Dartblog

The president of the University of Michigan, Mary Sue Coleman, has been fighting a losing battle against the state’s voters, who recently ordered her to end racial discrimination at the university. After first vowing to sic her lawyers on Michigan’s new civil rights amendment, she later retreated from that position, sending out campus-wide e-mails urging students to provide “blueprints for diversity” within the bounds of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative. There has been little news on the progress of that fallback initiative. But one can feel the frustration that grips the Michigan administration, frozen o’er by their new legal obligation not to racially discriminate. President Mary Sue Coleman released a two paragraph statement following the passing of former President Gerald Ford, who was a Mich alumnus and football star.

In just those two little paragraphs, she found room to co-opt the former president’s death into an instrument for the current battle over affirmative action. She ends her brief statement by saying, “perhaps most importantly,” that “President Ford was outspoken in his support for our diversity programs through our defense of affirmative action to the Supreme Court.”

The fellows at The Michigan Review are following the story closely.

Via the watchful John J. Miller.