A few weeks ago, something unusual happened at the University of Chicago, where I am a student. Vineet Arora, the dean for medical education, received a powerful letter from the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR), a civil rights nonprofit, expressing concerns about a program proposed by her administration that would have paid a $2,000 monthly stipend and provided exclusive networking and mentoring opportunities to certain medical students.
The catch? “Successful applicants,” the program overview states, “will advance our diversity and inclusion mission.” In other words, white students were to be excluded. But that, as FAIR noted, would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating based on race. Dean Arora, in turn, quietly indicated to FAIR in a curt email that she and her fellow administrators would be “updating their materials in order to ensure compliance with the law.”
It was a rare moment—the successful routing of anti-white discrimination...
Yet despite all that, there were no calls from any white students to get her fired. There were no protests, boycotts, or public outrages by any students of any color....
By contrast, much fanfare surrounded the attempted lynching of economics professor Harald Uhlig, at the University of Chicago, after he criticized Black Lives Matter as riots erupted across the country. Economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman joined other high-profile academics in suggesting Uhlig lose his editorship of the Journal of Political Economy. Amid the furor, a student claimed Uhlig had “made fun of Dr. King and people honoring him” during a class session, triggering an investigation by the administration. Uhlig said he didn’t recall the incident, as if that mattered.
Unlike Arora, Uhlig had not proposed racially discriminating against anyone. But it was Uhlig, not Arora, who was forced to publicly clear his name and suffered harm to his reputation....