The Trump Justice Department plans to sue colleges and universities that engage in affirmative action to favor students of color for the sake of diversity.
Vox and several other websites said this is a good time to remember how Jared Kushner got admitted to Harvard.
Of course few will be surprised that Kushner’s father, Charles Kushner, a wealthy and connected developer and political donor, helped him get in. But the details of just how that happened, described in Daniel Golden’s thoroughly reported 2007 book The Price of Admission, remain remarkable to this day.
What Golden found, essentially, was that Jared’s father handed Harvard (a school he did not attend) a big pile of money just as Jared was starting to apply to colleges. Around the same time, Jared’s dad got his US senator to contact another US senator to arrange a chat with Harvard’s dean of admissions.
Happily for the Kushner family, Jared was then admitted. But several officials at Jared’s high school outright told Golden that they found the choice puzzling, since his grades and academic record really didn’t seem to merit it.
Two senators contacted Harvard on behalf of young Kushner, Ted Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg, both Democrats.
The school that Jared attended was taken aback when he was admitted and far better qualified students were rejected.
If AG Jeff Sessiono wants to stop preferential treatment, then he will surely investigate universities that set aside seats for underqualified boys whose daddies offer large contributions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
ouch . Jared i am to stupid to have commuted treason by colluding with the Russians . I’ll prove it here is the check daddy delivered to Harvard to get me in.
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You have been sadly misinformed. The NYT article that triggered all of this was based on a personnel memo at the DOJ that was posted to find a voluntary investigator for a discrimination complaint. The complaint was filed by 40 ASIAN STUDENTS IN 2015! The Obama administration ignored the complaint. Repeating that would not generate the angst however, so they changed it up and every time it was repeated it became more outlandish.
What would be so bad if the DOJ did investigate discrimination? Equal rights for all … It has been at least 50 years. Is it working as intended for everyone, or just a select few?
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Linda,
Are you ok with Charles Kushner buying a place for little Jared at Harvard with a gift of $2.5 million? Equal rights for all, even the rich!
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That has been happening for centuries all around the world. Colleges and Universities have counted on such gifts. Even private prep schools take advantage of that revenue source.
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Affirmative action for rich kids is ok then?
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Good question and comments to Linda, Diane. I ask the same questions. THE RICH can PURCHASE their degrees, even if they don’t learn anything of value except that they can GET THEIR WAY, because of their $$$$$$. SICK.
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Let’s be honest. Admittedly, based on anecdotal experience, I would estimate that 70-90% of Ivy League grads are admitted based on familial or social connections. I may be wrong. It may only be 50%. We need only look at names like Kennedy and Bush to get a representative sampling.
I taught at independent schools and had students with exceptional and middling qualifications who were accepted and most of them graduated from Ivy League schools. They had great advantages going in and greater advantages going out…advantages that I, as their middle and high school teacher, never got or would have had. Or deserving students throughout the nation would never have had. Connections and networking opportunities that last a lifetime and ensure high salaries, stock options, pensions, and expectations few Americans could ever dream of accessing.
Jared is just the most obvious example of how egregious this “system” is. And Donny Jr. And Eric. And Ivanka. And our Dear Leader, for that matter.
Until we quit hiring these folks in Wall St. firms, law firms, and from business schools or elect them to paid political offices and appoint them as bureaucrats in the foreign service and other federal and state agencies, we will get what we deserve.
Interestingly, as much as I believe military experience is overvalued, it is striking how many of our top military leaders have educational roots that do not include Ivy League schools or military academies. They might be indicators of how we need to wean ourselves from these institutional misconceptions.
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Greg,
As someone who went to a female Ivy college, having no social connections, no donations, no family wealth, I would say the number admitted for those reasons was high 50 years ago but not now. These institutions today are more meritocratic than ever in the past, when a “Gentleman’s C” was good enough for the Bushes
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The class of 2021 (according to an NYTimes story today about a lawsuit targeting Harvard’s admissions policies toward Asians) is around 50% non-white. So I think it’s safe to say that legacy admissions are nowhere near 50%, let alone 70-90%.
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BINGO, Diane. Thanks for your comment to Greg.
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If college admissions was really meritorious, the students who got shut out would include many (not all) of the white students from connected private schools who are disproportionately admitted to some very selective colleges despite having lower standardized test scores than hundreds or thousands of public school students — many of then Asian but not all — with better test scores and the same excellent report cards.
