"Ex-Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore told mistress he was going to make her watch him kill himself — with butter knives, kitchen scissors."

 That's the disturbing headline in The New York Post.

The inconsolable 39-year-old [Moore] allegedly burst into the apartment of his executive assistant and mistress, Paige Shiver, on Wednesday, where he grabbed butter knives and kitchen scissors and told her he was going to make her watch him commit suicide. Shiver, 32, had broken off the illicit tryst with her boss just two days before, prosecutor Kati Rezmierski said during Moore’s arraignment on Friday afternoon.The pair has been in an “intimate relationship” for a number of years, she added.... Shiver reported their relationship to the University of Michigan’s athletic department when Moore continued to call and text her, despite her efforts to ignore him, prosecutors said.... Prosecutors on Friday described to the court how an enraged Moore told his mistress, “you ruined my life,” and that he was going to kill himself and “make you watch.”...

"She was accused of saying in a conversation at a conference in March that the university was 'controlled by wealthy Jews'...."

"She was also accused of saying that Jewish students were 'wealthy and privileged' and not in need of her office’s diversity services, and that 'Jewish people have no genetic DNA that would connect them to the land of Israel,' according to the documents, which were part of a complaint from the Anti-Defamation League of Michigan.... Ms. Dawson had been in charge of an office that oversees efforts to mentor and retain racially, culturally and economically diverse students.... Ms. Dawson’s lawyer, Amanda Ghannam, denied that she said anything antisemitic.... 'The university has clearly, blatantly violated Ms. Dawson’s First Amendment rights.... It’s deeply troubling that they would escalate the situation to termination based on one conversation in somebody’s private capacity'...."

From "D.E.I. Official at University of Michigan Is Fired Over Antisemitism Claim, Lawyer Says/The official, an administrator of multicultural programs, was accused of making antisemitic remarks in a conversation. Her lawyer said that the school fired her this week, and vowed to sue" (NYT).

"The University of Michigan will no longer require diversity statements as part of faculty hiring, promotion and tenure decisions...."

"Critics view them as a form of compelled political speech that are often used to evade legal restrictions on affirmative action.... [A] survey conducted for the committee found that more than half of Michigan faculty members believed diversity statements placed pressure on professors to express specific moral, political and social views.... Thomas Braun, a biostatistics professor who led the committee, said he hoped the university would still find a way to allow job applicants to discuss how their work related to diversity in the broad sense, without imposing ideological litmus tests. 'I think all faculty should be able to explain how their own personal experiences inform what they do everyday as a faculty member, and how it fits in the core values and mission of UM,' Mr. Braun said in an email. 'If that seems impossible to some individuals, then maybe UM is not the right fit.'..."

The NYT reports.

That word "fit" is doing a lot of work. Anyway, at least now faculty and prospective faculty won't have to formally explain how they fit the University's specific moral, political and social views, but they will still need to fit and to be able to explain how they fit. 

Isn't the formal statement the easier part of this fitness test? Especially with A.I.

"Just as students [in 1968] could no longer tolerate the horrific images of a distant war delivered, for the first time, in almost real time by television..."

"... so many of today’s students have found the images from Gaza, now transmitted instantly onto their phones, to demand action. And just as students in ’68 insisted that their school sever ties to a government institute doing research for the war, so today’s students demand that Columbia divest from companies profiting from Israel’s invasion of Gaza.... Universities do have a serious obligation to protect Jewish students from antisemitism and to maintain order, but it is to their students and teachers that they must answer, not to Republicans eager to score points against woke 'indoctrination' at elite colleges or to megadonors seeking to push their agendas onto institutions of higher learning...."

Writes Serge Schmemann, a member of the NYT editorial board, in "Student Protest Is an Essential Part of Education" (NYT).

