanced the power of exclusion until Asian Americans crashed the tea party.
Griggs v. Duke Power also cemented the status of the Ivies. Without actual intelligence measures to work with, educational name brands had to suffice.
And we see a similar pattern in Federal civil service accessions where objective measures were dispensed with decades ago and elites given the authority to “hire the right types” who could be considered the “best and brightest” despite all evidence to the contrary. Most DC federal jobs now appear to be reserved for volunteer alumnus of the Center for American Progress, a clan within which significant interbreeding occurs.
All of this would appear to be entirely natural and consistent with the sociology of humans as a species. As social animals we form groups to advance our offspring’s reproductive intererests. All this twaddle about egalitarianism is best understood as a reproductive strategy. There is nothing inherently evil about exclusion when understood in the proper context.
The proper response is not to decry other social groups for doing what comes naturally. Rather, non-elite groups need to exclude the influence of the corrupt ancien regime from their worlds. When subjugation is the only force providing social coherence for an old elite, it is time to break up into smalller groups.
During the Renaissance, numerous city states flourished and produced one of the great moments in all human history. We are now stuck in a dark age. How might we thrive if the failed US republic was put out of its misery and a thousand flowers allowed to bloom?
An interesting and relevant example of what happens when an authentic elite from outside the ancien regime succeeds in cracking through the Ivy League glass ceiling is described today in an article entitled “In Oklahoma, a ‘Transformative Leader’ Brings New Vision to University” by Brandon Dutcher on the James G Martin Center for Academic Renewal web site (h/t George Leef on National Review). The article describes the awe-insping achievements of a non-Ivy Leaguer, James L. Gallogly, and his success in upsetting comfortable sinecures no doubt disproportionately incumbered by Ivy Leaguers.
The article states:
His first day in the office, Gallogly fired six high-ranking administrators before lunchtime. He announced an executive restructuring which reduced his number of direct reports by nearly a third. “When our university strives to be more efficient and cost-effective, college can remain within the reach of more students,” he said. “During this time of change, we will continue to focus on academic excellence, student success, employee engagement, and efficiency. These first steps are needed to help maintain current tuition levels and work toward faculty pay raises.”
Imagine that. Not attempting to load down the proles with enormous student debt burdens so as to squash their reproductive potential. Lest one doubt the significance of assortative mating amongst the elites, “Opting Out among Women with Elite Education” by Joni Hersch (Hersch, Joni, Opting Out among Women with Elite Education (April 24, 2013). Vanderbilt Law and Economics Research Paper No. 13-05. Available at SSRN) found that:
This paper shows that female graduates of elite institutions have lower labor market involvement than their counterparts from less selective institutions. Although elite graduates are more likely to earn advanced degrees, marry at later ages, and have higher expected earnings, there is little difference in labor market activity by college selectivity among women without children and women who are not married. But the presence of children is associated with far lower labor market activity among married elite graduates. Most women eventually marry and have children, and the net effect is that labor market activity is on average lower among elite graduates than among those from less selective institutions. The largest gap in labor market activity between graduates of elite institutions and less selective institutions is among MBAs, with married mothers who are graduates of elite institutions 30 percentage points less likely to be employed full-time than graduates of less selective institutions.
I don’t see what sort of relief the plaintiffs in this case are expecting or what sort of damages can be assessed. Let’s say an Asian applied to Harvard 5 yrs ago and had good grades and was rejected. Would be he addded to part of a class action.
I don’t see what sort of relief the plaintiffs in this case are expecting…
They’ve asked the court for “a permanent injunction prohibiting Harvard from using race as a factor in future undergraduate admissions decisions.”
It’s a very rare remedy for a civil suit, especially because the current plaintiffs won’t have any harm redressed, and the (direct, individual) benefits are expected to flow to current minors – that is, future applicants – who wouldn’t ordinarily have standing and are not proper parties to the suit.