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In a recent issue of the ‘Pennsylvania Gazette,’ the magazine for the University of Penn., there was an advertisement for legacy parents to meet with admissions about their children’s applications. Why would they want to meet with Penn. grad. parents unless it was to discuss some measure of partiality?
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I now agree with all of you that my estimate—which I confessed was anecdotal and therefore biased—was surely overblown. But I still believe strongly that those who get in with legacy and financial connections and graduate still have a leg up over their peers. That doesn’t mean graduates without those advantages won’t do well and be successful, but they still face barriers their well-connected peers don’t.
I’m probably still bitter about being told that I was going to get a job in Congress on a Friday afternoon and finding out on Monday morning that the member gave it to the offspring of a wealthy donor after a conversation when the member went home for the weekend. Old memories die hard!
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GregB,
Never forget the Sophie Tucker adage:
“I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor. It’s better to be rich.”
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The Ohio Republican Party has returned a pair of large donations from two top officials at an embattled company that operates Ohio’s largest online charter school.
William Lager and Melissa Vasil each gave the party $38,000 on June 26, according to party campaign finance records that were released Monday. Lager is the politically influential owner of Altair Learning Management, which runs the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, and Vasil is Altair’s operations director.
Asked about the donations Wednesday, Ohio Republican Party spokesman Blaine Kelly in an email said the party has sent refund checks for the $76,000, saying “it is in the best interest of the Ohio Republican Party to respectfully return those funds.”
ECOT has no revenue other than public funding, so the money traveled like this:
Ohio citizens to ECOT, ECOT to the Ohio Republican Party, Republican Party tback o ECOT.
This is an absolute joke.
ALL of ECOTs money, every dime, comes from the public. There is no other revenue source for ECOT.
All they’re doing is passing public money thru ECOT to the Republican Party. The only things that is different now is the Ohio Republican Party just passes the same money back to ECOT.
http://www.cleveland.com/open/index.ssf/2017/08/ohio_republican_party_returns.html
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O-SIGH-O. Glad I don’t teach there anymore.
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Wait, it gets better!
“However, the $76,000 in contributions came around the same time the state party sent large contributions to the Summit and Cuyahoga County Republican parties, which shortly afterward donated similarly large amounts to State Rep. Larry Householder, a Republican ECOT supporter who is running to lead the Ohio House of Representatives in 2019. ”
ECOT gave 76,000 to Ohio Republican.
Ohio Republicans gave it back to ECOT.
Then Ohio Republicans made a huge donation to the lawmaker ECOT bought.
So they bought the same politician ECOT usually buys.
ECOT wins either way.
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As a non Trump supporter and as an a career educator in urban schools I am shocked by this ant-semetic stereotype: “Jew buys son a seat in Harvard”. This calls into question your reputation as educational guru as your hatred of anything Touching the Trump family has overwhelmed you. Do you how many Kennedy’s were admitted into Harvard? How may Bush’s attended Yale? We’re they all academically worthy? How many dubious chairs are endowed by persons with large pockets whose children wind up at Ives, particularly at Harvard? How many “unworthy” legacy babies take up spots aoof more qualified applicants? Is not your position on the efficacy of standized tests as predictors of future university achievement is questionable? Has liberalism been lowered to reverse elitism? Only the disenfranchised are worthy. Isn’t the proof of achievement the ability to make through the rigorous 4 years. Let’s not mention sports scharships that open doors to those student who would otherwise never qualify? Intellectual snobbery is quite unbecoming.
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Schulman, I said nothing anti-Semitic, you did. Read Daniel Goldin’s book “The Price of Admission” about legacies and buying seats into college for rich kids. I reviewed it for the WSJ when it was published about 10 years ago. Once you are admitted to college, even a selective one, it is not hard to get a degree if you stay around for four years.
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You have to be kidding.
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Dude. Diane is Jewish!
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Your accusation “calls into question” your honesty.
Diane said nothing of the sort. You set up a straw man so that you could insult Diane.
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H. Schulman sounds like a troll.
Far too many errors to just be typos and the argument is all over the place.
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A November, 2016 article in ProPublica documents how Kushner and other rich white boys get into Harvard without meeting even the most basic requirements…
…………
I’m now waiting for the outstanding results of Kushner’s reorganization of the state department. Next, he can devote his energies to peace in the Middle East. That should take two weeks, at most.
