Stanford to California: We Don't Need Your Money

Last September California banned "legacy" admissions in private colleges, i.e., the practice of favoring the children of alumni during the admissions process.

The law is difficult to implement, since many applicants have impressive resumes and it will be nearly impossible to prove that being a legacy was the deciding factor in a candidate's admission.

Stanford University decided not to play the game of prove-that-I'm-violating-a-complicated law. Stanford announced that it will continue to give preferential treatment to legacies: [bold added]

With three weeks to go before California’s ban on legacy admissions takes effect at private universities that receive state funding, Stanford has made a stunning decision: To preserve that perk, it’s pulling out of the Cal Grant program that benefits hundreds of low-income students at the pricey campus.

By declining Cal Grants, Stanford can continue giving admissions preference to hundreds of students who are related to alumni or whose relatives have given money to the university. The statewide ban on such legacy and donor-driven admissions takes effect Sept. 1 under Assembly Bill 1780, which was signed into law last year.

Stanford officials say they will cover the canceled aid with university money, and that it will cost just $4 million a year...

Stanford is one of six California private schools that last year reported giving preferential admissions to the children of alumni or wealthy donors. Stanford said it admitted 295 students this way in fall 2023, or 13.6% of all undergraduates admitted that year. The other private schools that relied on the practice were Santa Clara University, the University of Southern California, Northeastern University Oakland (formerly Mills College), Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College. None has said it was pulling out of the Cal Grant program.

Jonathan Levin

Without considering the moral arguments, Stanford's decision can be justified on a dollar-and-cents basis:

Stanford's endowment exceeds $36 billion and can easily cover the loss of Cal Grant's $4 million per year.

If it did forsake legacies, Stanford would risk future donations by billionaire alumni like Google's Larry Page and Sergey Brin and Nike's Phil Knight and thousands of mere millionaires.

There are no Federal laws against legacy admissions, and therefore Federal funding to Stanford will not be jeopardized by this decision.

With the elevation of Business School Dean Jonathan Levin to its Presidency, Stanford appears to be pulling back from the egalitarian excesses (anti-Semitism, DEI) that have plagued it and the nation's most prestigious universities.

Sticky Ivy

Harvard and Yale: joining against a common enemy?

The Trump Administration claims that Harvard University has violated civil rights laws through Harvard's DEI programs and threatens to withhold $9 billion of funding and Harvard's accreditation.

Influential Ivy alumni seem to be supporting Harvard, at least for now.

“You know the world is going crazy when Yale alums are making donations to Harvard!” —Ross Eaton ’03 on the Yale Alumni Facebook group on April 16, shortly after the federal government began freezing grants to Harvard.

Up in Smoke

LA Mayor Bass and Gov. Newsom tour the ruins of the
Palisades business district (Photo by Thayer/TNS/Chron)

Chronicle "reporter" Kurtis Alexander says we should go easy on criticisms of politicians for their responsibility for the LA fires:

If you were to scan social media for what was behind this week’s deadly Southern California wildfires, you might think leaders in Los Angeles and Sacramento went out of their way to push policies to invite disaster.

The mayor of Los Angeles cut the city’s fire department budget, one pervasive criticism goes. The fire department hired the wrong people, others say. The city didn’t fill the reservoirs that feed the fire hydrants, another asserts. The state didn’t send enough water from Northern California for the firefight, yet another criticism goes.

While the series of wind-driven fires that has blasted Los Angeles County certainly exposed government shortcomings, media experts are quick to note that many of the accusations circulating online are less about real problems and more about pushing an agenda. And some are flat-out wrong.

Should you care to read the rest of the editorialist's (not "reporter"'s) defense against accusations of poor water management (both LA and statewide), emphasizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion over merit, misplacing budget priorities, and why we shouldn't dismiss climate change so quickly, click on the link above.

Your humble blogger understands that people have been overly quick to seize onto these criticisms but also understands that the Progressive ideologues who have run California for a quarter-century are responsible for that portion of the disaster that cannot be laid at the feet of Mother Nature.

And that portion will be significant, no matter how hard the people in charge will try to deflect the blame.

[Note: the Mayor and Governor's tight-lipped expressions aren't typical of sadness or concern. Could it be because they both realize their political futures have gone up in smoke?]

Friendly Takeover

With some of the largest, most successful companies (Tesla, Oracle, HP, and now Chevron) in the Bay Area moving to Texas because of onerous taxes and regulations, it's hard to name a company that is certain to be here a century from now.

Even trillion-dollar "megacap" corporations like Apple, Nvidia, Google, and Facebook can have their fortunes worsen suddenly, and California, seeing taxpaying individuals and companies fleeing its hostile business climate, will devise ways to squeeze the remaining golden geese. Those companies better have their "go bags" ready.

There is one private entity, however, that not only will stay here but has expanded its footprint throughout the 20th century and will do so in the 21st.