However unfairly, a good number of racial preferences affirmative action cases get thrown out for similar rationale, as judges look for ways to avoid touching such radioactive issues if they can, or to leave the status quo in place without having to explain themselves, which is a recipe for incoherent embarrassment (as Justice O’Connor embarrassed herself in Grutter). Often one has to persuade the judge that there is literally no other plausibly suitable remedy available.
I certainly hope they win. I otherwise might presumptively support a private institution’s freedom of association (at least so long as they don’t take public money). But in this case Harvard – and especially David Card who has behaved completely disgracefully and revealed himself to be a shameless hack – has been so dishonest in the manner of defending itself. Should elites reproduce themselves by means of brazen and obvious lies?
But even if the Asian groups prevail and get the injunction , it had better be self-enforcing, that is, handing over all Harvard admissions data every year for at least a decade to a outside and disinterested supervisory board with clear standards for determining racial transgressions and the right to refer violations back to the court for additional sanctions.
Otherwise they’ll just wing up with a California Prop 209 problem when the people officially outlawed racial preferences in admissions, but, as Richard Sander rigorously demonstrated, only to have administrators ignore the law after the first year has such ‘shocking’ results, and keep up doing what they were always doing, indeed, even more so in some cases one clever circumventions were established.
https://nypost.com/2018/09/01/california-passed-an-anti-affirmative-action-law-and-colleges-ignored-it/
Indeed. The main problem is that its obvious there is a 20% Asian cap. Not just in the Ivys, but in private schools of all age groups and corporate boardrooms. And we all know by Asian we mean East Asian, especially Han ethnics.
There is some talk about how one could ban personality scores while keeping affirmative action, but since personality scores are just the X variable used to achieve the quota, another would replace it. Punting it back to the schools will likely result in no meaningful change.
It seems to me that if the court wants to get Asians what they want (more slots) it can either maintain legal logic (ban race entirely and enforce it) or blatantly say it’s in the business of ethnic power horse trading (just tell people they need X% of each group). In a way that’s practically what they did in 2003 (this is totally illegal and immoral, but we are going to allow you 25 years to be illegal and immoral).
Here is my list of things colleges might to do maintain the illusion of compliance while keeping the Han % down.
1) Personality Scores will be made illegal, but they will come up with some other way to get to 20%.
2) Harvard will increase its Asian %, but it will be from compliant low IQ “Asians” that hit the census definition but can be counted on to behave as clients like blacks. High IQ East Asians won’t be given more slots.
3) High IQ Indians will be recruited more but the East Asians/Chinese will be shut out. A message will be sent that they shouldn’t have crossed Harvard.
4) They will recruit more East Asians, but will double down to make sure that every single one of them are selected for progressive bonafides and lack of loyalty to their own people.
5) They will accept some dumb Asians to say that the average SAT score of Asian admits is not equal to whites. This can loop into #2.
Also note that elite replication is only stable if future generations of elites replicate using much the same criteria as this generation. If we let the Example-stani population dominate on test-taking merit in one generation but the Examplestanis, once in power, only admit new elites based on religious orthodoxy, the current elites have not successfully carried their values into the future.
A desire to attend Harvard is not a sign of intelligence.
I’d like to see all non-profit education institutions regulated such that those who receive gov’t money don’t discriminate. Not on race, sex, age, religion nor creed — with political orientation specifically included as part of creed.
Most top Universities have been secretly discriminating against Republicans, and against pro-life Christians. Such places shouldn’t be getting gov’t money.
There should also be a BIG tax on the richest universities to pay for some partial student loan debt write offs — meaning the successful rich Harvards & Stanfords pay some of the debts of students who went to other places.
The world is a WORSE place with elite institutions which secretly discriminate based on any criteria. Asian professors are more likely to be hired than pro-life Republican professors, altho there are far more Reps than Asians in the US.
There must be a great deal of insularity in top US economic departments.
How is it the story of Takahashi Korekiyo is so unknown in the West?
It has been long known that mixing talent with money is important for the productivity of both.