Why Would Anyone Want to Enroll at Harvard?

Now that Jelani Cobb has contributed his two cents in The New Yorker Magazine to the discussion about the Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate racial quotas as a basis for college admissions, I’d like to contribute another two cents.

Cobb, you should know, happens to be a black guy who is Dean of Columbia University’s School of Journalism, who believes that affirmative action is “a sober, if imperfect, attempt to grapple with the abiding inequality in American society,” and its elimination will be “fewer students from traditionally underrepresented minorities on college campuses, particularly at the most competitive institutions.”

By using the word ‘competitive,’ Cobb is politely referring to the so-called ‘elite’ universities, meaning the Ivy League schools and a few others, whose sense of noblesse oblige toward our ‘lesser-endowed’ populations started to emerge as liberalism discovered the twin roots of racism and poverty in the 1960’s, thanks to Dr. King and his push for equal civil rights.

How did the first President of the 1960’s — Kennedy — signal his awareness of the importance and value of an ‘elite’ education? He brought down to D.C. a group of current experts with Harvard backgrounds whom he referred to as his ‘brain trust,’ i.e., the Dean of Harvard College, the Dean’s brother who was currently President of…