Rawlsian Explorations in Religion and Applied Philosophy

4. A Rawlsian Critique of Legacy and Affirmative Action

4 A RAWLSIAN CRITIQUE OF LEGACY AND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION In 1999 it came to light that the person who was to become president of the United States was a ‘‘C’’ student and had undistinguished scores on standardized tests (Mayer and Robbins 1999). How then did George W. Bush get admitted to Yale and then to Harvard? The answer apparently has to do with certain ‘‘legacy’’ considerations, namely, the consideration that his wealthy and influential relatives were alumni of these prestigious institutions. Likewise, in the 2008 presidential election it came to light that John McCain had graduated in the bottom 1 percent of his class at the Naval Academy. Why, then, was he admitted in the first place? Once again, the answer seems to lie in the legacy created by his father and grandfather, both of whom graduated from this highly selective institution (Timberg 2007, 17–34). The other major candidate, and eventual victor, in the 2008 American presidential election, Barack Obama, rightly accentuated his successful career at Harvard Law School. But Obama refused to make available, after repeated requests to do so, his Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) score and his grades while at Occidental College for two years. He likewise refused to release his Law School Admission Test (LSAT) score and his grades while at Columbia for two years (it is known, however, that he did legacy and affirmative action 67 not graduate from Columbia with honors). Although there can be no certainty here (Obama could eliminate all doubt by releasing the relevant data), it seems safe to assume that Obama’s standardized test scores and grades at Occidental and Columbia were undistinctive. Obama himself admits that at this stage he was indifferent to school and that drugs, including cocaine, were a significant part of his life (2004, 93–96). So how did he get admitted to Occidental and then to Columbia and then to Harvard? The safest guess seems to be: affirmative action. (Because Obama’s father went to graduate school at Harvard, Obama’s admission to that institution, if not to Occidental and Columbia, might have been due to legacy considerations.) Discussion of legacy and affirmative action admissions/hires tends to be heated. ‘‘Conservatives’’ tend to defend legacy admissions/hires and ‘‘liberals’’ tend to defend affirmative action admissions/hires. Hence it is not surprising that legacy and affirmative action admissions/hires are widespread. But it seems to me that they are conceptually problematic. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a Rawlsian critique of both legacy and affirmative action admissions/hires, although I will eventually argue that legacy is a worse injustice than affirmative action. It is odd that Rawls never in his published writings explicitly stated his views of legacy and affirmative action—odd because these topics, especially af- firmative action, have been hotly debated for several decades. One possible explanation for his silence on these subjects is that Rawls was primarily interested in ideal justice, whereas affirmative action in particular involves compensation for injustices, which signals the presence of nonideal conditions. But Rawls opined on several nonideal cases: war, abortion, euthanasia, campaign finance reform, school prayer (see, e.g., Rawls 1996, liii), and so on. Why not legacy and affirmative action? I do not know how to attempt to answer this question. Rather, the purpose of this chapter is to offer a Rawlsian argument against legacy and affirmative action. Although I will carefully cite texts from Rawls himself throughout the chapter, my view is not so much lifted from Rawls ’s writings as it is constructed loosely on the basis of Rawls’s insights. That is, I take responsibility for the way in which the argument is constructed . I am not trying to slip in through the back door the thesis that the parts of Rawls’s thought that I have put together would have been put together by Rawls himself in order to make the cases against legacy and affirmative action. Once again, I am defending not Rawls’s own view but a Rawlsian view. 68 rawlsian explorations Along with many other philosophers, I have the sense that, despite the enormous amount of attention that has been paid to Rawls’s work, there is still more there that is worthy of analysis. I will admittedly be trying to sort out the interpretive diversity of opinion about Rawls and the...