JD Vance accuses universities of racial bias against whites and Asians
[Source]
Vice President JD Vance accused U.S. universities of racially discriminating against white and Asian students and alleged widespread scientific failures, obstructive bureaucracies and political bias among faculty in a post on X on Saturday.
Allegations of racial bias: 'There is an extraordinary 'reproducibility crisis' in the sciences, particularly in biology, where most published papers fail to replicate,' Vance wrote. 'And on top of all of this, many universities explicitly engage in racial discrimination (mostly against whites and Asians) that violates the civil rights laws of this country.' He argued that institutions could either cooperate with the Trump administration on reforms or 'yell 'fascism' at basic democratic accountability and drift further into irrelevance.
Institutional and ideological claims: Vance also claimed, 'Most universities have massive bureaucracies that inhibit the translation of basic research into commercial adoption. The voting patterns of university professors are so one-sided that they look like the election results of North Korea.' He did not provide specific examples or data to support the claims.
Legal and political backdrop: The post comes amid ongoing national debate over affirmative action and the role of race in college admissions. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based admissions policies were unconstitutional, prompting many institutions to revise their diversity strategies.
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Counterpoint: Some Asian American students and leaders have pushed back against anti-affirmative action lawsuits, arguing that such efforts exploit Asian identities to challenge diversity policies. Rep. Grace Meng has said Asian Americans have been 'used as a pawn' in legal battles over affirmative action.
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He told me that it allowed Americans to obsess over narrow questions—who gets an acceptance letter and who doesn't—while ignoring structural inequalities, many of which go beyond race and manifest long before a student applies to college. It was a 'Band-Aid' that let us postpone 'dealing with the big issues,' he told me. Colleges and businesses that are hiring have other options; he suggested they could reach out 'to communities, neighborhoods, places where we don't usually get applicants from.' Race is part of that calculus, but so is class. When I got to college, I was struck by how few people saw this latter category as a means of achieving justice and inclusion. Policies focused on class, however, could both capture a high proportion of Black applicants and, crucially, treat poor white and other applicants equally—thus beginning to dilute the populist resentment that the Trump movement has so powerfully exploited. 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Weaponizing a reactionary politics of white grievance and hobbling some of the world's greatest universities because of a personal vendetta is appalling. So, too, is trampling on the laws that have made American society more equal. But it is also undeniable that systematically failing to treat people as individuals doesn't help Black or Latino people—or anyone else, for that matter. It has entrenched the rancid notion of innate racial hierarchy, and ultimately rendered the nation weaker and more divided.
