Keith Parsons: Diversity!

Friday--10 April 2026

This guest essay from Keith Parsons rounds out a welcome Keith Parsons week. Enjoy.

DIVERSITY

by Keith Parsons

Fiddler on the Roof

We had a memorable provost at my university (most are forgettable). The provost is normally considered to be the second in command at a university, just below the president. He was a great guy and we got along very well. With most administrators, my feelings towards them were very much like the blessing for the Czar given by the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof: “May the Lord bless and keep the Czar—far away from us.” I did not wish them ill; I only wanted as little contact as possible. Anyway, this particular provost was close to being a personal friend. However, when issues of diversity came up, it was clear that by “diverse” he meant “African-American.” I know of one case in which a search committee did not pick the black candidate. The provost voided the recommendation of the committee as insufficiently “diverse” and hired the black applicant.

What is diversity? Is it important? Why?

In my lifetime (and I am not that old), the first African-American was appointed to the Supreme Court (Thurgood Marshall, 1967). Also, the first woman became a member of the highest court (Sandra Day O’Connor, 1981). Prior to these, Supreme Court justices were all white men. Prior to Barack Obama (elected 2008), all presidents were white men. According to Google AI, there have been over 2000 United States senators. Of these, 14 have been black. In 2021, Rafael Warnock became the first African-American Democrat elected to the Senate from a state of the former Confederacy (Georgia).

Senator Warnock

Also, (same source) of the Fortune 500 companies, 10 have black CEOs. This two percent figure is the highest in history. White, non-Hispanic males make up approximately 29.4% of the US population (Google AI).

So the first meaning of “diversity” should be “not just white men.”

What, though, does it mean when an institution, a university, say, declares “diversity” as one if its goals? In a weaker sense it might just mean that the institution will strive to be a welcoming and inclusive environment, that is, to foster a sense of belonging for those of any race, ethnicity, gender or of any age, sexual orientation, or disability. As such, it is hard to see how anyone could object to such a commitment except members of the Trump administration, which is an affirmative action program for halfwits.

An Agenda of Social Justice

In a stronger sense, declaring for diversity might mean a commitment to an agenda of social justice, that is, proactively seeking to redress past and current discrimination against those of particular identities, perhaps, say, by implementing aggressive “antiracism” programs and mandatory “sensitivity” training. But is such a proactive commitment to social justice the role of a university? I have argued in past Letters that it is not. The one overriding goal of a university is and must be to achieve academic excellence, i.e., excellence in research, publication, teaching, and student achievement. No agenda, however laudable per se, can be allowed to detract or distract from that paramount aim.

In this case, shouldn’t a university, of all places, be a strict meritocracy, and, if so, might this not militate against a goal of diversity? I read that a member of the Harvard admissions committee was asked why they put so much effort into having students of many different sorts and many different backgrounds. Why not admissions based purely on merit? If Harvard chose (It is Harvard, after all.), it could have a freshman class composed entirely of students with perfect SAT scores and perfect GPAs. In that case, the admissions officer said, 90% of Harvard’s students would be very smart Asians and 10% would be very smart Jews.

I think this is an exaggeration, but if true, why not? Why not a Harvard student body of 90% Asian and 10% Jews?

The short answer is that admitting students purely on the basis of grades and test scores would produce a less talented, less meritorious set of students than a more diverse one. In my life I have had the privilege of knowing and learning from a large number of very bright and very interesting high achievers. Some were black. Many were women. Some were Muslims. Some were Jews. Some were Asian. Some were European. And so forth. I would have not had the benefit of their company if failure to make a perfect score on a standardized test had excluded them from the opportunities to exercise their talents.

Test Scores vs. Diversity

Test scores may tell you something about a person, but not a lot. What the Ivy League admissions people look for seems to be people who are bright, for sure, but also people who are interesting, those whose experiences and backgrounds have enriched them in various ways qualifying them to make unique contributions to the university and the broader community. In other words, some considerations of diversity apply.

Consider my late (sigh) wonderful friend Gerry, whom I have mentioned in previous Letters. He was a black man from a tough neighborhood in Philadelphia. He was raised by a single mother who was tougher than the neighborhood, and she put him on the road to achievement. He went to a quality university and became a reference librarian. His knowledge of classical music, film, and twentieth century history was encyclopedic. I thought I was well-read in the history of World War Two, but he had read ten books to every one of mine. You never found him without a 700-page tome in his possession. I could name any work in the classical repertoire and he could tell me the conductor and orchestra that had done superlative recordings of that work. His recommendations never led me astray. I do not know what his test scores were, but if I were on an admissions committee, I would have snatched him up like a precious jewel and offered him a full ride.

Not basing admissions solely on test scores and grades is not giving up on meritocracy. Rather, it means that evaluating merit is not algorithmic. Would Einstein or Darwin have made it into Harvard? Both had rather lackluster academic credentials. Einstein was working as a low-paid patent clerk in Berne, Switzerland, when, in 1905, he published three papers, any one of which could have won him the Nobel Prize. One did. Darwin graduated from Cambridge with second-class honors—in divinity! He then got five years on an around-the-world voyage of discovery courtesy of the Royal Navy. He married, settled down in his house in Kent, where he lived the rest of his life, and began to raise a family. He began to ponder that “mystery of mysteries,” the origin of species, and came up with the ideas that changed the world forever.

