by RICHARD D. KAHLENBERG
The Tyranny of the Meritocracy:
Democratizing Higher Education in America.
By Lani Guinier.
Buy this book
Two decades ago, Lani Guinier became a liberal icon when President Bill Clinton proposed—and then withdrew, under conservative pressure—her nomination to head of the Justice Department’s civil-rights division.
A racially charged 1993 Wall Street Journal op-ed unfairly labeled Guinier a “quota queen,” a term, Yale Law Professor Stephen Carter noted, that “resonates mellifluously with welfare queen.” Worse was Clinton’s reaction. The president and his nominee had been law school classmates at Yale, and Clinton attended Guinier’s wedding. Yet in withdrawing her nomination, Clinton unjustly characterized Guinier’s advocacy of efforts to ensure minority voting rights “undemocratic.”
Guinier went on to become Harvard Law School’s first black female professor and a thoughtful author of several books on race, gender and inequality in higher education. Her latest book is The Tyranny of the Meritocracy: Democratizing Higher Education in America. As the subtitle suggests, Guinier turns Clinton’s unfair characterization of her writings on its head, advocating more democracy, not less, in American universities and life. And far from endorsing racial quotas, she suggests that affirmative action is a poor substitute for rethinking our admissions process from top to bottom.
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