SAN DIEGO
-- I took an early liking to Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito
Jr. I thought it was charming that he had said that the life story
of his Italian immigrant father was much more interesting than
his own. But now I've seen something I don't like. It has to do
with an organization that Alito once boasted that he belonged
to but about which he now claims to know little.
As the Senate
this week considers Alito's nomination, here's the question senators
have to confront: Was Alito overstating matters in 1985 when,
angling for a promotion, he made it known to officials in the
Reagan Justice Department in a memorandum that he belonged to
a group called ``Concerned Alumni of Princeton"? Or is he
understating matters now when, seeking a promotion of another
sort, he claims he has ``no recollection of being a member, of
attending meetings, or otherwise participating in the activities
of the group"?
It's hard
to tell. Part of the reason may be Alito's admission that, as
a lawyer, he was accustomed to advocating for certain positions
and playing up his advocacy to win favor with employers. For instance,
Alito told senators that he was simply applying for a job when,
in the same memorandum in which he disclosed his affiliation with
the Concerned Alumni, he said he was proud of having argued that
the Constitution does not protect the right to an abortion. Trouble
is, Alito is now applying for another job, and trying to impress
moderate members of the Senate in both parties. So, given his
history of using job interviews to tell people what they want
to hear, how can we be sure that he really believes what he's
telling us?
Besides,
Concerned Alumni of Princeton -- which folded in the late 1980s
-- doesn't strike me as the type of organization that might slip
one's mind; its founders and board members were mostly outspoken
opponents of Princeton's affirmative action policies and maintained
that the school had lowered its standards to admit women and minorities.
That's not
the most offensive part. A lot of people resist change in their
old schools, especially in the Ivy League. A lot of others think
that you can't have diversity without abandoning standards. Personally,
I don't. We're a long way from having to pass the plate on behalf
of white men because, as a class, they can't get into the college
of their choice or a decent job.
Yet, as
someone who has come over time to oppose stringent racial preferences
because I think they hurt the very people they are intended to
help, I'm not about to hold one's opposition to affirmative action
against them. But what I will hold against them is their hypocrisy
and inconsistency. And that's what bothers me about this Princeton
bunch. It seems the same people who were so insistent that applicants
be admitted on the basis of merit -- when it came to keeping out
women and minorities -- were willing to bend that standard when
it came to arguing that Princeton should admit more children of
alumni.
Whoa. What
happened to merit? This bunch talked a good game about how admissions
standards should be upheld and how quality shouldn't be sacrificed
for the sake of diversity, when all the while what really concerned
them was that their own kids might never make it into their beloved
alma mater.
There doesn't
seem to be much evidence that Alito subscribed to that double
standard, or that he was deeply committed to the group's objective
of keeping women and minorities out of Princeton. In fact, there's
scant evidence that Alito was even a member of the group -- except
for the fact that he himself claimed he was in a memorandum written
about 20 years ago.
Still, I'm
troubled by three things in all this: that Alito could have been
a member of such an exclusionary group in the first place; that
he saw fit to brag about being a member to win favor with the
right-wing hard-liners in the Reagan Justice Department, many
of whom took on the dismantling of affirmative action programs
as a pet project; and that he refuses to own up to this now by
claiming that he doesn't remember the first thing about the group.
That, I
don't like.
©
2005, The San Diego Union-Tribune