By the way, that headline is close to what I wrote to my parents when I participated in a student strike at the University of Michigan, circa 1970. I am in possession of this letter, and I can only imagine what my parents must have thought. I went so far as to assert that the protesting was more educational than the classes themselves. And it's not as though they'd asked for an explanation. I took it upon myself to pontificate. The issue at the time was affirmative action. The chant was: "Open it up or shut it down." What did I know about the wisdom of a program of affirmative action? It seemed vivifyingly clear at the time.

In the realm of law school rankings and affirmative action: "There is no subterfuge here."

I'm reading "Law schools love to hate U.S. News rankings. But some can’t let go. Yale law’s decision to stop cooperating with the publication landed like a thunderclap. Records show what other schools thought about the 'revolution.'"

Let me drag this key passage out of the middle:

As schools weighed their decisions, some questioned the purity of the boycotters’ motives. One theory: Some schools, correctly anticipating that the Supreme Court would soon strike down race-based affirmative action, could be planning admissions changes that would hurt them in the rankings but preserve diversity. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board surmised as much, saying, “The Yale and Harvard announcements look like attempts to adapt in advance.”

When the University of Michigan’s law dean heard this theory from an alumnus, he dismissed it, saying in an email shortly after Yale’s announcement that his school’s decision to withdraw was “100% not connected to any Supreme Court ruling.”

“There is no subterfuge here,” wrote Mark West, dean at Michigan, which ranked 10th at the time.

"Tonight the touch points are going to include your hand holding another hand, your back against somebody’s back, your hand on someone’s heart space..."

"... and their hands on your heart space, and you’re going to take turns leaning in and out of two long-held hugs."

Said Allie Hoffman, the founder of something called The Feels, quoted in "Extreme Eye Contact and Other Ways of Dating/Forget dinner and a movie: Let’s see if we can gaze into each other’s eyes for three minutes instead" (NYT).

When it was time to touch each other’s “heart space,” some laid their hands directly on the left side of their partner’s chest while others made contact with just the tips of their fingers. Somatic practices like meditation and eye gazing have long been incorporated in relationships.... The innovation here is attaching this mindfulness style to first-time romantic meet-ups....

I can't imagine volunteering (let alone paying) for this kind of thing. Here are the first 2 associations that sprang into my head.

1. In the James Whale movie "The Old Dark House" — which I watched on October 1st, the first day it became available on the Criterion Channel, part of a collection called "Pre-Code Horror" — the owner of the house suddenly lays her hand on her hand on the bare upper chest of the young Gloria Stuart:

"Towards the end of class, Phoebe asked us all to smile for her, even though it was evident that we were all tired and upset by her microaggressions throughout the class."

"I would also call this an act of aggression towards us. We do not owe her any performative emotions." 

Said a complaint filed against Phoebe Gloeckner, a professor at my alma mater, the University of Michigan School of Art and Design, quoted in "Meet the ballsy art professor students tried — and failed — to cancel" (College Fix).

Gloeckner teaches a course on the art of comics, and she demanded that the students study the work of R. Crumb.

"The [Board of Regents] posted 118 pages of those emails on the university website... In one email exchange... the employee said that her 'heart hurts,' and Dr. Schlissel replied, 'i know. mine too.... I still wish I were strong enough to find a way....'"

"[I]n November, Dr. Schlissel wrote to the subordinate that he was disappointed that he might not be sitting next to her at a University of Michigan basketball game. He wrote, 'the only reason I agreed to go was to go with you.' The emails used 'inappropriate tone and inappropriate language,' the letter from the Board of Regents said, and showed that Dr. Schlissel had used official business to carry out the relationship. Dr. Schlissel’s conduct was 'particularly egregious' because he had taken a public position against sexual harassment, the board said. After a provost, Martin Philbert, was accused of sexual misconduct, Dr. Schlissel had sent a letter in August 2020 to the university saying that 'the highest priority' was to make the university 'safe for all,' the Board of Regents’ letter noted. Mr. Philbert left the school."

From "University of Michigan Fires Its President Over Inappropriate Relationship/Mark Schlissel’s contract was terminated immediately for interactions with a subordinate, the Board of Regents said" (NYT).