Rich white boys with mediocre abilities can accomplish so much. Just take tRump, for example. Look at the wonderful cheap healthcare plan that we all now have. (Is it $12 a month or $12 a year for my premium?) Look at the amazing wall that Mexico paid for. His infrastructure improvement plan is outstanding.
This is sickening. It reinforces the wealthy cocoon that keeps these people from interacting in the real world. They have no idea what exists outside their cozy life but they believe they have the abilities to tell everyone what they need. People are being hurt by their ignorance.
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Yes, indeed, carolmalaysia.
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I found the answer. Here is tRump’s quote regarding the cost of insurance:
“From the moment the insurance, you’re 21 years old, you start working and you’re paying $12 a year for insurance,” Trump stated, “and by the time you’re 70, you get a nice plan.”
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It doesn’t say great things about Kushner that he bought his way in but what does it say about Harvard that they go along with this?
I live in a predominately white area of the country in a county where only 25% of people have any education past high school. To think that affirmative action is the reason for that is delusional. We have much, much bigger problems than some tiny group of people who gain admittance to prestigious colleges based on factors other than test scores. The vast, vast majority of people here attend either community colleges or less selective public colleges. Trump focusing on affirmative action won’t help them at all- affirmative action has little or no impact on their lives. It’s not WHY they don’t go to college.
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Diane: Stick to writing questionable opinions about Education and Common Core (some were actually good, at one time); leave politics and gossip to MSM.
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Diane’s readers greatly appreciate the posts she writes, the articles she links, her compassion, her reasoned judgement, her sacrifice, and her activism.
Patrick T Carlin, if you are are the couch beside me in Diane’s blog living room, I don’t want you there.
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You don’t have to come here and read this, Patrick. But keep reading–with an open mind, if you can. You may learn something.
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We can start leaving politics out of education as soon as politicians start keeping education out of politics.
Well, okay, no, not really, because education is inherently political. But you can’t have politicians using education as a political trophy and not expect educators to fight back.
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HUH, Patrick? This AWFULNESS is CONNECTED by $$$$$$$ and GREED, plus pure LIES.
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Patrick,
This is my blog and my space. I write what I want. If you don’t want to read it, that is your privilege.
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Harvard’s reputation is dropping as these less-qualified rich kids graduate and then continue on to powerful positions and proceed to screw things up royally. Witness the financial meltdown of 2008.
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Harvard’s reputation is in free fall because of its embrace of neoliberalism and its association with the Koch ideology, both of which harm the nation’s advancement. The Harvard Kennedy School of Government’s intern page featured a student placed at the Heritage Foundation. The intern program had two students placed at DFEER. Prof. Roland Fryer’s “two-tier education” plan (Deutsch 29 blog), reflects a view that should be anathema to all who value democracy and oppose colonialism. Fryer received a huge grant from Gates.
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Fryer’s work is heavily funded by the Broad Foundation. Nonetheless, Roland Fryer and his colleague Will Dobbie did a study of charter schools in Texas that found that the charters had no impact whatever on test scores and a negative effect on subsequent income in the labor market.
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Rhetorically, is Fryer going to repudiate the Gates’ et. al. education marketplace? Is he going to spend some of the money from his plutocratic grants to fund Network for Public Education?
When Fryer’s benefit to public education exceeds the damage he’s done then, I may stop pointing out his association with Steven Levitt, in “Going ghetto”. Levitt is a controversial book and website author (Freakonomics) and charter school board member.
Fryer should forever be held accountable for saying kids who don’t live in suburbs like his kids do, ought be tested everyday. It is an assumption that IMO lacks all compassion, empathy and understanding about what fuels individual and national economic growth.
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This is part of a greater inequity issue of scholarship versus able to pay tuition. Some universities haveneed blind admissions, but some have lower admission standards for students that don’t need financial aid.
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Gates -funded New America posted a plan at its site calling for expansion of state tax funding to legacy admission colleges.
It’s time to stop all federal and tax support for any school that allows money or lineage to affect admission.
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Ah yes, Teddy Kennedy (who interceded to get Trump’s s&@theel future son-in-law into Harvard), that great liberal who helped give us NCLB, airline and trucking deregulation (which have destroyed wages, benefits and job security in those industries) and other goodies for the Overclass.
