"Newman's Liberal Problem"

An interesting essay by Edward T. Oakes in First Things, April 2003:

.... No student of Newman can avoid the fact of his many conversions. He changed his mind — indeed his life — at least five times: from an adolescent flirtation with atheism, to Evangelical and Calvinist-tinged Anglicanism, then, after a short-lived espousal of Liberalism in his early years at Oxford’s Oriel College, on to High Church Tractarianism, and finally ending up in the Roman Church.

Now Newman’s own interpretation of these conversions, which Turner thoroughly rejects, was that he was slowly growing out of the shadows of willful private judgment and into a life of obedience to an ever more clearly perceived objective revelation. And for him part of that obedience to an objective revelation was the dawning realization that such a divinely given and publicly accessible revelation also had to be objectively defined by a divinely appointed and infallible oracle. As he directed his tombstone to read: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem — “from darkness and simulacra into the truth.” For Newman, the darkness out of which he had emerged could be described, in large part, as liberalism. This he made abundantly clear in the allocution he delivered in Rome on May 12, 1879, on the occasion of receiving the cardinal’s red hat from Pope Leo XIII. On that day, he declared that “for thirty, forty, fifty years I have resisted to the best of my powers the spirit of liberalism in religion. Never did Holy Church need champions against it more sorely than now, when, alas! it is an error overspreading, as a snare, the whole earth.” According to Newman, what made liberalism so dangerous was that it stood directly counter to the principle of revelation, obedience to which was for him the very sum and substance of his life....

(Thanks, Donna Marie.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 05/17/03 03:22:08 PM
Categorized as Religious.

On "Diversity" and "Affirmative Action"

Is the University of Michigan really trying to pull a fast one on the public and the court?

Two articles appeared this week on the University of Michigan case now before the Supreme Court.

The first by Lucas Morel at the Ashbrook Center, May 2003:

.... Interestingly enough, true diversity derives less from the pursuit of group representation and more from the protection of individual rights. Real diversity, which represents the differences that arise from the freedom of each individual to express unique opinions, preferences, and interests, comes from the liberty that is the birthright of all human beings. If these individual rights are given equal protection, the results will be as diverse as Americans themselves.

In a self-governing society, government gains its legitimacy from the consent of the governed. It should, therefore, protect equally what we each possess equally: as the Declaration of Independence puts it, our equal rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." The freedom that results will give rise to the diversity of individual expression that the academy claims it seeks.

Of course, the equal protection of individuals, and hence their diversity of expression, will ineluctably lead to diverse, that is, unequal, results. But what do the various measures of scholastic achievement, like grade point averages and test scores, reflect but the unequal or diverse achievements of a student population that comprises a diversity of upbringings, abilities, initiative, preparation, and habits? The question is not about the inequality of outcomes, but whether or not the field of competition was equal and fair. When asked what the black man wanted, Frederick Douglass consistently replied: "Give him fair play, and let him alone." Americans black, white, and in between, should ask no more and no less of their common government....

The second, a provocative and potentially incendiary article by Chetly Zarko at OpinionJournal yesterday:

.... The modern idea of diversity, of course, was given its first big push into the culture not in corporate hiring and promotion but in university admissions, where the 1978 Bakke decision enshrined both the word and the practice. Fittingly, the university campus is now the site of the biggest push against it -- in a case before the high court questioning preferential admissions at the University of Michigan.

One of Michigan's major claims, in its legal arguments, is that student diversity enhances the environment for learning and improves the quality of education. Implied is the notion that when a greater number of blacks and other minorities are introduced into the classroom, a more diverse pool of ideas and "perspectives" is generated and everyone gains.

But is this true? The university has said yes, asserting that it has conducted studies showing just such an educational benefit. In its legal briefs and testimony, it has leaned heavily on something called the Michigan Student Study (1990-94). Patricia Gurin, a University of Michigan professor of psychology and the university's key statistical witness, has testified that the 1994 study, with two others, "consistently confirms that racial diversity and student involvement in activities related to diversity have a direct and strong effect on learning and the way students conduct themselves in later life, including disrupting prevailing patterns of racial separation."

But that wasn't the way the 1994 study was first understood. As it happens -- through a Freedom of Information Act request -- I was able to obtain a copy of the study's first "Executive Summary," submitted on May 24, 1994. It concluded that Michigan's racial preference programs actually "stigmatized" African-Americans and "increasingly polarized" the campus; that "self-segregation" was common; that "diversity of skin color" is not equivalent to "diversity of ideas" (financial disparities were more telling); and that diversity "quite simply... does not, in itself, lead to a more informed, educated population." ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 05/17/03 03:14:21 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.