Humiliating exposure —the banal words of sexual desire, the Philbert hypocrisy, the revelation of not caring about basketball.... 

"I remember that day well" — the day Roe was decided — "because it was also the day when former president Lyndon B. Johnson died."

"I was one of the editors of the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan, and we had a passionate argument that went late into the evening over which should be our lead story. Should it be legalized abortion across the nation? Or the man who sent tens of thousands of young Americans to die in the Vietnam War? Most of the female editors saw the historic importance of Roe and understood the impact it would have on women’s lives. Most of the male editors — myself included, I confess — could not see past Vietnam and pushed hard for LBJ. We won, sort of: The paper ended up stripping Johnson’s death across the top of the front page and putting the Roe decision right beneath it, still above the fold, with a boldface two-line headline. For history’s sake, I thought that was the right call. I was spectacularly wrong. Johnson was indeed a towering figure, but he’d been long out of office and had to die at some point anyway. Roe was like a bolt from the blue, and with it the nation took a giant stride toward treating women as full and equal citizens under the law. The decision’s impact continues to this day — but perhaps not for many days longer."

Writes Eugene Robinson in "If the Supreme Court throws out ‘Roe v. Wade,’ it will tear the country apart" (WaPo).

I was a student there at the time, so I know I read that edition of the Michigan Daily. I didn't follow the Supreme Court, and I remember being completely surprised that the Court would do something so dramatic, to change so much about our experience of life. 

Isn't it interesting that the editors split by sex — everyone dominated by the  importance of sovereignty over one's own body?

As for the assertion in today's headline — who knows? Will overruling Roe "tear the country apart"? More than it's already torn apart? We may find out. I think it will help the Democratic Party, but you don't hear Democrats expressing hope for this gift of overruling.

"There was almost a celebrity-like aura around him. It wasn’t a normal class. He would go on these long tangents about life and spirituality."

Said Amelia Brown, quoted in "Past Students Say Professor of Rock ’n’ Roll Sexually Harassed Them/Six former University of Michigan students have filed legal papers accusing a former lecturer of sexually harassing them and the school of not doing enough to protect them" (NYT). 

The class Brown took with the professor, Bruce Conforth, was “Beatniks, Hippies and Punks.”

[One former student] says, according to the court papers, that Mr. Conforth pressured her into a series of sexual encounters, some of them in his campus office, and later, after she had graduated, raped her in his Ann Arbor apartment. A second former student, Ms. Brown, said she was pressured into a sexual encounter with Mr. Conforth after he told her he had feelings for her and pursued her for several weeks. A third woman said he aggressively kissed her. The other plaintiffs say Mr. Conforth propositioned them to have sexual relationships, at times sending them sexually-charged messages or emails and persisting even after they said no. One woman said he gave her a raccoon penis, suggesting it was a talisman.... 

"The University of Michigan is withdrawing from hosting a presidential debate..."

"U-M is making the move because of concerns of bringing the campaigns, media and supporters of both candidates to Ann Arbor and campus during a pandemic.... The move comes on the same day Biden's campaign said he would commit to participating in three debates, not four like Trump's campaign was pushing for. 'Our position is straightforward and clear: Joe Biden will accept the Commission’s debates, on the Commission’s dates, under the Commission’s established format and the Commission’s independent choice of moderators,' said Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon.... ... Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani [proposed adding] another, earlier debate to the current schedule of three. They also proposed that each campaign have a role in selecting the debate moderators."

The Detroit Free Press reports.

"I think it's cool that even though her family went to Ivy League schools, she decided that UM was the caliber high enough to match that of an Ivy League school. We hope she finds her fit here just like we all have. We all love it here. We hope she does, too."

Said a sophomore at the University of Michigan, quoted in "Sasha Obama set to begin college career at University of Michigan" (Detroit News).

I don't know why Sasha Obama isn't going to a fancier school, but as a graduate of the University of Michigan and the daughter of a graduate of the University of Michigan and granddaughter of graduate of the University of Michigan, I'm happy to hear this news.