And he was far, far better than the current Dims who, by magical thinking, are expected to slow down/stop/reverse the ongoing hostile takeover of the Republic…
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tRump has no negotiation skills…just the ability to bully. This shows how high a wealthy person with limited abilities can go in this country.
Don’t you just love how Trump treats the leaders of Mexico and Australia? No wonder the US is loosing respect in the world.
……………..
Headline: Trump urged Mexican president to end his public defiance on border wall, transcript reveals..WaPo
President Trump made building a wall along the southern U.S. border and forcing Mexico to pay for it core pledges of his campaign.
But in his first White House call with Mexico’s president, Trump described his vow to charge Mexico as a growing political problem, pressuring the Mexican leader to stop saying publicly that his government would never pay.
“You cannot say that to the press,” Trump said repeatedly, according to a transcript of the Jan. 27 call obtained by The Washington Post….But “if you are going to say that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall, then I do not want to meet with you guys anymore because I cannot live with that.”…
Produced by White House staff, the documents provide an unfiltered glimpse of Trump’s approach to the diplomatic aspect of his job, subjecting even a close neighbor and long-standing ally to streams of threats and invective as if aimed at U.S. adversaries…
Trump seemed to acknowledge that his threats to make Mexico pay had left him cornered politically. “I have to have Mexico pay for the wall — I have to,” he said. “I have been talking about it for a two-year period.”…
Though Australia is one of the United States’ closest allies, Trump’s call with Turnbull was even more contentious….At one point, Trump expressed admiration for Australia’s refusal to allow refugees arriving on boats to reach its shores, saying it “is a good idea. We should do that too.” In a remark apparently meant as a compliment, Trump told Turnbull, “You are worse than I am.”
But the conversation rapidly deteriorated….
http://wapo.st/2hqtKIl?tid=ss_mail&utm_term=.726cc63e107c
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The vast majority of us go to schools that are near us and are affordable because we can work and go to school too. Recently, my students have taken to going a couple,of hours away, but still to,a state school.
Ivy League schools were always my dream. The reality, however, was that I attended college and worked on the family dairy farm. Everyone’s reality deserves support from an educational system that gives people a chance. But this reality needs money. I have one message for the people who complain about affirmative action. Put your money where your mouth is.
Let’s fund higher education. For the sake of us all.
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This is a great article that lists the ignorance of our great leader. It is a disaster that someone so willfully stupid could be in charge of this country. He doesn’t know and isn’t interested in learning. The ‘Trump Stupidity File” grows each day.
……..
From newyorker.com: Why Is Donald Trump Still So Horribly Witless about the World?
The President’s foreign-policy mistakes, large and small, are taking a toll.
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-is-donald-trump-still-so-horribly-witless-about-the-world
Max Boot, a lifelong conservative who advised three Republican Presidential candidates on foreign policy, keeps a folder labelled “Trump Stupidity File” on his computer. It’s next to his “Trump Lies” file. “Not sure which is larger at this point,” he told me this week. “It’s neck-and-neck.”
Six months into the Trump era, foreign-policy officials from eight past Administrations told me they are aghast that the President is still so witless about the world. “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20th,” Boot, who is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. Trump’s painful public gaffes, they warn, indicate that he’s not reading, retaining, or listening to his Presidential briefings. And the newbie excuse no longer flies.
“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former Presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp, who worked at the Pentagon during the Ford Administration and at the National Security Council during the Reagan Administration, reflected. “He has an almost studious rejection of the type of in-depth knowledge that virtually all of his predecessors eventually gained or had views on”…
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Carolmalaysia, did you see the Newsweek cover? That says it all.
https://www.google.com/amp/abc13.com/amp/politics/newsweek-blasts-president-trump-as-lazy-boy/2278743/
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Dang. It sounds really good. Unfortunately, I get Time magazine.
I wonder when tRump will implode from all the negativity. He’s learning the hard way that not everyone thinks he is the greatest, the best, the most wonderful thing that has happened since the dawn of the ages.
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Newsweek did have him right on, didn’t they?
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Looked very accurate to me. He wants all the glory with none of the work. He eats food that isn’t healthy but expects everyone to bow at his unbelievably wonderful, probably gorgeous, self.
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Carol,
That’s all fake news.
As he said, the leader of the Boy Scouts said his meandering speech was the best ever, in history
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Just saw it online with your help. Thanks.
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