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On Thursday, Georgetown Law terminated one of its professors who was recorded in a video
discussing the academic performance of black students.
In the video that has gone viral on Twitter and sparked controversy and outrage, Professor Sandra Sellers and Professor David Batson can be seen generally discussing students' academic standings on a video Zoom call.
"You know what? I hate to say this,
I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are Blacks," Sellers says. "Happens almost every semester and it's like 'oh come on.'"
Sellers then briefly laughs before saying: "I get some really good ones but there are also usually some that are just plain at the bottom, it drives me crazy...
I feel bad."
Batson doesn't speak much in the video, but can be seen nodding his head a few times.
On Thursday afternoon, Georgetown Law Dean Bill Treanor stated that
Sellers would be fired and that Batson has been put on leave awaiting the findings of an investigation being conducted by the Office of Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action.
Comment: Sellers was just stating the truth. One of the problems with affirmative action is that unqualified students are accepted based on the color of their skin. Many of these students - unprepared for the course material to follow - end up falling behind and receiving lower grades than they would have in a program for which they were qualified. The problem isn't the professors. And the solution isn't affirmative action - it is increasing school performance in grade school.
For an example of the wrong solution, there are calls for elite Thomas Jefferson High School to lower their academic standards so that more minority students can be accepted. As Harry Jackson, a black Naval Academy graduate points out, this is a
bad idea:
As previously reported by National File, amid left-wing efforts to massively alter academic admissions and curriculum using critical race theory nationwide, officials at Fairfax County Public Schools directed administrators at Thomas Jefferson High School - a magnet school ranked #1 in the nation - to scrap the school's admission standards in favor of a race-based "merit lottery" meant to admit more "diverse" students to the school.
"The student body is notably diverse," wrote Jackson. "With 79 percent coming from a minority background. But according to state and local education bureaucrats, that last point isn't good enough — because, as it turns out, the school's population is made up of 'the wrong kind' of minorities: Asian students...By comparison, relatively small numbers of Black and Hispanic applicants meet TJ's demanding admission standards."
While Jackson says that he'd like to see more black and Hispanic students attend TJHS, the watering down of admissions standards by "paternalistic white liberals" shows that what they truly believe is that black and Hispanic students are inferior to white and Asian students.
"When I see the effort to water down the admissions standards to TJ — and let's be clear, that effort is largely led by paternalistic White liberals who are determined to "help" minority victims at any cost — I see it for what it is: a tacit admission that they don't think Black and Hispanic students have what it takes to compete on merit."
See Heather Mac Donald's
Diversity Delusion for all the details.
Comment: Sellers was just stating the truth. One of the problems with affirmative action is that unqualified students are accepted based on the color of their skin. Many of these students - unprepared for the course material to follow - end up falling behind and receiving lower grades than they would have in a program for which they were qualified. The problem isn't the professors. And the solution isn't affirmative action - it is increasing school performance in grade school.
For an example of the wrong solution, there are calls for elite Thomas Jefferson High School to lower their academic standards so that more minority students can be accepted. As Harry Jackson, a black Naval Academy graduate points out, this is a bad idea: See Heather Mac Donald's Diversity Delusion for all the details.