And I thought this poor girl was mistreated by the original NYT headline!

By "original," I mean the one I saw when I wrote the post yesterday: "How would you like to be the one person photographed to appear under the headline 'Political Divide on Campuses Hardens After Trump’s Victory'?" I said:

I had to laugh at this grim-faced young woman in her shadowy Ann Arbor bedroom, embodying post-election trauma for the NYT.

Oddly enough, this person was pro-Trump. She started out "ecstatic"....

But her mood of celebration quickly faded when students held an evening vigil on campus — to mourn the results — and her biology teacher suspended class on the assumption, Ms. Delekta said, that students would be too upset to focus.

She was outraged. “Nobody has died,” Ms. Delekta said. “The United States has not died. Democracy is more alive than ever. Simply put, the American people voted and Trump won.”

But click on the link to the article, and you'll see — at least if you're going there this minute — that the headline has become "On Campus, Trump Fans Say They Need ‘Safe Spaces.'" Now, the grim-faced young woman who let the NYT photographer into her bedroom looks like a big whiner who demanded a safe space! And she's the one who chided others for getting coddled:

She circulated an online petition and accused the university president of catering to the liberal majority by suggesting that “their ideology was superior to the ideology of their peers,” as she put it, when he sent out an email publicizing the vigil and listing counseling resources for students upset by the election. Three days later, she was invited to meet with the president in his office.

“I was completely shocked that he even read the letter,” she said. “That was definitely a new thing. It was very exciting.”

Quite aside from the distinct disservice to this particular 20-year-old individual, why is the new headline connecting the demand for "safe spaces" to the pro-Trump side? The first 5 paragraphs are about how Trump opponents were acting out grief and how the university administration was proactively offering psychological support (not "safe spaces," but counseling).

If we keep reading, do we ever encounter support for the proposition that it's the Trump fans who are demanding safe spaces?

There's a video from the woman in the first photo, Amanda Delekta, and she's talking about going to a biology class that began with the teacher saying she couldn't respect anyone who voted for Trump. Delekta only says there should be mutual respect within the shared space of the classroom, not that anything like a "safe space" must be provided.

There's the conclusory sentence:

Conservative students who voted for Mr. Trump say that even though their candidate won, their views are not respected. Some are adopting the language of the left, saying they need a “safe space” to express their opinions — a twist resented by left-leaning protesters.

"Safe space" is in quotes, but who is quoted? Where has this happened? And have "left-leaning protesters" really expressed resentment over this demand that I'm not sure has even been made?

Is this the fake news I've been hearing about?

I keep reading this long article, which is by Anemona Hartocollis, and I'm not finding anything to support the headline. Way down in the text there's this:

Ibtihal Makki, a self-confident senior in a pink hijab who is studying biopsychology and neuroscience and is chairwoman of a student government diversity committee, objected to conservatives on campus saying they needed safe spaces to express their views.

“To turn around and say that they need safe spaces after their candidate won I think is ironic and hypocritical,” Ms. Makki said.

In the past, she added, conservatives did not understand the need for safe spaces, “because they never needed it, because they don’t have any of the identities that made them feel that way.”

So it's hearsay from Makki?

White conservatives like Ms. Delekta...

Delekta is white? More hearsay. Does Delekta self-identify as white?

... Ms. Makki said, are not as vulnerable as someone with dark skin or who is wearing a hijab, because she cannot be identified as a conservative by any outward signs.

Okay, I get that Makki called Deletka a hypocrite, but did she have access to some quote from Deletka that isn't in the article or did the NYT reporter paraphrase Deletka's comments in a way that introduced the term "safe space" and elicited a reaction that got Makki to say what the reporter wanted said? These are very young people, Makki and Deletka, and it's wrong to use them to say something the reporter has decided ought to be said. If that's what happened, this is fake news.

By the way, Makki raised an interesting point that could have been further examined: People can be hated because of things they can't hide (like your race if you have a very dark or very light skin color) and because of things they can hide (like your race if you have a medium skin tone or your beliefs and opinions or your sexual orientation). But I wouldn't assume that it's easier when the attribute can be hidden. It's different to have a choice whether to be out and proud or to hide.

