FAIR News: Advocating for Pro-Human Admissions Standards
Newsletter
FAIR Files Amicus Brief in Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard Case
On May 9th, 2022, FAIR’s legal team and network counsel filed an amicus brief in the case of Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard College. FAIR filed in support of Students for Fair Admissions and made a pro-human argument in favor of holistic and fair admissions not based on skin color or ancestry. As stated in the brief:
The “moral imperative of racial neutrality” is no imperative at all when vague exceptions are carved out and neutrality has been stripped of its meaning. The only option that is both workable and consistent with equality principles is to preclude any consideration of “race” in university admissions.
FAIR agrees that diversity along many dimensions is a desirable goal in institutions of higher education. However, employing group preferences to achieve that goal is inconsistent with the nation’s first principles of equality and individual rights, and does a disservice to those the policy claims to uplift. Skin color is a crude proxy for perspectives and experiences.
By using reductive group preferences that do not necessarily correlate with an individual's life experience, competence, or character, we elevate institutional interests over individual rights and foment division, resentment, and dehumanization.
Announcing FAIR Working Groups!
The Educators Alliance is growing! We are actively working to spread the pro-human message throughout schools and classrooms across our country through the expansion of the Educators Alliance with a FAIR Administrators Alliance, a FAIR Libraries Working Group, and a FAIR Independent School Strategy Working Group.
If you’re a K-12 school administrator and would like to join our Administrators Alliance, please email educators@fairforall.org.
If you work in a library, are concerned with recent trends in your field, and would like to join our FAIR Libraries Working Group to share resources and create a strategy to address the pressing issues facing libraries and their staff, please email libraries@fairforall.org for more information.
If you’re the parent of an independent school student and would like to join our Independent School Strategy Working Group to address the unique needs of parents and students in K-12 independent schools, please email educators@fairforall.org.
Stay tuned to the FAIR Educator’s Alliance webpage for more updates!
Have Something to Say? Write for Us
We want FAIR Substack to be the go-to publication for diverse perspectives on culture and civil rights. Whether you’re a seasoned author or an amateur writer with a story that can contribute to our mission of promoting fairness, understanding, and humanity, we would love to receive your stories, opinions, investigations, reviews, interviews, and more!
Please submit your piece to submissions@fairforall.org
Submission guidelines:
Complete articles only (i.e., no “works in progress”).
No previously published submissions.
We have no hard word count limits, but prefer submissions between 1,000 and 2,500 words.
In the email, please include a short personal introduction and brief (one paragraph) summary of the article.
We hope to hear from you!
FAIR Perspectives
This week on FAIR Perspectives, we feature a special episode about the Emory Law School Free Speech Forum (EFSF), and their victory in securing formal recognition as a student organization.
Having witnessed intolerance at Emory and on other college campuses, the EFSF students sought to create a place for interested students to hear, consider, and debate diverse ideas. In October 2021, the group’s application for formal recognition was denied twice, under the pretext that open inquiry is “harmful” and the EFSF “overlapped” with other organizations.
FAIR sent a letter to the Emory SBA and administration on January 18, 2022, advocating for the EFSF, and the EFSF’s charter was finally granted in April.
Co-hosts Angel Eduardo and Melissa Chen spoke with the group’s founders about their journey and their plans for the future of the EFSF.
Tune in on YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts!
FAIR News Podcast
For audio versions of our FAIR News and FAIR Weekly Roundup newsletters, subscribe and listen to FAIR News Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or via RSS feed.
John McWhorter: The Anti-Science Attitude of the Intolerant Orthodoxy
This week FAIR has released a new video with FAIR Advisor John McWhorter, where he discusses the dark legacy of “anti-science attitudes” in recent history and how a similar phenomenon has become widespread in America today. McWhorter explains how theories about “microaggressions,” “implicit bias,” and “systemic racism” have caught on despite the lack of evidence supporting them. He concludes:
“If we want to heal the racial divisions in our nation, we need real science and scholarship not twisted by ideology…Believing that being more race conscious in all aspects of our lives can cure our ills won’t make it so. But if we’re willing to open our mind beyond the ideas that are presently popular, we might just be able to find what will.”