Diversity and Merit

The upshot seems to be, far from an opposition between diversity and merit, the former can contribute to the latter. How, though, do we implement diversity in a practical way, a way that enhances rather than impedes academic quality? What about quotas? Here is a case I heard of: A student whose parents had immigrated from Hong Kong graduated near the top of his class and made a very respectable 1390 on his SATs. He applied to Berkeley and was turned down. He was told that his qualifications were not good enough to be included in Berkeley’s quota of Asian students. However, to meet their quotas of Hispanic and African-American students, they had to admit applicants who scored 1100 on their SATs.

If this is so (and that affirmative action programs disadvantage Asians has been vigorously challenged) would this not be prima facie unfair? Does not it undermine the goal of meritocracy to prefer those whose test scores are three hundred points lower? There is, of course, a long history of litigation over affirmative action and quotas, and I cannot get into all of that here. How would you feel if you were passed over for admission, employment, or promotion by those who, by the accepted measures, had scored much lower? As I say above, considerations of diversity should matter, but should they matter that much? Can preference edge over into reverse discrimination?

Here is one way of doing it right: In college I knew a Hispanic woman in my class who was the daughter of migrant workers. She was an outstanding student, graduating magna cum laude in biology and chemistry. In her junior year, she was contacted by Harvard Medical School and invited to apply. She applied, was accepted, flourished in med school, and became a distinguished dermatologist. Diversity was served, as was academic excellence. If college football coaches can follow the development of a quarterback from middle school on, surely high-performing minority students can be found and their progress followed.

Why, though, is there any tension between diversity and qualification? Why should Asian students score higher on math SATs than white students and white students higher than African-Americans? One explanation, favored by the authors of The Bell Curve (1994), is that some groups are just innately more intelligent than others. If Asian kids are just smarter, then, assuming that tests like the SAT are reliable indicators of ability, there is just nothing more to explain. Such a thesis serves right-wing predilections against large liberal programs of social amelioration. How can such programs improve the innately inferior?

It would be a significant understatement to say that the arguments of The Bell Curve have not met with general acceptance. The consensus appears to be that innate differences, if any, account for only a small part of the observed variance. Rather, income, opportunity (including, crucially, educational opportunity), the home environment, the community environment, expectations, and many other such factors have the major effect.

Biff

Consider a hypothetical person, Biff. Biff is the scion of wealth, attendee of exclusive private schools, recipient of private lessons of various sorts, and frequent European vacationer. If Biff did not score at least 1400 on his SATs, he should have to explain why not.

Notoriously, poor kids often do not have the benefit of quality schools. Worse, they arrive at school already behind their better-off counterparts. Over the years, the gap widens. Improving public schooling has long been the Gordian Knot of public policy, frustrating generations of would-be reformers. How to cut the knot? Throwing money at public schools does not help, as has been shown again and again.

A very surprising turn of events might shed some light. As Idrees Khaloon points out in a recent article in The Atlantic, just the past few years have seen alarming declines in the reading and math aptitudes of public school students.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/10/education-decline-low-expectations/684526/?utm_campaign=atlantic-daily-newsletter&utm_content=20260329&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&lctg=6050e64b4953a53f14852a24&utm_term=The%20Atlantic%20Daily

Forty-nine out of the fifty states have shown significant declines. The one exception is Mississippi. Mississippi—the perennial fiftieth out of fifty in everything! For decades, the other low-achieving states, almost all of the former Confederacy, could at least point to Mississippi as being worse.

What is Mississippi doing right? Kahloon says that liberals will not like the answer:

Matthew Chingos and Kristin Blagg, two scholars at the Urban Institute computed “demographically adjusted NAEP [National Assessment of Educational Progress] scores,” examining how effective states are at educating kids after accounting for significant differences in socioeconomic status. Their analysis of the 2024 NAEP results found that Mississippi was best at educating kids in fourth-grade math, fourth-grade reading, and eighth-grade math. (In 2013, Mississippi was at the bottom of the unadjusted league table.) When I computed the correlation between these demographically adjusted scores and state spending, I found that there was none. If you’re an underprivileged kid in America, you will, on average, get the best education not in rich Massachusetts but in poor Mississippi, where per-pupil spending is half as high.

How did this seemingly miraculous result occur?

A clear policy story is behind these improvements: imposing high standards while also giving schools the resources they needed to meet them. In 2013, Mississippi enacted a law requiring that third graders pass a literacy exam to be promoted to the next grade. It didn’t just issue a mandate, though; it began screening kids for reading deficiencies, training instructors in how to teach reading better (by, among other things, emphasizing phonics), and hiring literacy coaches to work in the lowest-performing schools.

What seems to work is to hold students to high standards and provide testing, training, and coaching to help attain those standards.

Of course, there is no panacea. All human phenomena are complexly caused and resistant to quick cures. However, if poor inner city kids could get more of the advantages that the Biffs of the world take for granted, we would likely see a significant decline in the divergence of test scores.

It is worth a try, anyway!

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