When it comes to political opinions, you can keep them to yourself, and the ballot is nicely secret. That left a lot of people hiding their support for Trump. Trump haters made it socially if not physically dangerous to openly support Trump, and so they laid the groundwork for the shock that came on election night.

Do you want political opinion to be out where you can see it and talk about it? Or do you want people to withhold their opinions? It seems to me that Delekta was saying: Let's have it out in the open. Let's have that marketplace ideas. We can be together. That's the opposite of a demand for a safe space.

And it seems that Makki is saying that she feels vulnerable because of things about her that she can't hide, even though she is choosing to wear religious garb. Is she saying because of her beliefs — which are inside her head — she feels threatened by what she uses her head to imagine is in Delekta's head? Where does all that get you? To a demand that everyone repress whatever they can because a few things — like very dark skin color — cannot be repressed?

I wish the article had explored some of these depths! Why not invite Delekta and Makki to sit down together and talk and see where they go instead of inducing one to talk about the other behind her back?

"Kevorkian's ghoulish reputation is belied by the videotaped consultations in the archive."

"They show Kevorkian turning down many people seeking assistance and only signed on after he spoke to them and their family members and was assured of their terminal state. That can be seen in interviews with Poenisch's mother, Merian Fredericks, and an unidentified woman suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments. The 1994 interview shows the woman from the neck down, in a wheelchair, with her legs amputated and one eye removed. She says that Kevorkian had 'counseled me a couple years ago' and suggested that she should keep trying other remedies. Now, she tells him, 'I am really full of despair because the pain can't be controlled. And I'd really like an out.'"

From "Kevorkian archive opens as physician-assisted deaths rise."

Nothing in the article about the privacy interests of the patients. I'm amazed that these videos are available — at Bentley Historical Library at The University of Michigan, donated by Ava Janus, Kevorkian's niece and sole heir.

"Hail to the Victors Valiant"... is the fight song to beat...

... in this version by some University of Michigan musical theater students at their graduation party:

Posted by Scott Orr on Sunday, May 3, 2015

Wisconsin? Anybody?

ADDED: I'm looking for musical-theater-type presentations of the Wisconsin song (and other schools' songs), not just the usual marching band things, but something different. Also, I just want to say that my mother grew up in Ann Arbor, and here I am as a little kid visiting my grandparents on South Division Street:



I'm the one I would want to be if I didn't already know which one I am. (Photo, from 1956, previously blogged in 2013.)

"Nearly every time I have mentioned the subject of p.c. to a female writer I know, she has told me about Binders Full of Women Writers..."

"... an invitation-only Facebook group started last year for women authors," writes Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine.

The name came from Mitt Romney’s awkwardly phrased debate boast that as Massachusetts governor he had solicited names of female candidates for high-level posts, and became a form of viral mockery. Binders was created to give women writers a “laid-back” and “no-pressure” environment for conversation and professional networking. It was an attempt to alleviate the systemic under­representation of women in just about every aspect of American journalism and literature, and many members initially greeted the group as a welcome and even exhilarating source of social comfort and professional opportunity. “Suddenly you had the most powerful women in journalism and media all on the same page,” one former member, a liberal journalist in her 30s, recalls.

Binders, however, soon found itself frequently distracted by bitter identity-­politics recriminations, endlessly litigating the fraught requirements of p.c. discourse....

ESPN's sports-writing metaphor makes it impossible to understand the incident it is writing about.

"MSU irked by Wolverines' slight... extinguish the flames... dumping gasoline... on the ropes... parting shot... Throwing the stake down in our backyard... Michigan players planted a stake on the Spartan Stadium turf... 'It just felt like we needed to put a stake in them at that point'... defeating Michigan State was like beating his 'little brother'... 'The little brother stuff, all the disrespect...'... 'Throwing the stake down in our backyard out here and coming out there like they're all that. That got shoved up... It got shoved in the last minute and a half'... Michigan coach Brady Hoke said he was aware that something might have happened with his players before the game... Cook said seeing Michigan players plant a 'dagger' on the field fueled him early in the game...."