Watch more videos from FAIR Advisors on our YouTube channel.
America's Founding Principles Saved Us Before, and They Can Save Us Now
The April 21st Zoom webinar featuring Johnny and Suziann Davis and hosted by FAIR Advisor and Director of Messaging & Editorial Angel Eduardo is now live on FAIR’s YouTube channel.
The discussion was about America’s founding principles, the tensions between the Founders’ beliefs and behaviors, and how leaders throughout history have used the founding principles to move America toward fully embodying those ideals.
Webinar: How Activism Impacts Transgender Healthcare: A Pro-Human Discussion
How can we provide safe and quality transgender healthcare in the age of activism in medicine? Join FAIR in Medicine for our webinar How Activism Influences Transgender Healthcare: A Pro-Human Discussion as we engage with this question and others.
Moderated by FAIR Advisor and Senior Fellow Zander Keig, and featuring panelists the Gender Care Consumer Advocacy Network’s Corinna Cohn, founder and Director of the Gender Dysphoria Alliance Aaron Kimberly, and psychotherapist, best selling author and founder of Genspect Stella O’Malley, as we discuss the pro-human approach to transgender healthcare.
Register for the FAIR Film Festival
Today we’ve opened registration for the FAIR Film Festival! Featured films include What Killed Michael Brown?, directed by FAIR Advisor Eli Steele, Mighty Ira, I Am A Victor, and more. The festival will take place from June 12th through June 16th, with in-person events in New York City and virtual registration available to all.
FAIR Diversity Training
Meet FAIR Diversity: What It Means to Be Pro-Human
For all FAIR Members and volunteers. These events are typically held on the last Monday of each month.
Registration is now open for the following events:
May 30th, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET
June 27th, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET
FAIR Diversity Conversations Series
Open to the public! These events are typically held on the first Monday of each month.
In this webinar series, FAIR Diversity panelists discuss how to apply the fundamental principles of inclusive and civil dialogue to everyday social interactions. We use the pro-human approach to navigate challenging conversations in healthcare, education, corporate, non-profit sectors, and more.
Upcoming Webinar: Navigating difficult conservations with family and friends
June 6th, 7:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m. ET
Please feel free to bring any relevant thoughts, ideas, questions, and insights, to the conversation!
To learn more about FAIR Diversity, please visit our FAIR Diversity website.
FAIR Chapter Events
Chapter Leader Meetings
May 23rd:
Series 1: Sharpening Our Perspectives
7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. ET
May 24th:
Series 2: The Pro-Human Leader
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. ET
May 26th:
Series 3: Pro-Humanizing Language
12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. ET
Chapter Events
TODAY May 12th:
Ottawa (613) Open House
8:00 p.m. ET ZOOM
May 14th:
Ontario - FAIR 101
10:00 a.m. ET ZOOM
May 20th:
Spokane Meet and Greet
5:30 p.m. PT
Info: washington@fairforall.org
May 23rd:
FAIR Washington Educator Alliance
7:30 p.m. PT
Info: washington@fairforall.org
FAIR Educator Alliance ‘Happy Hour’
Teachers often feel isolated and alone in their schools, but FAIR is here for you! The FAIR Educators Alliance brings together educators from all levels to share experiences and concerns and work on developing resources that can support teachers, community members, and FAIR chapters.
We have an informal “happy hour” every Thursday evening at 8:00 p.m. ET, and hold more formal monthly meetings that will address issues based on your interests and needs.
We welcome all teachers and hope you will get connected.
For more information, contact educators@fairforall.org or, for Canadian educators, contact educators-canada@fairforall.org.
Join the FAIR Community
Become a FAIR volunteer or to join a FAIR chapter:
Join a Welcome to FAIR Zoom information session to learn more about our mission, or watch a previously recorded session in the Members section of www.fairforall.org.
