(Some) Black students score lower in exams than their peers — true, but you can’t say that!
A law professor at Georgetown University has been fired for pointing out that black students got lower grades in her classes. This was not due to racism. Black students get lower grades at selective colleges because they are admitted with lower grades and test scores than their non-black classmates, due to racial preferences in admissions at schools like Georgetown.
“I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks, happens almost every semester," the professor said in the video.
The conversation between two law professors at the Washington, D.C., school was filmed and posted to the online database Panopto, where students, who have been attending classes virtually because of the pandemic, can access the recordings. The video is no longer available on the platform.
[snip]
The professor was targeted simply for telling the truth, says Ted Frank, a lawyer who has won over $100 million in lawsuits, and several landmark court decisions: “The only thing reprehensible here is the statement of the Dean throwing his faculty member under the bus instead of telling students unpleasant truths. GU Law grading is blind and anonymous!” So the professor is not saying he engaged in any kind of racism. As Frank notes, “African-American law students good enough to get into Georgetown Law end up going to Harvard and Stanford instead” because of those universities’ racial preferences in admissions.” As a result, “Georgetown Law has to”lower standards for black applicants, and “dive deeper into the pool to get a racially balanced class.” As a result of these lower standards for black and non-black students, “African-Americans attending Georgetown Law are less qualified than average students, and perform worse in school.”
As Frank notes, it is utterly predictable that black students will get lower grades at Georgetown, given their lower grades and standardized test scores: “Georgetown uses LSATs in admissions for a reason: they do a good job of predicting who will do well in law school. What do you expect will happen if you mix students with LSATs in the 150s with students with LSATs a standard deviation higher?”
LSAT scores are not a perfect predictor of law school success — ask me about my own score, and whether I ended up in the top 0.01 % of my class – but they do test the ability to think logically and clearly, add and subtract, and even write a bit. Not all that long ago, those were critical skills for lawyers.