What the hell happened? Was an actual stake or dagger involved at some point? "Put a stake in them" seems to refer to the method of killing a vampire, but "throwing the stake down" sounds like a failed attempt to say "throwing down the gauntlet." As for "planting a 'dagger,'" I googled "how to kill a vampire" to see if a dagger was an alternative approach — as if that would help me understand the article — and I was amused — as I tried to understand the sports talk in terms of vampires — an effort to explain vampire-slaying in terms of sports:

If you think of monsters in terms of sports, vampires are those great offensive players who can always score, but are pretty crappy defenders. Sure, their speed and strength give them a big advantage, but the truth about vampires is they are too used to overpowering their opponent with their offensive capabilities that very few have spent much time learning to defend themselves.

Knowing this, the key to killing a vampire using a wooden stake is to strike first. Yes, that means playing offense against the offensive powerhouse, but in this game of life and death, you only need to score once.

Okay, enough with the sports analogy....

Yeah, stick a fork or knife in that analogy, it's done.

ADDED: This article makes it clear:

Right before the opening kickoff, U-M junior linebacker Joe Bolden stabbed a tent spike into the field of Spartan Stadium. U-M head coach Brady Hoke issued a statement on the incident on Sunday, stating the stake was used during a Friday night meeting as a motivational tool and a team leader elected to bring it on the field.

The stake ultimately turned into a motivational tool for MSU, instead of U-M.

“Everyone saw when they ran out and stuck the dagger on our grass and disrespected us right out of the gate,” junior quarterback Connor Cook said. “We weren’t having that.”

MSU certainly was fired up immediately after the incident, driving down the field on the opening possession to take a lead they would never surrender.

"The modern university doesn’t believe in a curriculum."

But then there is the idea of the Experimental College...

[F]ounded by educator Alexander Meiklejohn in 1927, the program presents itself on its website as a “college within a college” that fosters an “integrated understanding of the great themes of human inquiry and expression” through its interdisciplinary courses and certificate program—a “more cohesive alternative” to the traditional approach of earning a degree....

Here's the full text of Meiklejohn's book "The Experimental College." More here:

[A]s intentional communities organized around specific learning objectives, LLPs [living-learning programs] had their beginning with Alexander Meiklejohn’s experimental college... at the University of Wisconsin.... LLPs took hold during the expansion of higher education in the 1950s and 1960s, and a few of the early comprehensive programs still exist today, notably the University of Illinois’s Allen Hall/Unit One and the University of Michigan’s Residential College. 

I attended the University of Michigan's Residential College. That was back in 1969.

"Althouse, who do you root for when Wisconsin faces Michigan?"

Asked Chuck, in the comments to the post on last night's basketball game, which the Badgers won. The Wolverines still need to win tonight, but if they do, the next game will be Wisconsin vs. Michigan.

My one-word answer was easy and instantaneous: "Wisconsin."

Chuck's reply:

I can't imagine that; a Michigan undergrad rooting for a conference rival. I know a former UW prof who used to live in your neighborhood. She's an Ohio State undergrad/University of Chicago Ph.D. Even as a Wisconsin faculty member, she knew who to root for. No doubt; no hesitation.

Key word: "former." How long was she here? I have been on the faculty at the University of Wisconsin for 30 years.

When she was here, how long ago had she been at Ohio State? At this point in my life, 40 years separate me from my Michigan student self.

But let me tell you about my Michigan student self. These were hippie days, Vietnam War protest days, days of the "10 for 2" "John Sinclair Freedom Rally," days of a student strike to demand that the Michigan regents adopt a policy of affirmative action. If you had told Student Althouse that one day she would be a law professor teaching about a Supreme Court case that said the University of Michigan regents violated the Constitution by doing affirmative action, it would have perplexed the hell out of her. What bizarre turns of events would need to occur for that to become reality? If you had told Student Althouse that later years would find her living in a hovel, tending a subsistence garden, and selling tiny ink drawings on the street, she'd have recognized a future that flowed — organically — from this education at the University of Michigan.