Sign the FAIR Pledge for a common culture of fairness, understanding and humanity.
Join the FAIR community to connect and share information with other members.
Share your reviews and incident reports on our FAIR Transparency website.
The Amicus Brief is fantastic. I was concerned at first because there are two specific areas that I initially disagreed but I'm re-thinking.
My first disagreement was the idea that race is a group rather than an individual trait. I see most of the problems caused by race-based thinking as resulting from ingroup-outgroup psychology, that thinking of race as a group that you are a "member" of, rather than an individual trait like hair color or eye color, tends toward evoking tribalist "us vs them" instincts and ultimately both stereotypes and fallacies of division.
That is, saying "men are taller than women" is true statistically at the group level but cannot be applied to individual members to claim that a 5' man has "height privilege" and a 6' woman is short. Yet, that is the type of fallacy of division that CRT and related beliefs have at their core, and is the basis of the irrationality of the Harvard/school preferential treatment of individuals based on group statistics.
Hence, I think/thought the proper objection is to note that race is a feature of individuals, not a group membership, in the same way that height is a feature of individuals and not a group membership, and using race as a proxy for different experiences is no different from using genders as a proxy for height; it is a form of stereotyping by group membership rather than measuring the individual trait, which may correlate but are unnecessary and crude proxies. (The amicus makes this argument well on page 12 about actual hardships, joy, etc.)
But, from reading this brief, I accept the nuance espoused in it that does a good job to explain why race is better seen as a group membership in the context of this case, that Grutter allows for consideration of race as an individual trait (which would be somewhat consistent with what I say above), but that it has no practical use at the individual and can only ever be applied to individuals based on group contexts such as statistics and stereotypes, as is done by these schools. (It also further implicitly argues that, unlike height, race cannot be defined at the individual level by only in the context of statistical differences of genetics and ancestry, and imprecisely at that.)
OK, I'm swayed. Good argument.
My second concern is, perhaps, addressed in a different way. From my perspective, one of the practical problems (as opposed to moral problems) of adding "points" for race instead of merit-based is that it simply trades one statistical difference for another.
For example, lets take SAT as one measure of merit. If you have a purely merit-based system based on SAT, but there is a correlation of SAT scores with race. OK, then you will have a statistically disproportionate number of different races at the school, but they will be distributed across the grade range, given the correlation between SAT and grades.
Now suppose Woke U decides to adjust entry criteria to achieve numerical proportionate outcomes by general population. To do this they decrease the minimum SAT required by individuals of Race A (who are overrepresented) to get in and increase the minimum SAT required by Race B (who are underrepresented) to get in.
The effect then is to essentially remove all of the Race A students who get low marks in the class (e.g., C, D, F), and add in a lot of students from Race B who should (by SAT correlation) get even lower marks (mostly D and F). What this does is artificially inflate the average mark of Race A and artificially deflate the average marks of Race B.
So now Woke U has created an artificially inflated grade inequality which exacerbates stereotyping of Race A as the smart ones and Race B as the less intelligent race. And, it supplies statistical measurements by which people can now (incorrectly) claim is an objective measurement of how each race performs statistically. Even if marks are hidden, you can't hide who in class answers questions well, is more proficient in group discussions, study partners, etc.
To cover up that inequality, you'd need to now keep students from mingling, force grading on curves by race, and hide marking results from teachers to avoid them getting stereotypes. But that still just kicks the can down the road for when people have to apply that education in practice in which case the racial differences would be readily apparent. The ultimate result is that you can't possibly end discrimination this way.
I don't see this exact problem identified in the amicus. But, it does have a related proxy argument in the case of the mere knowledge of racial preference on entry now tainting all people of that race, creating an unconscious bias even within themselves, even for students of Race B who could have gotten there purely on their own merit. So I think the tradeoff is still there; it is just not as objectively measurable as to the artificially increased grade disparity example.
Overall, I think it is a great amicus, well-argued and well-cited.