Koret Field at Notre Dame de Namur University (Chron photo)

Headline: Plans for Stanford’s new Bay Area campus move forward. [bold added]

Stanford University’s plan to purchase a historic Catholic university property on the Peninsula and turn it into a satellite campus for up to 2,500 students, faculty and staff is taking shape, according to newly released documents.

Belmont officials this month released a draft environmental impact report, the first public document detailing Stanford’s option to purchase the nearly 46-acre site of Notre Dame de Namur University in the city. In the works since 2021, the deal — if it goes through — would continue Stanford’s push into San Mateo County after local concerns about growth forced the university’s withdrawal of a huge expansion plan for its main Palo Alto campus in 2019.

Stanford already operates Stanford Redwood City, a 35-acre health care facility and administrative satellite 5 miles north across the Santa Clara County line. The proposed new acquisition, to be called Stanford Belmont, is 13 miles from the Stanford campus and a 20-minute drive up Highway 101.

The Leland Stanford Junior University, which had a $36.5 billion endowment in 2023, has the deep pockets and structure (e.g., no quarterly earnings reports to shareholders) to endure the lead times necessary for Bay Area real estate projects.

The University also has a growing long-term demand for its education and health services that will populate its projects as soon as they are completed.

The installation of Economics Professor and Business School dean Jonathan Levin as its President, the arrest of demonstrators who took over and damaged its property, and the reinstatement of standardized admissions tests indicate that Stanford is setting aside the excesses of Progressivism, DEI (diversity,equity, and inclusion), and wokeness, which is more reason to expect it to survive into the next century and beyond.

The Ultimate DEI Hire

Former President Trump sat for a scheduled interview before the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, and the fireworks started with the opening question and answer:

Former President Donald Trump attacked Vice President Kamala Harris over her race, baselessly suggesting his election rival only began identifying as a Black woman in recent years.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said Wednesday at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention. “So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”

He continued: “I respect either one but she obviously doesn’t because she was Indian all the way and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she became a Black person. And I think somebody should look into that, too.”

Following the interview (PBS / YouTube at the bottom of this post), partisans leapt immediately into the fray attacking and defending President Trump's answers to various questions, with the main focus on whether Vice President Harris self-identified as "Black" or "Indian". There are videos supporting both positions, but my own take is that this contretemps will blow over when the Democratic convention begins on August 19th.

Also, the immediate negative reaction to President Trump's statements about Kamala Harris' race was understandable but self-defeating. The great American public, including myself, was unaware of how often she emphasized her Black or Indian heritage to the press, depending on which position was more advantageous. That's no crime, just opportunism.

President Trump made a smart chess move because:

1) It reminded us that Vice President Harris was selected as President Biden's running mate because of her sex and race, the ultimate DEI hire. (There are various speeches by candidate and President Biden declaring this to be the case.) DEI is becoming a dirty word in corporate circles.

2) Both white and black journalists later stated that they were highly offended by this latest example of Trumpian racism. Reporters should grow a pair, because the story isn't about them. Rational voters don't care about TV personalities' feelings, especially if the latter are rich and successful.

3) President Trump wasn't trying to convert the mostly hostile crowd who wasn't intending to vote for him anyway. He was going after the 10-20%, of all races,who are not enthusiastic about identity politics and who are staying silent because they're afraid of being cancelled if they strayed from the dominant narrative.

Let's first see what Kamala Harris does with the naming of her running mate and actually being declared the nominee of the Democratic Party before delving too deep into the dynamics of a Trump-Harris contest.

MEI, not DEI

(Image from Diversio/Linkedin)

There's a new Human Resources acronym to learn about: [bold added]

From tech to tractors, companies are dialing back diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Instead, a DEI alternative endorsed by Elon Musk could alter the fate of your next job application.

It’s known as MEI, short for merit, excellence and intelligence. As described by Scale AI Chief Executive Alexandr Wang, who helped popularize the term, MEI means hiring the best candidates for open roles without considering demographics.

The George Floyd riots of 2020 kickstarted the whole Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion movement, and companies raced to install DEI programs that would diversify their work forces, diversity being typically measured by the number of people they would hire who were not white, straight males.

Four years later the lack of a return--or perhaps even a negative return--on their investment have caused some companies to renounce DEI in favor of merit-based personnel policies.

Your humble blogger finds it important to note that one major organization that wholeheartedly embraces DEI is government, which has few performance metrics and no competition to show whether an alternative might be better.

By the way, expect DEI to be a hot-button topic this election year:

That tension is now in the brightest of spotlights, after President Biden abandoned his re-election bid and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris. Biden picked Harris as his running mate four years ago, after vowing to consider only women for the job. Almost immediately, some political opponents began painting Harris, who is Black and South Asian, as a “DEI hire.”

Fox News:

Florida Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost said on Tuesday that calling Vice President Harris, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, a "DEI hire" was like using a "racial slur."

The race card has already been played, and there's still over three months to go to the election.