Bush and Spellings Go After Diversity Standards in Law Schools

We have already seen how the Bushies plan to reshape higher education by making the survival of college accrediting agencies dependent upon adoption of the political goals of the crooks, theocrats, and oligarchs who now own the White House. Inside Higher Ed reports the latest threat-down, with the ABA's accrediting body for law schools now on the grill for its diversity standards. A clip:

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has upheld the recommendation of a federal advisory committee that she extend for 18 months her department’s recognition of the American Bar Association body that accredits law schools. But the secretary, expressing clear disapproval of the accreditor’s controversial new “diversity” standard, is also — against the recommendation of the advisory panel — requiring the law school accreditor to report about how it applies the diversity standard.

In December, when the ABA’s Council of the Section of Legal Education and Admissions appeared before the department’s National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity, the Education Department’s staff — at the urging of political appointees at the department, according to several people familiar with the situation — was told that it faced punishment if it did not alter a standard it used to ensure racial and ethnic diversity among law school student bodies. . . .