Hoo boy, kicker here is he doesn't say he checks resumes for evidence the student is a legacy admit at whatever top school, and downgrades accordingly. Even though he complains about legacy admissions as hypocrisy in the letter. 1/
https://twitter.com/lefarkins/status/1383624169477214210
The takeaway is: look, legacies are a thing. It's hypocrisy to get all worked up about race and NOT about legacy admits. (True!) Therefore, the status quo must be ... preserved? That's crazy. It isn't even two wrongs make a right. It's one wrong makes a right. 2/
The larger takeaway is that the enthusiastically favorable response to this letter, by Weiss and co., is proof Weiss and co. are empirically and morally delusional on the subject, like the letter writer himself. Severely so. 3/
Setting aside the 'always the ones you most suspect' revelation that the author is, in fact, an enthusiastic, personal booster of systemic racism, in a professional capacity, the letter is a slurry of nonsense, resentment, questionable claims - and a few half-decent points. 4/
It's plausible the school has gone overboard - doing some things excessively, others in a pointless, performative way. It's perfectly reasonable to object, could be, that some of this stuff gets grifty. Institutions are worried about criticism. 5/
What they really want to do is not solve a problem but buy insurance against being accused of not having tried to. They want to be certified as going through the motions. For the most part that's 'mostly harmless' but sometimes it's kinda toxic, pedagogically, could be. 6/
Grant this is so, for the sake of the argument. (I do not think it unreasonable to grant it, even though this author is demonstrably racially resentful, hence an unreliable informant. I don't know what's up at the school. Worst case, it's ridiculous, verging on bad.) 7/
Grant this is so: the letter is still an obvious triple-decker shit sandwich - with a few prospectively palatable ingredients tucked in there! Who in their right moral mind looks at that and thinks 'looks good'? 8/
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