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The chief qualification for a university president
The latest person to be awarded with the presidency of an Ivy League university for his outspoken defense of affirmative action is Jeffrey S. Lehman, current dean of the University of Michigan Law School and soon to be president of Cornell. The New York Times, as it did with the new Columbia University president Lee Bollinger (who also came from the University of Michigan), lauds Lehman for his support for affirmative action, an accolade that starts in the second paragraph of an 18-paragraph article: “In his role as a dean at the University of Michigan, Mr. Lehman is a defendant in a lawsuit over affirmative action that the Supreme Court recently agreed to hear.” But in the fifth paragraph, giving the point almost equal priority with diversity, the Times throws in this odd observation: “Mr. Lehman said his legal training probably helped him to be comfortable with ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty.”
Now think about that.
Lawyers, especially contemporary lawyers in America, are professionally trained to believe there is no truth, only the manipulation of various truth-claims in order to get the client what he wants. So, by liberal standards, they of all people are the best suited to lead our major universities. These institutions, once devoted to the pursuit of truth and knowledge and the transmission of our cultural heritage, are now devoted to the promotion of the diversity agenda, along with its indispensable practical requirement—the belief that there is no objectively discernible truth.
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