Mass. Legislature Moves to Ban Legacy Preference in College Admissions

Plus: Sharansky, Pahlavi on regime-change in Iran; Powell before Congress

Harvard University would be affected by Massachusetts legislation banning legacy preferences in college admissions. Photo: The Editors.

The Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on Higher Education yesterday favorably reported “An Act Relative to Equitable Higher Education Admissions Policies,” which would prevent colleges based in the state from giving admissions preferences to those whose parents went to the school.

“When deciding whether to grant admission to an applicant, a degree-granting institution of higher education located in the commonwealth authorized to grant degrees by the board of higher education shall not consider the applicant’s familial relationship to a person who attends or attended the institution,” the legislation says. The law would take effect starting with students being admitted to start in the 2026-2027 academic year.

Regardless of where one stands on the underlying issue, there’s a process dimension to this that highlights a double standard. When the Trump administration or Republicans in Congress press Harvard to crack down against antisemitism, to guard against Chinese Communist Party influence on campus, or to add viewpoint diversity to remedy the stifling ideological conformity, the left cries “McCarthyism” and caterwauls about the supposedly unprecedented infringement on the independence and academic freedom of Harvard and other universities. But when it’s the Democrat-dominated Massachusetts state government trying to make college admissions more merit-based, nobody seems to be complaining.

It’s almost enough to make a person wonder whether the issue is principled, consistent opposition to government meddling in higher education, or whether it’s partisan opposition to the idea of Republicans, rather than Democrats, doing the meddling. Or perhaps it’s driven not by partisanship, but by the substance—the colleges (or the loudest complainers among them) object to a crackdown on antisemitism or a widening of ideological diversity, but don’t mind being forced to get rid of legacy admissions preferences.

The committee action moves the provision a step closer to becoming law, but there are additional approvals necessary, so this is by no means a done deal. Some colleges have voluntarily (or under public or donor pressure) eliminated the legacy admissions preference already. It’s also easy to envision colleges finding ways around this by recategorizing the legacy preference as a donor or development preference or a volunteer preference.

Sharansky, Pahlavi on regime-change in Iran: There are certainly some reasons to be happy about the “ceasefire” between Israel and Iran, at least if it holds. Israeli Air Force pilots and ground crews can finally get a rest. Commercial flights in and out of Israel can return to normal. Israelis will be able to go through nights without rushing into bomb shelters. Israel can replenish its supply of missile defense interceptors. And America can avert, at least for now, the most dire scenarios about Iranian retaliation via “sleeper cells,” attacks on American bases or embassies, or so on. It’d be a shame, though, if the “ceasefire” ruins the opportunity to remove the Islamic Republic entirely as a threat to the world and to the Iranian people.

The former Soviet dissident and former deputy prime minister of Israel, Natan Sharansky, has an illuminating interview with Lahov Harkov of Jewish Insider.

If some people cross the line of fear and go to the streets and resist, [the regime] can fall in a few days, as it did in Eastern Europe or in Tahrir Square in Egypt.

[On Monday], I thought we were very close….The regime can be changed by people on the inside, if they stop being afraid. If a small group stops being afraid and goes to the streets, it’s very risky. If many people think it’s possible and millions stop being afraid, that’s the end of the regime…

We don’t have to physically change the regime; we have to help the people see the regime is weak. At the moment we have the Nachshons [the first Israelite to enter the Red Sea before it was split in the Exodus story]. This is how it happened in many other places, like in Romania. The moment they go out and show they are not afraid, the regime will be finished in two or three days.

I think we are now very close to this….

The leaders of the free world need to show their real attitude toward the dictatorship and their support for the people. Especially the Americans and Europeans. That was the failure in 2009. All that was needed was for leaders to say, “We are with you”...

Reza Pahlavi, son of the shah of Iran and an opponent of the Islamic Republic, posted to social media:

We are now moving to the final phase of our struggle. It will be hard. But the regime is weak. It is near collapse. Only we, the Iranian people, can end it. To the military—as you’re given orders to lash out at the people—stand down. This is your final chance. You are being watched. We will remember who stood with the people and who committed crimes against them. To the world—do not save this corrupt, crumbling, terrorist regime. At this historic moment, stand with the Iranian people. Shield them from the regime’s desperate backlash. Do not prop up a regime that will, soon again, turn its guns, missiles, and terror toward you. Do not fear. Be bold. Victory is in our hands.

On some important level this is up to the Iranians not the Israelis and the Americans. But as both Sharansky and Pahlavi say, what the Israelis and the Americans and the rest of the free world do can help inspire and give courage to the Iranians rather than undermine them. The risk here is that years from now people look back at the present moment as a missed opportunity on par with Obama’s mistake in 2009, and that that, in the interim, as in the years between 2009 and today, tens of thousands are killed and tens of millions are immiserated, impoverished and oppressed by a tyrannical theocratic regime that survives.

And short term, unless the “ceasefire” includes a cessation of the Iranian regime’s violence against its own people, there’s a risk also of a bloodbath in the next couple of weeks as whatever is left of the Islamic Republic regime attempts to consolidate control with a show of force.

Powell before Congress: The chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, testified today before the U.S. House Committee on Financial Services. Striking to me, in an environment of partisan polarization, was the bipartisan consensus that Powell is inflicting pain on consumers by holding rates higher longer.

The questions from the members of Congress were more newsworthy than Powell’s testimony. “Families in our state are really struggling with the higher cost of borrowing,” said Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey. At least in the part of the hearing that I caught, the members of Congress were not complaining about price inflation. They were complaining about the Fed’s too-high rates, and, like President Trump, pressing Powell about when they will come down lower.

Powell’s response— “I don’t think we need to be in any rush”—did not seem particularly responsive to questions like what was coming from Gottheimer, Republican Mike Lawler of New York, or Democrat Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Powell doesn’t need to be in any rush. But if you are a member of Congress in a swing district with constituents stretching to pay a mortgage or make a car payment—or if you are Trump, trying to make the math work on the federal budget—speed matters.

Two Fed governors, Chris Waller and Michelle Bowman, have recently talked about cutting rates at the July 29-30 meeting if inflation stays tamed.