Is the Ivy League the last acceptable bastion of prejudice in America?
That seems a not unfair question, given the reaction to a recent column of
this writer.
That column, based on a piece by political activist Ron Unz, noted that
the ethnic composition of Harvard's student body looks like a voter
profile of the Greenwich Village Democratic Club.
The percentages of black and Hispanic students at Harvard (7 percent and 8
percent) are approaching their shares of the population, wrote Unz, and
the percentages of Asian and Jewish students (20 percent and 25-33
percent) far exceed their shares of the population (3 percent and 2.5
percent).
When foreign students and the children of alumni and faculty are
factored in, only 25 percent of all slots at Harvard, wrote Unz, remain
for that 75 percent of America that is non-Jewish white. Catholic ethnics
and white Protestants are being crowded out of the Ivy League.
When I suggested that it might be time for Euro-Americans to demand
affirmative action, the usual suspects answered with the usual invective.
One letter writer, however, put a human face on the forgotten victims of
Ivy League bigotry -- an Italian American face.
Wrote A. Kenneth Ciongoli, president of the National Italian American
Foundation, "Euro-Catholics, the American middle class, have paid the
price ... of affirmative action, while the establishment perpetrators have
hypocritically protected themselves. ... Italian Americans, 8 percent of
America's population, are 3 percent of Ivy League student bodies and less
than 1 percent of the faculties."
In a 1977 paper, Dr. Ciongoli noted that while set-asides for blacks and
Hispanics were a "well-known reality ... missing from the public debate is
the discussion of 'upper-class' set-asides ... those for legacies and
athletes ... and also missing is the identity of those who are denied
admission, those who are truly set aside by this social engineering. They
are the middle-class white ethnics."
"In the first half of this century," Ciongoli concludes, "the old
Protestant establishment shunned us as undesirable Catholic ethnics. Since
the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the new Progressive establishment has again
pushed us aside in favor of the groups they support. Both elites, by
exempting their own, have avoided paying any price for their historical
arrogance and ... contemporary magnanimity. We (Catholic ethnics) paid and
are paying their debts."
This social and moral injustice needs airing. If Ivy League schools are
fencing off, as Dr. Ciongoli insists, 50 percent of all student slots for
athletes, their own kids and preferred minorities, they are preselecting
America's future leaders -- using un-American means.
If a Northern bricklayers union or a Southern police force set aside as
many jobs for the children of present members, it would have the Justice
Department banging on its door. Why is what is forbidden to the rest of
America permitted at Harvard and Yale?
Italian Americans do not seek quotas or set-asides, says Dr. Ciongoli.
But they demand to know why the Ivy League has adopted admissions
practices and hiring policies that make Italian Americans almost
invisible on elite campuses. Is that an unfair question?
Long ago, Catholics and Jews were looked on with suspicion by a
WASP-dominated Ivy League. Jewish Americans seem to have
overcome the prejudice. Catholic ethnics, if Ciongoli is right, never did.
Why not? If discrimination does not explain these lopsided numbers, what
does? There is one way to find out.
As these schools feed off tax dollars, they should be required to publish
exact statistics on the religious and ethnic composition of all faculties
and student bodies and the percentage of student slots chosen by methods
other than merit -- and identify those methods.
Next, they should indicate, by ethnic group and religion, who lost out
when slots went to preferred minorities, whether ethnic or the children of
faculty members or alumni. We know who the beneficiaries are of this
discrimination. Let's see its victims.
If the Republican Party wishes to represent Middle America, it must
address the concerns of Middle America. Among these is the deeply
ingrained leftist and anti-Christian bias on elite campuses that are the
breeding stables of future American leaders.
Every conservative speaker knows that the more elite the campus, the more
likely you are to be shouted down. Have these bastions of radical
liberalism been established in violation of the letter of civil rights
laws?
Let's find out if those who have lectured America for years on racism and
prejudice are themselves closet bigots. Then, in Clinton's phrase, let's
make the Ivy League look more like America.
