Here and There, Feb. 18

Stanford University stated on the record today that it believes that some ethnic minorities aren't as smart as others

Stanford has joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a handful of leading institutions of science and technology in filing a "friend of the court" brief arguing the importance of diversity in science and technology education and the necessity of taking race and ethnicity into account in admissions policies to achieve that diversity.

I'm open to arguments that a diverse student body (if we're talking diversity of life experience, not skin color) can enhance everybody's learning experience. This is especially true, in say, a social science program or a law school. But using skin color to create diversity in a science and technology program? Are we to believe that there is a distinctive African American perspective on mathematics, or a Cherokee tradition of chemical engineering?

I know exactly what Stanford means when it says it has "a long history of supporting affirmative action". It means lowering standards for people of certain ethnic backgrounds to the point of admitting unqualified candidates, with all that implies. How insulting to all of the minority candidates who are capable of meeting the same standards as everybody else. Stanford should be ashamed of itself.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer country: Thieves emptied more than 100 vaults at a diamond trading center in what officials said might be the largest theft ever in Antwerp, the gem trading capital of the world.

Axis of eBay: In case you missed Robert Scheer's recent line calling our allies in the mulinational campaign against Saddam

an "international coalition" that amounts to a fig leaf named Tony Blair and a motley collection of nations one can buy on eBay.

Today the Professor links to a couple of anti-Weasel editorials from our eBay allies the Czechs and the Romanians. (Can't imagine why these countries would be nervous about a Russian-German alliance, but there you have it):

Communism wrung our neck while the honourable democracies issued communiqués. And now they are surprised that all the countries in the former communist bloc do not give a damn about obsolete stratagems of France and Germany.

And we all know which side Robert Scheer was on in the Cold War, don't we.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder continues to pick up support from the unelected despots of failed states everywhere, as Egypt's Hosni Mubarak praises Schroeder's Iraq policy.

Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at February 18, 2003 06:18 PM