I'm lucky they let me into law school after that. (Thank you, NYU, and thank you, LSAT.)

So spectator sports have not had much of a place in my life. In 30 years living practically on campus at the University of Wisconsin, I've gone to exactly one event — a football game where the Badgers played Purdue, and that was to go with Meade, who has longstanding ties to Purdue. (He grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana.)

But I do feel the mood of my environment. I get the vicarious experience of the emotion people around me in my city feel about what happens to the Wisconsin teams. From my house, I hear the cheering in the football stadium. For decades, the sound of the marching band playing "On Wisconsin" has drifted up from the practice field over by the lake to my windows. I like it when the people of Madison, Wisconsin feel good.

I don't like it enough to want my fellow citizens to get their way in politics. But unlike the outcomes of elections, there are no consequences to the outcomes of sports events. There are winners and losers, some people will be happy and some will be sad, so I can safely and easily prefer that the people who are happy are the people in my immediate proximity. I know the Madison citizenry feels aggrieved politically, and this grimness sometimes affects me and I deal with it.

But to walk down the street in the real, physical space that is Madison, Wisconsin is — on most occasions — to see the great satisfaction we feel in our long-term relationship with the Badgers.

When Nina Totenberg is calling affirmative action "racial preferences," affirmative action is in trouble.

Here's her report — at the NPR website — on yesterday's oral argument in a case she doesn't mention the name of but which I happen to know is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. This is the case where the people of Michigan — after the Supreme Court approved of the University of Michigan Law School's use of race in admissions — amended their constitution to require that the state "not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin." Another way to put that is to say: The state constitution bans affirmative action.

Under U.S. Supreme Court case law, affirmative action in university admissions does not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution when it is done in a way that is narrowly tailored to the compelling interest in the benefits of classroom diversity. In Schuette, the question is not whether the university can choose not to have a policy of affirmative action, but whether the policy against affirmative action can be put in the state constitution — where, as a political matter, it becomes difficult to change. The idea is: 1. The political process has been restructured along racial lines, and 2. That restructuring violates Equal Protection.

It's a difficult argument to make, since it sounds like choosing equality imposes inequality, but there are a couple old cases upon which to build. I just want to focus here on Totenberg's (perhaps) careless adoption of the state's characterization of affirmative action as "racial preferences." Boldface added:

Students seeking to enact or get rid of other preferences can lobby the regents, [the ACLU's Mark] Rosenbaum observed. But racial minorities cannot lobby for reinstatement of consideration of race in college and university admissions decisions. Moreover, he said, to get back their preferences, minority students would have to embark on a difficult and multimillion-dollar campaign to re-amend the state constitution in a state that is more than three-quarters white.

Also arguing against the referendum was lawyer Shanta Driver. Justice Stephen Breyer posed this hypothetical to her: Most cities have "a vast number of administrators" of all kinds of programs. Suppose an administrator of one project decides to adopt a racial preference, for a good reason, but then the city council votes to abolish that preference. Would that be unlawful?

"No," replied Driver. Breyer pressed on, asking "Where's the line?" How do you avoid giving every individual administrator the power "to decide on his own whether to use racial preferences without a possibility of a higher-up veto?"

So there's Justice Breyer saying it too. Perhaps Totenberg picked up the cue from him. It seems to me, if you want affirmative action to be accepted as important, good, and — as we say in legal doctrine — compelling, you don't want to encourage the habit of thinking of it as preferences, which seem to be special benefits that some people get because of their race. You want people to think in terms of taking into account all of the many factors that play a role in the university's practicing of a subtle art of composing a student body with a marvelously fine-textured, beneficial-to-all diversity.

If that way of thinking is lost, affirmative action is doomed.