Keeping Georgetown Law School Profs from Talking About Black Students' Low Grades Helps No One

Townhall ^ | March 17, 2021 | john R Lott Jr.

[richardb72]

Some simple, obvious facts are too politically incorrect for academics to state publicly. Georgetown University just fired law professor Sandra Sellers and forced out professor David Batson. Sellers' offense? "I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks," Sellers' said in discussion with another professor at the end of a Zoom call.

Batson's offense? He didn't condemn the statement, but instead sympathized with Sellers’ concerns. “What drives me crazy is… my own unconscious biases playing out in the scheme of things” might be responsible for their poor scores, he said. The logic is that blacks do poorly in college because of professors' biases.

Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor said he was "appalled" by these statements, but all academics know that this is true.

I held teaching or research positions at many universities – the Wharton Business School, University of Chicago, UCLA, Yale, Stanford, and Rice -- and I have heard these concerns raised many times. I have listened to even the most liberal professors make the same statements as Batson and Sellers.

But the left has only itself to blame for the harm that affirmative action in academia does to black students. ...

[Bookshelf]

There are 1.33 million lawyers in the USA so the bar exam can’t be that difficult.